When the high tech bubble burst, who bailed out the staggering number of highly educated people that were thrown out of work? No one. Why the *expletive* are auto workers more deserving?

Good point. Fair is fair.

And thank you for the opportunity for me to make a second post, so that I can proofread my first one.

They’re all right; we need manufacturing.

But if we bail them out, that will only encourage continued bad management by the auto company management and other companies.

Chapter 11 is there for a reason. That is the legally acceptable way for a company to begin a turnaround. One might argue that Chapter 11 is also a morally acceptable way (as opposed to asking for public funds with no discernable way of paying them back).

As one recent TTAC article’s title said, they should “learn to love Chapter 11″.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_49/b4111040876189.htm

I don’t have any confidence in Cerberus’s management of Chrysler. Let Chrysler go under. It has the least viable lineup of products of the Detroit Big 3 and it won’t be missed very much.

No one is concerned about Cerebrus. But we can empathize with the ordinary folks who work for Chrysler, suppliers and dealers or just live in towns that will be hammered by Chrysler’s collapse.

I echo the comments above about this video.

Anyway, tanks and planes are not relevant to modern warfare like they were in WWI and WWII. The US will always have military technology and equipment upper-hand against terrorists and rogue nations – the issue in those cases in intelligence and strategy.

If things go bad with China or Russia it is not going to come down to tanks and planes; it will be nuclear winter.

Modern warfare is executed with overgrown model airplanes armed with missles taking out the leadership. It doesn’t take an auto plant to glue one of those things together. And if China ever tried anything, we’d throw padlocks on every Walmart in the US and bring their economy to it’s knees overnight.

It’s a different world and it’s time for that argument to go away.

“Apparently not even the fleets want their product anymore.”

Or it could be they are not selling (at a loss) to fleets. At any rate here are the numbers:

“Fleet sales decreased 63% versus last November, as planned, and retail sales were in line with the retail industry (down 36%).”

http://www.allpar.com/news/index.php

So apparently retail is off 36% which means they did better than Toyota’s total numbers.

The griping about tax dollars going to bail out private entities seems odd to me. It happens all the time.

The justification is that it was 8 years of Bush and the Federal Reserve mismanagement of the economy that got us to this point although the 2.8 have made equally bad management choices.

When Bush took over, the Clinton administration had given us 8 years of relative peace and prosperity. Bush and the Republicans threw it all away with wars, deficit spending and failing to deal with the energy problem.

And who put them in power? The majority of Americans. That is why tax dollars should be used to bail out these losers. Votes matter.

When we vote in a incompetent government that makes bad decisions, we all have to suffer the consequences. That’s life.

I wrote essentially the same thing about GM to Sweet Pete at Autoextremist yesterday, and he told me to f–k off and never visit his site again.

Saying we should loan money to companies that clearly won’t be able to repay that money because we’ve made bad loans to others or spent money foolishly is a silly argument.

You don’t really believe ChryCo would repay any loan. There is absolutely no evidence they would repay a nickel of the money. Poor sales, ineffective leadership, non-existent product pipeline, etc., etc.

If we are going to be extreme with Detroit, would it be fair to ask for all those billions we have been pouring into failing public schools with 40% graduation rates? Can we get some of that back too? Maybe I can ask the Air Force for the $6000.00 it gave my friend to relocate to another State to cover moving costs….he owns 3 suitcases and a Focus…it cost him $120 in gas money to move.

Chrysler asks Congress for $7B bridge loan by year-end. Plans more consolidation and pledges to seek alliances to stay viable.