Mike Thompson's auto bailout toon and an even better rant

[Bozita]

http://www.freep.com/article/20120223/BLOG24/120222083/Mike-Thompson-Santorum-Romney-and-the-auto-bailout?odyssey=mod|newswell|img|FRONTPAGE|p


By Mike Thompson
Detroit Free Press


As hard as it is to believe, there are more than a few autoworkers in Michigan who will go to the polls next Tuesday and enthusiastically cast their votes for candidates who would have put said autoworkers in the unemployment line.

That’s because all of the remaining Republican presidential candidates opposed President Barack Obama’s auto bailout plan. And without that plan, General Motors, Chrysler and a good chunk of the Michigan economy would have been toast.

Ask Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum what they would have done differently and they’ll go into some tortured explanation about a managed bankruptcy. But as Jeremy W. Peters wrote in the New York Times earlier his month, “(GM and Chrysler) needed billions of dollars in financing, money that auto executives and government officials who were involved with Mr. Obama’s auto task force say was not available at a time when the credit markets had dried up. The only entity that could provide the $80 billion needed, they say, was the federal government.” And as Peters notes, defenders of the bailout say that the result would not have been a Chapter 11 reorganization, but a Chapter 7 liquidation.

The Republican presidential candidates were wrong. As ugly and messy as it was, Obama’s auto bailout worked. It was maddeningly expensive, but certainly less expensive than the alternative. And all the spin and hair-splitting in the world won’t change that those facts.

[liberal N proud]

1. K&R

[Bozita]

2. kick for the day shift