Good Question 0
I’m not saying I agree with its premise, but it’s worth thinking about; I commend the column from this morning’s local rag to your attention.
Why consider a bailout for the automakers when we have a perfectly adequate system for restructuring companies in dire financial straits? It’s called bankruptcy.
The nation’s steel industry, long considered crucial to “national security,” has been totally reorganized through bankruptcy and consolidation. It’s a much smaller domestic industry now and much of it is foreign-owned.
What makes General Motors, Ford and Chrysler any different from Bethlehem Steel, LTV and Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel?
(Here’s an opposing view.)
Clearly the American auto industry has done little more than demonstrate its incompetence and its inability to see farther than the next quarter’s returns. Autoworkers are already taking it on the chin; why protect the empty suits?
Frankly, I think a lot of the hysteria over the auto industry is as much a result of Americans’ emotional attachment to big, loud, fast Detroit Iron (even though, these days, much of it is Mexican and Canadian Detroit Iron–the cars may be assembled in the US, but many of the parts are manufactured abroad) as it is a rational attempt to protect jobs and industrial output.
All the infusions of money in the world won’t help the American auto industry unless someone figures out a way to infuse some smarts into auto executives’ heads.
