We're all hurt by the fucking crisis. How is taking tax dollars and giving it to Ford or General Motors or who-the-fuck-big-business-ever going to help me pay the mortgage by the 15th of November and December and January and February etc...????
If you put out the fire by dumping more gasoline on it, why are you surprised when the house burns faster????
Seriously. What am I missing?
9 comments:
Whatever you're missing I'm missing it as well. I'm against the Wall St bailout and the car companies can rot for all I care. The Big 3 got themselves into this mess by fighting CAFE regs and building (and granted, selling) big gas thirsty trucks. Now that people want gas sippers, they're not fleet enough on their feet to make the change. Hell, bankruptcy may be good for GM, it will allow them to bankrupt off some of their pension obligations. Not that I'd like to see that, being a good Union person. Geez, Fiery, you've got me to write enough to thing about posting something like this on my blog.
What am I missing
Balls
(and not the red shiny ones on christmas trees)
You see all the top execs of all the top companies are men (minus a few rare exceptions and none of those are currently in financial trouble, that I know of), and the overwhelmingly vast majority of board members are men. All these men award themselves vast sums of money to do jack shit. Then when their company goes belly up they go and hit up their other male buddies for a few quid to bail them out.
Simple when you think about it.
(the above is part of a blog I've been working on for about two weeks. One day I'll finish it.)
Joe- EXACTLY!!!!! It's like the people who signed the variable interest rate mortgage. Ummmm didn't the term VARIABLE bring up thoughts of credit cards that promise 1% interest for the first 6 months and then if you read the fine print it jacks up to 19.9% APR after that. Fuck people read the fine print. Or better yet, JUST READ!!!!!!!!
I'd like these motor companies to take their arses down to the patent office, figure out who owns the ones for the incredible fuel efficiencfy and PAY The inventive fuckers what they're worth to help them develop better cars. It's not hard, the greedy cunts just don't want to do it. Must. Make. Money. AND Fuck. People. Over.
Well lose the fuck people over part and you won't need a bail out.
OzA-
Oh I've got balls. A lovely pink pair about 1.3" in diamater that roll around together and jangle a bit as well. Very discreet. Strangely not a CEO though. Pity that.
;)
Hope you finish that blog post soon!!!
Looks like Joe's got one churning inside of him as well. :) Can't wait to read 'em.
There's an old maxim of American economy: As GM, so goes the US. Meaning, the auto companies (from manufacturing to sales) are the largest employers of Americans and if they fall, the American economy will collapse entirely. I don't like that my taxes are having to go to GE and Ford, but we're teetering on the edge of a depression and we have to make personal sacrifices to keep from losing everything. It sucks, but such is life under the stifling failure of Reaganomics.
As long as the auto execs use the money to actually help the companies instead of doing what the banking execs did and squandering the money on personal trips and "bonuses", I'm okay with bailing out GE and Ford.
Don't get me wrong: I wish we didn't have to.
Reed- the article I read said that the 3 major auto manufacturers account for 250,000 jobs directly and effect another 4 million. Obviously a lot of employees.
The companies blame the global credit crunch for an accelerated decline in U.S. sales and severe limits on corporate and consumer borrowing. Most consumers finance their vehicle purchases.
People are too broke to buy new autos, and banks don't want to lend losers with no assets money to buy new autos. And fair enough too.
So how is this proposal... a comprehensive aid package of $50 billion - with half directed as emergency capital. The second $25 billion, to be considered later, would go to a retiree health care trust fund to free up cash for other priorities.
The White House has urged Congress to accelerate the availability of $25 billion in advanced technology loans approved by lawmakers in September to help automakers make more fuel efficient cars. going to solve the problem of people not having the money for a car and not qualifying for the loans to buy the car????
Not deliberately dense,
just genuinely perplexed.
people are too broke to pay off mortgages as well; but the government gave the banks a few trillion to fix them up.
I don't understand any of this either (which is another reason why my post is taking so long to write)
Reed, it's not just the American maxim, Australia's doing the same thing. Our car industry has been bailed out several times before and they are talking about doing again. The car industry are very large employers here as well.
I'd just like to know where all the money goes? I suspect some (most?) goes to paying off debts worked up during the lean times. If companies end up going broke (too much debt to pay) then the company will close, sacking all the workers = lots of unemployment = even less spending.
The only possible good outcome to us general populace is cars being sold off at cheaper prices.
Unfortunately I agree with Reed. I think the trickle down effect regarding jobs would suck the life out of what is left of our economy.
I DO think it should come with some restrictions and regulations regarding the types of cars they can build and the MPG they MUST get.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24639217-601,00.html
We're all suckers, we're all victims...
