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Tuesday 
18 November 2008
Capitalism is suicidal
As a follow up to my post yesterday, could the Wall Street Journal be more contemptuous of tree-hugging environmentalists?
When is $25 billion in taxpayer cash insufficient to bail out Detroit’s auto makers? Answer: When the money is a tool of Congressional industrial policy to turn GM, Ford and Chrysler into agents of the Sierra Club and other green lobbies.
That’s the little-understood subplot of the Washington melodrama over a taxpayer rescue for Detroit. In their public statements, proponents describe the bailout as an attempt to save jobs, American manufacturing and the middle-class way of life. But look closely and you can see that what’s really going on is an attempt to use taxpayer money to remake Detroit in the image of the modern environmental movement. Given a choice between greens and blue-collar workers, Congress puts the greens first…
All of this shows that Democrats don’t merely want to save jobs. They want an entirely different American auto industry that serves goals other than selling cars to consumers. The green lobbies have disliked Detroit for decades — for resisting fleet mileage standards and having the audacity to make SUVs, trucks and other vehicles that people have wanted to buy but that violate modern environmental pieties. For the greens, the bailout is their main chance to remake Detroit according to their dictates.
Could they be any deeper in denial and disregard of the seriousness of the climate crisis? Do they really care so little about the future, blinded by suicidal orthodox capitalism?
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You expected something else from the WSJ editorial page? But I do agree with the last paragraph of the editorial. The only solution here is for the companies to go into chapter 11. A bailout — with environmental regulations or not — would just add a few months to their life.
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Of course I didn’t expect anything else from WSJ, but if I didn’t react in some way there’d be no Transcendental Floss. ;-)
Seriously, you very well might be right about Ch.11 vs. bailout. I read something somewhere comparing the fear rhetoric in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq to the fear rhetoric around the financial crisis. The argument against Ch.11, of course, is that it won’t work and that it will just lead to complete collapse of the companies and liquidation. I heard a spokesperson for the UAW on NPR parroting that meme.
Yeah, that’s real nice. It’s like extortion. Scare people with the possibility of losing their jobs in order to build a populist push for a bailout.
BTW, executive bonuses are indeed being suspended by many large companies right now. I love thinking about these people feeling the pain for a frickin’ change. One report I read was that the top execs in one company will get no bonuses, only their $600,000/year base salary. They’re still making 20 times what I make, but maybe, just maybe, they’ll lose a mansion or a penthouse or a yacht and be really sad about it.
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One of the douchebag CEOs said that bankruptcy is off the table because no one would buy a car from a company in bankruptcy. One of the millions of articles I read had the counterpart that people fly on bankrupt airlines and risk their lives which is a little more important than the warranty on a new car. You’re right, they are trying to scare the politicians and us into a deal that is good for the executives and bad for the workers and taxpayers.
Those Detroit CEOs each took private jets to DC for these meetings rather than fly commercial. They are so far out of touch with reality they need to be fired — and sued by their shareholders for gross negligence. The CEO of Ford may $28M last year.
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Yeah, I read about the private jets, and you state that they are out of touch with reality, but it’s worse than that. They really are sinister.
The CEO of Ford might have flown to DC on a private jet, but as a PR stunt he was driven from his hotel to Capitol Hill in a Ford Focus hybrid.
That is not out of touch with reality, that’s premeditated! To even come up with that PR stunt you have to know that there’s something wrong with what you do for a living and then decide to try and trick people into thinking otherwise.
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Holy crap?! When did the WSJ become such a tool for blatant corporate socialism? That editorial wreaks of shameless panhandling. And it contains nearly every element a normal, fiscally responsible free market Republican would rail against if a Democrat was trying to establish a program to help the poor and/or struggling small businesses. Good gawd, they’ve gone off their rocker. The greed in New York can only be fixed with several detonated warheads. And soon.
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My guess Gonzo, is the Ford PR flunky that dealt with his appearance on knew it would be a good impression to have him roll up in a hybrid. The CEO was probably bitching the whole way to the meeting about what a crappy car he had to ride in. The CEO himself probably would have taken a helicopter to Capitol Hill if he could. I still contend the CEOs are out of touch and in this case, the HQ PR people should have pushed harder to have them fly commercial.
The other great thing from those meetings was when the politician asked them if they’d take a $1 salary during and they all said no! The PR people should have also coached them to say they’d take a dollar salary and that they’d still be paid well (call it a stipend, have deferred compensation but don’t sit in front of Congress and tell them the truth!)