celticlord2112
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quote:
ORIGINAL: cjan Alas, there is no good solution to this mess. If the automakers go belly-up in bankruptcy, their creditors will get, at most, pennies on the dollar and may, in turn, go belly-up. Personally, I would like to see the executives who created this mess in stocks on the Capitol steps. Assume for the moment your scenario is the likely one (I doubt it is, but that's another discussion). If the automakers cannot regain solvency through a Chapter 11 bankruptcy, then how will a bailout accomplish that goal? And if these "bridge loans to nowhere" cannot restore solvency--if they will not work, in other words--then how is throwing still more dollars on the fire at all helpful? If the Big Three's creditors have not properly accounted for the risk of extending them credit, and if the extant loans and lines of credit to the Big Three number among the "toxic debt" buried on banks' balance sheets, then shame on the banks for playing yet more financial games, and let us demand they own up to their complicity in the blundering of the Big Three to insolvency (the CEOs made all the bad decisions, with the UAW demanding all the bad labor deals, but for Wall Street not to have understood the way Detroit was being managed into the ground reeks of yet another lack of due diligence on the part of Wall Street). Even if Chapter 11 turns into Chapter 7 for the Big Three, and even if that in turns topples some or all of their Wall Street creditors, if that collapse is inevitable, let us get the pain over and done with now. First law of holes: when you're in one, stop digging. If your scenario is correct, all the bailout accomplishes is digging the hole deeper--so why do it? None of the bailouts thus far make much sense--even the ones that at first had some semblance of reason in hindsight were complete fuckups--but this bailout is the most insane, the most inane, and the most irrational one yet. As for putting the CEOs--along with Gettelfinger of the UAW--in the stocks on the steps of the Capitol....I'm ok with that. Can they receive a proper scourging first? (I'll be glad to mete out the biblical measure of 39 strokes on the chest and back).
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