samboct
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Joined: 1/17/2007
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Bush is delusional. His grasp of reality has finally snapped.
On another source for the same story-
"
Bush said the auto industry is "obviously very fragile" and he is worried about what an out-and-out collapse without Washington involvement "would do to the psychology" of the markets.
"There still is a lot of uncertainty," he said.
At the same time, the president said anew that he is worried about "putting good money after bad," meaning taxpayer dollars shouldn't be used to prop up companies that can't survive the long term.
He revealed one other consideration - that Obama will become president in just over a month.
"I thought about what it would be like for me to become president during this period. I believe that good policy is not to dump him a major catastrophe on his first day in office," Bush said."
Umm- Bush doesn't want to dump a major catastrophe on Obama for his first day in office? The financial meltdown, massive Wall St. bailouts, rapidly rising unemployment and consumer confidence plunging...this is the closest we've come to the Great Depression of the 1930s and so far the only difference is that we haven't had a drought and it hasn't been recognized as such. Not to mention shoveling money with dumptrucks into the sandpit/latrine of Iraq- never mind not doing anything about global warming....but he doesn't want to leave Obama with a major crisis his first day in office? He's lost all connection with reality.
Has any president elect been handed a larger mountain of fertilizer for his first day in office in our 200 plus year history? Not bailing out the auto industry is merely insult to injury at this point. Some of the previous posters have noted that the major problem of the automakers isn't poor management- it's the financial crisis which has downgraded their bond rating while companies such as Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch continued to get AAA ratings. Lower ratings means it costs more money to borrow, and the margins of these companies has been very tight for many years due to global overcapacity-driven by countries such as Korea supporting auto manufacture as state policy, not as a profitable enterprise. In short- you could be a brilliant business person, and you're still out of options, and have been for the past decade.
Republican senators against bailing out the car companies have shown that they are incapable of learning from their own errors- or facing them. While they throw out comparisons with the failure of the Rover bailout in England with the US manufacturers- the reality is very different. The US car mfg's have a decent market share and ALL car manufacturers are suffering. (Rover was ailing when other firms were successful.) This is a tsunami that can swamp all boats- those with gov't lifelines will probably weather the storm the best. Wanna buy a Prius? They'll cut you a nice deal...right now. Mercedes are stacking up in yards near the ports where they got unloaded- nobody wants them. It seems to me that the US manufacturers made cars/trucks that people wanted, until the gas prices rose. Yes, being caught flatfooted by that was dumb, but these companies don't have enough reserves to have backup models waiting in the wings for that shoe to drop. And they've still got some pretty good engineers- it'd be a shame for those people to be out on the street.
But the biggest problem that the car companies have is that the bank bailout hasn't worked and the money's evaporated. Most people who buy a new car have to take out a loan- I think there are more car loans out there than mortgages, although the total $$ amount in mortgages is much higher. But if you have to buy a car now, you need to pay cash, because in one of the most moronic moves of all time, credit agencies are demanding ever higher credit scores. This idea is idiotic because credit scores haven't worked- they've brought us to the financial abyss we're looking at.
Consider the $350B bailout to the banks so far. Well, that's enough money to buy over a YEARS worth of car production- yet people who want an auto loan are SOL. How are people supposed to buy these cars without being able to get a loan? Yet, do any of the bozo's in Washington acknowledge that the bailout didn't work- that credit's still frozen? And who got all this money anyhow? An article in todays NYT pointed out that it's still bonus season on Wall St- and where did that money come from?
Detroit has been the whipping boy for failed US policies, and it looks like they may get wiped out- which would be a tragedy for us all. What wouldn't be a tragedy would be if the senators that won't vote for this bailout would be out of a job instead.....
Sam
< Message edited by samboct -- 12/18/2008 7:29:20 PM >
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Bush considering "orderly" auto bankruptcy - 
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