A little duck for the holidays

December 17th, 2008 at 10:51am Annette LaCross

Published Dec. 15:

These days, there are only two words to remember about the economic crisis — until February, at any rate:

Lame duck.

That applies as much to Wall Street as it does to Capitol Hill — especially since Wall Street is now officially owned by Capitol Hill — where the 110th Congress is spending its twilight hours bickering over the various details of one bailout or another.

In a lame-duck world, we see a lot of activity but very little action. And we probably shouldn’t expect to see any real substance until after Jan. 20, when Barack Obama assumes the mantle of president and the power brokers in Washington and Lower Manhattan resume their regularly scheduled hysteria.

Until then, a general lassitude has gripped both regions — except, of course, congressional Democrats, who spent most of the fourth quarter looking less like lame ducks and more like Goosey Loosey, running in crazed, squawking circles and scattering feathers hither and yon in so-far vain attempts for some kind of loan money to throw at Detroit’s automakers.

It was no different last week, when they pushed a trimmed-down, $14 billion, no-frills version. They even managed to get President Bush’s buy-in before they were brought up short by skeptical Republicans.

But even if Republicans are successful in temporarily halting any sort of real action on the plan — I get the feeling that the GOP has already pounced on one of its talking points for the 2012 presidential election — both sides seem to like the idea of hiring a baby sitter to keep an eye on the automakers, gleefully dubbed the “car czar.”

I already feel sorry for the poor slob who gets tapped for that job.

As Congress sees it, this is the guy who will dole out the loans, with the power to force General Motors and Chrysler into bankruptcy by next spring if the two don’t cut quick deals with labor unions and creditors to restructure their businesses and become viable.

So the guy has to get tough with the automakers, with the United Auto Workers, with suppliers and other creditors. In other words, he has to start smacking around the very corporations Congress won’t because those same corporations tend to be sizable contributors to political campaigns.

Into this thankless job walks our hapless middleman, who must report to Congress every couple of weeks.

He has to rewrite the rules for the auto companies and get them to play a new kind of game, one that will almost certainly never be over because nobody has specified what “viable” means. Profitable? Green? Leaders in market share? Downsized? Research and development scions?

In this day and age, and with the companies in question, those results don’t necessarily go hand in hand.

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