[/quote=] The Center for Automotive Research, an Ann Arbor, Michigan-based think-tank supported by the auto industry, estimated more than 1 million jobs would have been lost if GM and Chrysler had been allowed to fail.

---

I agree, that is a pretty bad source

 

-----signature-----

In other words...who cares if both Chrysler and GM have returned to profitability in a few short years. We needed to have shafted the unions more while, at the same time, privatized profits and socialized risks to lenders by guaranteeing any new loans they make.

Not to mention, absolutely no private funding was available. That's a big part of whey they were headed to bankruptcy in the first place.

Government investment in energy research is fine with me. More than fine. Though, it does come dangerously close to saying government is an important component of the system. I'm surprised that didn't set off the right. Unless he meant to do it through tax cuts to corporations.

 

-----signature-----

Thanks for the reformat

 

-----signature-----

He wrote that in 2008.

Second, he clearly states his stance on Unions.

"The new management must work with labor leaders to see that the enmity between labor and management comes to an end. This division is a holdover from the early years of the last century, when unions brought workers job security and better wages and benefits. But as Walter Reuther, the former head of the United Automobile Workers, said to my father, “Getting more and more pay for less and less work is a dead-end street.”"

"The need for collaboration will mean accepting sanity in salaries and perks. At American Motors, my dad cut his pay and that of his executive team, he bought stock in the company, and he went out to factories to talk to workers directly. Get rid of the planes, the executive dining rooms — all the symbols that breed resentment among the hundreds of thousands who will also be sacrificing to keep the companies afloat."

"huge disadvantage in costs relative to foreign brands must be eliminated. That means new labor agreements to align pay and benefits to match those of workers at competitors like BMW, Honda, Nissan and Toyota."

He is not saying Unions are bad. He is saying we have to be competitive and unions need to make sacrifices just like the companies they are working with.

I agree.

Finally, I am not certain where we see him stating he wanted to use private financing.

"In a managed bankruptcy, the federal government would propel newly competitive and viable automakers, rather than seal their fate with a bailout check."

He was advocating change and not the status quo that had gotten the auto makers into the mess.

Letting them make the proper changes and go through the proper channels.

I am not saying the process we went through was bad, but I don't see his answer as being bad either.

 

-----signature-----

The union made numerous sacrifices over the last 10-20 years. Just not enough for Republicans who want all unions dead. He wanted to have the government guarantee loans rather than just make them directly so that his Wall Street buddies could get a nice cut while risking nothing. In other words, pretty much what I said in my last post.

 

-----signature-----

Of course there was no private funding for the clusterfark that is the US auto industry. Who would want to invest in that?

Had they gone bankrupt, however, it would have attracted a ton of private parties who would have competed to pick up the pieces. Who knows what new companies could have emerged from the rubble, all competing with each other from birth in a cacophony of innovation necessary in order to emerge on top. It would have been natural selection in the manufacturing world, and each company would need to employ the same workers who lost their jobs at the old bloated uncompetitive fossils....

Maintaining the status quo instead of sparking innovation, however, is bad for the unions...

 

-----signature-----

if the companies went under, the unions would still have been screwed.

Depends on what the goal was. If the goal was to save GM and Chrysler despite how stupidly they have been run, then no, the free market wouldn't have fixed that. The only really effective way to reward the stupidity of GM and Chrysler and to punish Ford for being well run was to do what Obama and the Democrats did.

On the other hand, if the goal was to save the auto industry, then the free market would have done that just fine. When GM and Chrysler went under it's not like people would have stopped buying cars. They just would have switched to other brands. People who care about buying American would have bought Fords and Toyotas. Those companies would have massively ramped up their production in the US to capitalize on the natural reward that the free market provides for not being idiots like the companies we saved.

 

-----signature-----

Once again we are seeing right wing ideologues ignoring reality. The reality is that the U.S. is much better off because Obama saved GM and Chrysler.

 

-----signature-----