As you have read and heard, the Big Three automakers were on Capitol Hill last week begging for even more money than what they were asking for just a few weeks ago. Two of the three did make their way to D.C. by car. I’d like to believe it’s because someone was reading my blog when I mentioned the idea. However, let’s face it, there are about ten of you who read this thing, and a bunch more who show up looking for that ugly dog picture I posted a month ago. (Yep, still getting hits for that one.)
Where was I? Oh, yeah, begging. So after being on the Hill for a couple days, the weekend has been filled with opinions being verbalized on all sides. One thing that both the White House and the Democrats in Congress can agree on is that there must be terms made in order to hand out billions of our money to the Big Three. Now, what exactly those terms should be is sort of the problem. Sen. Dodd feels that the GM chairman should step down. President Elect Obama feels that many of the executives should step down if money’s being shelled out.
No matter what, the auto industry is in the shitter and it’s going to continue to get worse. In fact, with the economy doing so horribly, there are thousands of cars that sitting at U.S. ports. It’s gotten so bad that automakers are having to lease space to store the cars because the demand has decreased.
We’ve got problems. Serious problems. Will we end up bailing out the Big Three? Yep. However, great stipulations will hopefully be made, like replacing a lot of the higher ups who have been detrimental to their companies for a few years. (Like Chrystler, who seems to have struggled more in the past thirty years than done well.)
However, a lot more is going to have to be fixed than just handing money to the Big Three to boost up our economy. Even President Elect Obama has said that our economy is going to do much worse before it rises again. This whole situation (or as I like to call it, a clusterfuck) is a good case for regulation vs. deregulation.
Filed under: political morsel Tagged: | Barack Obama, Big Three, Capitol Hill, clusterfuck, Sen. Dodd, White House
Regulation seems like it’s a no-brainer at this point…what about all of the people who really need cars, and there are a bunch of them beings stored to the tune of more money…why can’t they just sell them at reduced prices? Wouldn’t that be a better business decision? They would recoup some money, and someone would have a car they could afford………
I’m not sure whether we should bail them out or not. I’d hate to see the jobs go, but I seem to remember the auto companies having trouble back in the 80′s.
I certainly don’t think the heads of these companies should still be in charge. Paul Krugman said it’s a mistake tp loan them this money, and I think he is a smart guy. Maybe we should listen to him…
Oh, and I passed two humvees on my way to school this morning. One person per vehicle. Ridiculous!
Why don’t the oil companies just bail them out? They’ve had record profits, let them do it!
Obviously the ‘free market system’ is not working in our country right now. If left alone, would the economy eventually right itself? Probably, but how many people would we then have living in the streets?
Clusterfuck is the ONLY word to use at this point and we are (IMHO) only at the beginning.
Chris- If they dropped the prices to move the cars, that would make sense. We can’t have that.
Mari- That’s a good idea, since the auto industry and the oil companies have been in bed for awhile.
LLL- Good point. It’s going to take more than bailouts for our economy to bounce back.