BrianKeithSmith

Let's form a lobbyist group to lobby against the lobbying altogether.

Willard Bridgham 3

Ptahhhhhhhhh......more political machismo........

mjb

Now that's a bailout I could get behind...

Veloce Raptor

Nuke the gay whales for Jesus!!!!!!!

NaroEscape

I'm not sure I even know what to say about that one....

NaroEscape

My big concern about this whole thing is that as the government "bails out" one industry after another, we're screwing with the normal free market system. Corrections are needed, like survival of the fittest in nature. Screw with it, then what? The government owns everything: banks, manufacturing, housing, etc. we eventually end up with a fully socialist society that we can't get out of.

The US car industry will never go out of business all together. Restructure? sure. but that's probably a good thing anyway.

Why isn't the government bailing out all the small companies that need help? There are WAY more small businesses that have been hit by the economy that will put WAY more people out of work.

Anyway...

JimmiLew

If the gov't doesnt bail them out, and the auto co's lay off mass amounts of people, the country will be far worse off in the next year or two than if the govt did bail them out. I think the govt knows this and has no choice. What you are seeing now is more arm twisting of the UAW (which just sucks and is a huge part of the problem, imho) to give more blood.

The real travesty is that Honda, Toyota, and Nissan make a better car for less money while maintaining profitibility. What a concept!

I seceretly wish the big three would crash and burn....they truly deserve to....but....that would be a real bad thing for all of us.

So meanwhile, can I take the chick in VR's avatar for a test drive? I am sure there wil be no disappointments in her performance

JL

Riff

Well it is a LOAN (albeit a interest free one?) not the gift that was given to Wall St. As painful as this is, this is supposed to be paid back, I do not think the notion of pay back was ever part of TARP. Just some wistful promise of potential future profits.

Will the Big 3 be able to right the ship, who knows.

"Now Congress, I think I know what this whole thing is about. You gave the financial industry $700 billion but you may not give the car industry $35 billion because you don't really know what the finance industry does, do you?...See here's the problem. The auto industry has a product that is tangible and easy to complain about. I should know, my first car - this is true - was an AMC Gremlin...It's a car that existed so that Pinto drivers would have something to **** on...but it got me from here to there and while I was doing it, it preserved my virginity along the way. That's the thing about cars. Even the crappy ones are useful. But you won't bail out the people who make cars. You'll only bail out the people who make car loans. Not even car loans! The people you bailed out make derivative paper transfers speculating on the future value of enormous groupings of said loans to China. Fine! Detroit's business model is bad. We know they lose $2,000 for every car they sell. Wall Street lost $7 trillion without selling anything! At least when Detroit loses money we get cars. So give them the money! And by the way, if you see my Gremlin, tell her I ended up getting laid when I got a Mustang." - Jon Stewart