http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/yourlife/127875;_ylt=AgKcMO4WxC.UmHPKVDBIidG7YWsA

Bail Out Detroit خيخٌ Now

2.6178/5
Posted on Tuesday, December 9, 2008, 12:00AM
Usually this column is about finance. It usually is an attempt to help
the reader make money and have a more comfortable life. I am well
aware that I have made a lot of mistakes and that in the short run
many of my suggestions have turned out badly. Believe me, I am sorry.
I still believe that in the long run the investment ideas will do
well, but I am terribly sad that people's hopes have been disappointed
in the short run.
My best guess is that we are in a panic of sellers and market
manipulators and that we will recover within a few years, but I base
this on history. We may have moved into a new phase where history is
irrelevant. I would be surprised if that were so, since it's never
been true before, but one never knows.
However, today, let's talk about the American auto companies. They
need a bailout from us taxpayers, and they have to get it yesterday.
Here's why
First, we are on thin ice economically. To allow our largest heavy
industrial component to fail at this delicate moment is suicidal. To
put a couple of million more Americans into unemployment is just not
sensible. Mr. Barack Obama is talking about public works projects to
employ hundreds of thousands of Americans -bridge building, school
building, airport building. These projects take time to start, disrupt
local community life, and are famously wasteful.
Why not be smart about it and NOT LET AMERICANS GET UNEMPLOYED IN THE
FIRST PLACE? (Please pardon the shouting.) There are millions of
Americans already hard at work making great American made cars and
trucks. Why not keep them on the job? Wouldn't that be smarter than
allowing the whole upper Midwest to fall into oblivion and then rescue
it over a fifty year period?
Second, I get sick when I hear about how this or that professor says
we cannot have bailouts in a free market. Really? How about the
bailouts the professors get because gifts to colleges are tax free?
How about the bailout they get because if they have to teach six hours
a week they feel overwhelmed, while the guy on the line in Dearborn
works a grueling forty and doesn't whine about it?
Somehow, we can give bailouts to investment banks where the top dogs
make hundreds of millions a year for running the company into the
ditch and wrecking the whole credit picture in America. Somehow we can
have bailouts for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, whose bosses were
trading on the credit of the taxpayers to make themselves rich while
pumping up a serious housing bubble.
Amazingly, we can have whole fleets of C-130's fly to remote areas of
Iraq and Afghanistan with pallets of hundred dollar bills piled from
floor to ceiling. Then we can pass them out to warlords who make tea
for our soldiers one hour and blow their guts out the next. We can
send CIA operatives into Somalia and give millions, maybe hundreds of
millions, to warlords to fight other killers.
But we cannot find it in our hearts to save our fellow Americans in
Ohio and Michigan and Indiana who make the cars and trucks that about
half of us buy? We can send billions to Germany and Japan to bail them
out after they bombed us and killed our POWs and killed six million
Jews. But we cannot help the children and grandchildren of the men and
women who fought our war and made us the arsenal of democracy?
Something is very wrong here.
And please don't tell me how GM and Ford and Chrysler have made bad
cars that people don't want. I drive only American cars, only GM cars
actually, and they are the best, coolest cars I have ever driven: my
1962 Red Corvette, my mighty Cadillacs whose potent engines and super
brakes have saved my life many times on the freeway. Yes, the cool
people in DC and New York don't drive American cars. But a lot of
other good people do and we love them. And my Cadillac dealer down
here in the desert, Jessup Motors, gives me a lot better service than
my Mercedes, Porsche, BMW, Jaguar, or Acura dealers ever did. I would
trust my life to Detroit iron any time.
And why are we so angry at the car companies' executives? They get
miserable pay by Wall Street standards and have much harder jobs. Why
are we so angry at the unions? They negotiated their deals in good
faith. It's not their fault that roller coaster gasoline prices messed
up their world. They are our brothers and sisters. They fight our
wars. They maintain our middle class lives. Maybe they get paid a lot,
but they have been giving back for years. When will it ever be enough?
And what about the retirees? They get the benefits they were promised.
If those can be taken away, then whose benefits are safe? And do you
think it will be cheaper if the government takes on those costs
directly?
Let's stop the Depression before it starts. Let's show some fairness
and good faith to our own. Let's bail out the Big Three, help them
slim down, shape up, and keep making great cars and trucks. The Big
Three are us and if we cannot help ourselves, who can we help?