The Next Bailout: Detroit

"Are we trading our dependence on foreign oil to a dependence on batteries built in foreign countries?"

What a crock! Oil is a NATURAL RESOURCE, and if another country happens to have more of it underground, people can't control that.

Bun MANUFACTURED GOODS can be manufactured anywhere. To hear a major American manufacturer saying, "We can't make batteries without a bailout from Congress", when Japanese companies have been making great batteries all along just makes it perfectly clear why U.S. Manufacturing is in the toilet. GM and the unions are fat, lazy, entitlement-minded, and not used to competing with someone. And people blame "outsourcing" for this stuff.

Hey GM, if you want a piece of the electric car market, go make electric cars!

And if you want money from American taxpayers, stop lobbying Congress. It's not your money to take. Instead, sell people an environmentally friendly car they actually want to buy. If Toyota can manufacture popular hybrids in American factories, giving Americans jobs, what's your problem GM?

Is there no accountability for a corporation that over-invests in dirty, energy-sucking SUV's, and then whines to Congress for help? This is pitiful. I'm certainlyl not going to vote for any candidate who supports this nonsense.

Once again we have to bail out the auto industry becauwse of poor stewardship over the past 30 years as Detroit fought higher fuel efficiency with the help of the republicans and McCain. Us taxpayers are having to pay for the mistakes of the Ronny Raygunz crowd of Voo Doo Economics. Time for a change and that's Obama/Biden!

As a public high school teacher, the current state of our public institutions reflect our values as a society, from my point of view. (I make under $30,000 a year.) We are bailing out these failing institutions with taxpayer dollars while the state of our public school system continues to decline.

Good teachers are being laid off and class sizes are growing. No child left behind is a law that requires improvements without the promised funding to implement these improvements. And our schools are listed as "failing schools" because of unrealistic goals that are never supported or funded by the federal government in the first place. What is left in our public schools is often a stressed out skeleton staff that does not have the ability to properly educate our students, which we would hope will lead us someday to more effective ways of running this country.

Meanwhile, these corporate lobbyists have effectively secured deregulation and what they consider "optimal" conditions for their financial success (deregulation). And a few well-connected people have lined their pockets with enormous amounts of other peoples' money.

This sort of short-term gain at the expense of long-term growth way of thinking have really infected our entire way of running our society.

Unfortunately middle and lower class young people (the MAJORITY) of our future do not have the money or the resources to hire corporate lobbyists. Their teachers and their schools have very limited resources. And there is little to NO organized efforts to effectively support the reform and progress to lead our public schools to educate and prepare our future. In every other developed and developing country we compare our students' progress with, there is a clear and dedicated effort to improve, fund, and prioritize education. In America, we are starving our schools while bailing out reckless fat cats who've thrived on greed. Is this the American Way? Or have we lost our way?

Hopefully (as we say in school) we will learn from all of this and use it to improve, grow, and succeed.

This is a radical idea but it just might work. Detroit should build a car that is cheap, reliable, stylish, and doesn't guzzle gas. Do that and you might just build a business that doesn't need a federal bailout.

We have a chance to completely restructure the auto industry. Why not set up a conservatorship - you can have the money but you will have to make some major changes in exchange for it.

You want $25 billion? For starters, take $15 billion. Eliminate the unprofitable lines, close the redundant dealerships, change the way we finance cars. Better service, better warranties. No bonuses to executives for the first 5 years. Maybe we don't need a Big 3 - let's take the best of them and consolidate - maybe we end up with 2.

These are vague examples, but I'm sure there are many other ways the auto industry can improve, and plenty of people with more knowledge than mine who can oversee the re-invention of the industry.

We need a manufacturing base - allowing the auto industry to drown, even if they deserve to, doesn't serve our interests in the long run. And playing the finger pointing game just gives us all sore fingers.

Moving forward, we have an opportunity to fix the industry. We may not get another chance.

There are many liberal Americans who in their anti-corporate zeal yearn for the destruction of the Big Three. What you folks are not considering is that the auto industry is one of the last bastions of organized labor in this country. Be careful what you wish for....

