I agree with you. There can be plenty of finger pointing of what went wrong 20 years from now.

The issue is not, what went wrong. That is an easy answer for this economy: 20 years of loose credit is coming back to bite us. I mean come on....This time last year you could walk out of Best Buy with a $5K flat screen with no money down and no interest for two years. How did that ever make long term sense for a bank....?

There is enough blame to go around. That said, the auto industry is unique. This industry is so concentrated into two states, it has to be bailed out. If the workers were evenly spread out over 50 states, like most industries, you could make the case of letting them fail. But in the case of the Big 3, no, there is no alternative. These are workers that only know autos.

Since there is absolutely, 100%, under any circumstances, only one possible answer you would ever accept...doesnt it make you incredibly dishonest and a complete hack to make a couple dozen posts pretending you are interested in discussion or debate?

What you are essentially doing is proselytizing.

LOL, sounds like you understand the gravity of the problem but are aguing for the sake of arguing... It's easy to take the position "let them fail" but until you take a step back and realize the gravity of the issue, its easy to throw around slogans you hear on talk radio...

No, I understand the gravity of evangelicals like yourself.

Nope, give us YOUR plan that is less expensive or tragic than the alternative to a bailout.

Just give it to us. I am not asking for specifics, that would be unfair. But come on, the "let them fail" or "let the workers move" or "retrain them" is really kinda silly. If that is your logic let me know and I will refrain from responding in the future...

Just give me your plan, in realistic, general terms, and lets debate. I am saying a bailout with strong stipulations for management and labor.

Your general plan is____________________?

It doesnt matter, because you wont accept it until Congress enacts it.
Again, there is only one option that you will accept. And please dont use words you dont understand like logic. The phrases you have in quotes there are opinions, not logic.
The problem is, your definition of realistic is "agrees with me." This is painfully obvious. You are the worst kind of fundamentalist.
Abolish the government. Let me guess....too unrealistic, right? If you want realistic, I can tell you what they are GOING to do. Anyone can do that. Thats easy....so easy even YOU can do it.

You just conceded your position....you have none.

Give Michael Savage my best next time you call in. And for the record, I listen to him every now and then, he is good entertainment...

Preach on brother.

GM has to declare bankruptcy. They will be able to prolong immediate debt payments, and they will be able to continue operations. This will not lead to massive unemployment, and it's not wasting tax payer money.

I'm starting to think that they will go into Chapter 11 more times than not, but I think the Government should give them the loans anyway. They should just be secured loans so that if they go belly up, the taxpayers are protected. And if the bailout works and they pay back the loans, great.

GM is almost certainly already 100% secured to its creditors.

The gov't needs to do a capital injection conditioned upon the receipt of equity and the appointment of a receiver who has the power to renegotiate labor and legacy contracts.

RESTRUCTURE THEM IN BANKRUPTCY MAYBE?

Call me crazy but I think unprofitable companies should be allowed to fail.

They pay for it, just a lot ****ing less than the ridiculous health care plans and pensions UAW members receive, not to mention the overpayment.

well duh, but you are assuming that Democrats are trying to bailout the auto companies, not unions.

You've been given many plans by many people and you have disregarded them.

I think what we will end up seeing is a pre-packaged quasi bankruptcy where the government puts in some money on similar terms as the Chrysler bailout, the shareholders get wiped out, the Union takes a pretty large haircut (20%?) in exchange for equity and bondholders get squashed by 30 percent or so also in exchange for equity all without the company every entering bankruptcy court. It will be interesting to see which of the stakeholders decides to play chicken. I don't think it will be the union fwiw...

I wasnt to preface this by saying I'm drunk.

This post epitimizes everything that annoys me about this Harvard guy.

There aren't going to instantly be hundreds of thousads of homeless people if these companies go out of business. It's just absurd. I'm too drunk to formulate a good argument right now, and I don't know the direction that this thread has taken after this post, but the fact that you are willing to say that there will be hundreds of thousands of people becoming homeless IMMEDIATELY if one of these companies fails is just ****ing ******ed. If you actually got a Harvard MBA I wayyyyyyy underperformed when I was in school. These bolded words alone make the rest of your posts worthless imo.

to put them at parity with other automakers? **** that imo, will never happen.

ikestoys dreamlist:

33% haircut for union, right to work, no card check, dealer reform (you have no idea how big of a problem this is, well, probably)

I think the ideal solution would be a bailout, because a full bankruptcy would kill sales even more, although the company (at least ford and gm) wouldn't disappear. Whoever thinks that is just, well, a harvard grad. However, the bailout has needs to effective that I believe Democrats just can't pass because of the large amount of union influence.

The bailout that the Dems would pass would basically float Chrysler a little longer before that godforesaken company dies, maybe save GM, and give Ford some money to make it until the new UAW contracts kick in (Ford is pretty much safe imo).

The dealer networks are a huge problem and the main reason why GM can't trim its product lines (most of the relevant regulations are state, not federal and are going to be a bitch to get around.)

As far as a pay cut goes, they are not really going to have a choice, but the union will probably get some additional money for the pension fund which will only be partially funded when it gets handed over in 2010.

Right...except the government is the one placing the bids on automakers hemorrhaging cash, with no sustainable business model and huge legacy cost that the stock market is telling us few people want to invest in...

But of course we'll be "protected". Protected as much as any government program - meaning let's hope we get back 30 cents on the dollar.

This just in:

Obama weighing idea of "auto czar," aide says

If Obama had been president for the last 8 years, we'd probably have an affordable food czar, airline czar, affordable housing czar, world trade center memorial czar, saveusfromChina czar...

Can I be the czar responsible for overseeing pony distribution?

Ike or DE,

Please explain why the dealer network is such a huge problem. I haven't seen anything specific on that point.

I agree with the formation of an "auto czar". You people need to understand that the auto industry is critical for blue collar states, today and in the future. While not as important, from a job perspective it carries the same signifigance as the US Military. We must always have industries to employ blue collar workers - these jobs can't all go overseas. No.

I would also prefer the Oil industry be nationalized as well, but that is a topic for a different day.

And you need to understand that I don't give a **** about companies who are run like ****. I don't buy their products and they don't deserve my money; by the looks of their stock, no other private investor does either.

Why the hell should we be forced to invest in a company that sucks?