The Iraq war is starting to look cheap for the US compared to all these planned bail outs....Freddie and Fannie need 5 trillion (which is now explicitly government guaranteed) and the $4.3 trillion held in the social security trust fund is also supposedly guaranteed. There is about $15.6 trillion of US federal debt, a total that increased by over $1 trillion in the year to September 2008 and is increasing even more rapidly currently. Add about $9 trillion of home mortgage debt and $6 trillion of high quality corporate debt (and ignoring debt of financial institutions, which can be expected to be largely matched against other debts) and you have a total outstanding amount of $30 trillion of debt subject to interest rate risk, excluding the junk and near-junk that is currently in the process of defaulting.
Here's some general reading links to get you started....
http://www.businessweek.com/
http://online.wsj.com/public/us
http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com/
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog
Folks, these are fucking trillions, not millions or billions, its unbelievable. This stuff is being talked about all over the internet in depth, and although I don't know much about economics, these are basically plain facts....these figures are for America, but look at practically every other country in the world and you will find its the same fucked up story. Its been all about re-packaging and re-selling debt...and now no one wants to buy it...game over...easy yeah!!
I seriously doubt that anyone in the world knows how to halt the rot and get us all out of this massive balls up! Throwing big money (er..taxpayers money, keep that in mind) at car makers will be like one drop in a big empty bucket, the skinny is that they'll be back next week asking for more....along with a whole bunch of their mates who want bailing out as well....hey doncha think we've reached peak freak out time!!!
"I'd just like to know where all the money goes?"
Bailout money from the government is nothing more than paper with green ink on it. If you, or your bank/industry, get it first you can spend it and do well enough. But then...
That money starts moving into other areas of the economy and prices rise (yes, that is what "inflation" really is). As prices rise, the money in your pocket or bank account will not buy as much. Your money has less value than it did before the new money flooded the market!
YOU'VE JUST BEEN TAXED, as the gov't claims they are 'saving' the economy. Well, they have maybe saved some parts of the economy, but everyone else's economic experience sucks!!
The US 'gubmint' prints about a billion dollars a month, maintaining a constant low rate of inflation, by which they benefit, not you.
The present financial crisis arose because that steady flow of fake* money moved into markets that were most attractive... mainly housing. (No doubt, it has been helping pay for the U.S. military, too)
[*all US money is fake because it is not redeemable as gold, and can be printed as if it grew on trees. See "Zimbabwe's inflation rate a punishing 2.2 million per cent" Prices double every day!]
Housing was attractive because the banks had to offer low-interest loans (sub-prime!) to more risky home owners (often with zero down payments) according to the Community Reinvestment Act (as enhanced by Pres. B.Clinton). On top of that, the prime lending rate was held at, an insanely low, 1% by Alan Greenspan of the Federal Reserve (a despicable intervention in the economy, matched only by the printing of money).
This created a housing boom, where high future home values were an obvious way a borrower would be readily able to repay his mortgage, by flipping the house. But that ain't all.
Banks did not like having these risky loans, so they sought to consolidate them. Then, like insurance, defaulted loans would average out as a minor loss against loans that worked.
The consolidated mortgages were bought by various Big Banks (AIG etc.), and by the quasi government agencies known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac —who used taxpayer money. All were supposed to profit from the process, but (obviously) could not profit under the present conditions.
Of course, lenders had to make money to survive or grow, so most took advantage of the government interventions either out of short-sightedness, or in desperate measures to keep up with those chasing easy money. This is the "greed" most complain about.
The personal over-compensation of Executives is another matter... and is the "greed" most people think is the problem. Actually, the first "greed" is what everyone does when they try to get a nicer house or car, or better pay etc. That is good, but government intervention made the housing market seem much safer than it really was. The 'boom' had to end, but that intervention made it difficult for anyone to really know when the 'bust' was going to come.
But the irrational compensation and spending of some (not all) CEOs is what newspapers focus on as the cause of the financial breakdown. I disagree with that interpretation.
The real irrational "greed" is the desire of bureaucrats and politicians for power... which they sought to achieve by distorting the market, to make American life look better than it really was. The financial crisis is a direct consequence of that.
It was decidedly not financial deregulation, but financial regulation (54,000 new ones since 1996 alone!); it was not private selfishness but public officer's power-lust; it was not capitalism but socialism/fascism; it was not Ayn Rand it was Alan Greenspan.
Bailouts, even of the car industry, can mitigate a severe breakdown now, but may lead to a more severe one later. The best solution is restrained bailout now, followed by the repeal of such laws as the CRA (above) & Sarbanes-Oxley, relaxed labor laws, lowered minimum wage, removing of taxes from capital gains, health insurances and medical expenses, savings plans etc. Such changes would spur the economy dramatically, and perhaps enable the market to make its 'corrections' before they become crises.
The Big Lie:
"I'm from the government,
and I am here to help you."
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