Don't let them tell you this economic meltdown is a complicated mess. It's not. Our national financial crisis is readily understood by anyone who has seen greed and hypocrisy. Conservative Republicans always want the government to stay out of business and avoid regulation as long as they are making lots of money. When their greed, however, gets them into a fix, they are the first to cry out for rules and laws and taxpayer money to bail out their businesses. Obviously, Republicans are socialists. The Bush administration has decided to socialize the debt of the big Wall Street Firms. Taxpayers didn't get to enjoy any of the big money profits on the phony financial instruments like derivatives or bundled sub-prime paper, but we get the privilege of paying for their debt and failures.

Bailout after bailout, is there an end to this seemingly endless game?

The $85 billion rescue plan has sent the Wall Street on a wild and mad roller coaster run. Up and down, down and up, the near 5% change each time gets everyone on the nerve. The sad thing is the end point of the roller ride is always lower than the starting point, in fact often much lower. The worst is looming over the horizon.

The US government is in huge debt, ever sinking on a gigantic sandpit. The magnitude of the deficit cannot be easily grasped by the uninitiated. Only Americans can save their beloved nation, they can help by starting to lead a simpler and less extravagant life. Time is running out fast.
(Tan Boon Tee)

This isn't just about gas guzzlers. For decades, American car makers have not been able to create products that could compete with international car makers. Now they blame the gas guzzling, next decade it'll be some other reason why they are being outsold. So why should we reward their incompetence? How about making a competitive product people want to buy?

Also, I work for a small American business that is also losing market share. We had to layoff another 15% of our staff last month -- where is out bailout?

Wow, you're saying that the american workers should go to work for the Japanese car companies? Get the "F" out this country, people like you are the reason that this economy is in the shape that it is. You're part of the "me first" problem. Forget that the profits go overseas, as long as you can save a couple bucks on gas. For every dollar that you send to Asia, we lose more of our economic value. They don't buy squat from us, and it drives our dollar value down each time we send anything over there. Toyota doesn't pay it's American employees ***. most of the car is made over seas and parts are put together over here so they can label it "made in America", so people can say it helps out the "grass root workers", look at where the profit goes. If everyone took your advice the all our profit would go to countries that don't give a *** about America and the sacrifices that my fore father gave.

Hell no. Why should they get a bailout when they've known for decades that the end of gas guzzlers was coming, even if there was an occasional spurt in SUV sales. Businesses that last see the trends coming and invest money preparing. They refused to develop electric, even tho' those leasing prototypes loved them and wanted to buy and keep them. They done nothing to push CNG. They deserve to go.

I was telling people 5 years ago that since the major U.S. automakers were not investing in the then new hybrid technology that the industry should be forced by the government to retool their factories so that 10% of vehicles produced would be hybrid or electric. Legilation should have been passed and should still be passed, if we bail them out, to increase the production of hybrid / electric vehicles by 10% per year until 70% of production is hybrid / electric. It would eliminate dependence on foreign oil and reduce air pollution.

The 3 bigs need to go away... first to go should be FORD.... Designed to be fixed by dealers... THEY HAD THERE CHANCE........... MAybe the autoworkers should work at Mcdonalds like The president THEY voted for said.. GET A JOB!!!!!!!!!! DUMP THE BIG THREE>>>>>>>>

Nothing against the good people of Michigan, who have long suffered under their feudal overlords. I wish them the best in these tough times. BUT...

It is high time that the "Big 3" get packed off to the history books, and for good. They're in this trouble because they make undesirable, unreliable cars. Their R&D is a joke. Instead of developing battery and fuel cell technology, they wasted time developing Microsoft Sync soundsystems. Great for passing the time when you're running on fumes in a gas line.

The financial and auto meltdowns are proof that while American workers may be second to none, American management is second to everyone.

Let them die.

Somebody call Willie Nelson and let's get a concert going for the big 3. We'll call it lemonaid.
Maybe he can get Big and Rich to sing a song for Wall Street as well. Here in Texas I drive my diesel 2500 when I need power and my Geo Metro when I don't. Give LOANS here at HOME when necessary and QUIT the FOREIGN WELFARE everywhere else whether necessary or not! The Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bailout is just wrong. If you bought a home you couldn't afford you should loose it along with your credit.
I don't understand the AIG thing. It just sounds to me like a bunch of criminals, with $106 trillion in assets and $110.06 billion in revenues, just who did they loose their monies to?