It used to be Brother Can You Spare A Dime? nowadays it's Brother Can You Spare Billions Of Dollars. The Big Three auto makers of Detroit are now on line behind Wall Street with a battered tin cup they hope to fill with billions of taxpayer dollars. They want $25 billion from the Treasury Department's $700 billion economic rescue fund. We've already filled the coffers of the mismanagers of Wall Street, who, of course, quickly mismanaged the tax payer money given them and now hope to mismanage more.
I'm no economist, but I think businesses fail for a reason, and until the reason is ferreted out, money isn't the solution. Greed was the reason for Wall Street's failure, yet our money was given to the greedy without restricitions, and look how well that's working out. Now we're to bail out the automotive industry on their word that they promise to do better in the future.
We're talking about an industry who after the last oil crisis thought gas guzzling SUV's were the way to go. The problems they're facing aren't new, these are problems that have been accruing for years. They're like Rip Van Winkle; they've been asleep for a decade and now they've awakened to find they've lost more than just time, they've lost money.
Businesses fail because people don't want to buy their product. Should we invest in a business that doesn't know why it's failing? The automotive industry says it's because of the tumbling world economy. I say it's because like Wall Street, and the Bush Administration, there's an arrogant disregard for any reality except their own egocentric point of view. All these institutions have to get their heads out of their you-know-whats before we all go down the toilet.
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