Detroit gets skewered, Wall Street bankers get easy bailout

4 comments December 4th, 2008

Have you thought about this? When the Wall Steet banks and investment houses were cratering, their leaders went to Washington and Congress authorized $700 billion to bail them out, few questions asked. They were not asked to come in with a plan, they were just showered with money. Some firms were bailed out without Congressional action, and treasury secretary Hank Paulson became, briefly, the most powerful man in America.

There were no stories about how the bankers traveled to Washington. Corporate jets? We don’t know.

But when Detroit’s big 3 automakers came begging for cash and loan guarantees, whoa! Not only were they humiliated for doing a dumb thing — taking those multi - -million dollar jets to the capital city — but they were admonished for not having a more detailed plan for what to do with the $25 billion they wanted. At this date, we still don’t know whether Congress will help them, or tell them to go fishing.

Michael Moore was talking about this on Keith Olberman tonight. He echoed something I’ve long thought — the D.C. crowd cares little or nothing about U.S. manufacturing. They’d prefer to shower their attention and cash on people who say they can make more money out of money.

But folks, that’s how we got into this mess. Manufacturing is the source of our wealth, not banks.

Admittedly, we can’t just give the Big 3 money without demanding they do a much, much better job managing their companies. That said, the U.S. would  invite disaster by just allowing the companies to bite the dust. Millions of support jobs depend on the industry, indeed, because  like it or not, we have built our modern economy based on the automobile.

the only way we can truly save American manufacturing is to provide universal health care and drive down the so called legacy costs. The reason there are nearly a dozen auto assembly plants in Ontario, Canada is because the companies don’t have to provide health insurance, saving them considerable money on the cost of building a car.