The Toledo Blade reports that Hillary Clinton has gone on the record saying that "if confronted with the prospect of a bankruptcy by General Motors or Ford, she would extend the resources of the federal government to help keep them afloat." The quote comes from a meeting between Clinton and the editorial board of Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, in which manufacturing policy was widely discussed. When asked about her views on a Chrysler-style bailout of major American automakers, the Senator from New York said that "for both economic and national security reasons, the next president should be aggressive in taking steps to protect and nurture the nation's manufacturing base." Of course, politicians say lots of things on the campaign trail, and the worse-off the campaign, the more aggressive the sound bites. Had the Michigan primary been rescheduled, this blank check could have gone over well for Clinton, who is seen by auto execs as "anti-car." As things stand, however, this quote will accomplish little more than pointing out the desperation of the Clinton campaign, and the obviousness of Detroit's woe.
22 Comments on “Bailout Watch 3: Hillary Offers Industry Bailout...”
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Right, and radioactive spider-bites can make you strong enough to pick up VW Beetles.
I believe her.
How much would Hillary’s universal health care plans help the Big 3 if they no longer had to spend $1000/vehicle on health care costs ? Wouldn’t that be a proxy bailout of Detroit by tax payers ?
Great – let’s borrow more money from China to bail out some badly run corporations.
Hillary Clinton truly is the Tonya Harding of the Democratic party; she would do and say anything to win regardless of the consequences.
The really funny thing is that even though the Clintons got NAFTA passed, gave China preferential trade status (MFN), are currently being paid by the Colombian government to push CAFTA, are in the pockets of international oil barons and Chinese industrialists, democrats in Michigan still LOVE them. In fact, almost every democrat of note in the state has endorsed her (Governor Granholm, Senator Stabenow, Rep. John Dingle, Rep. Cheeks-Kilpatrick, and Mayor Kilpatrick, etc. etc. — Senator Levin, I am convinced, behind the scenes supports her). It is also no secret that Governor Granholm has been angling for a cabinet post in the Hillary government.
TTAC should start a Michigan suicide watch.
> TTAC should start a Michigan suicide watch.
LOL!
With the Clinton’s history on trade matters, there is no reason to think she’s interested in saving American business. But let’s play along for a moment.
OK, we’re going to keep GM and Ford afloat. Doesn’t this mean that we have to take decision making power away from the execs at these companies? We can’t give them money, or even guarantee loans, and then let the execs make the same stupid plays over and over.
As repugnant as I find the thought of bailing out those dumb motherf-ers, I can’t disagree with national security argument.
Never underestimate Her desire to spend my tax money on things that dont help me.
Heaven forbid we ever let the free market work things out for itself.
By the way didn’t she rail against the Bear-Sterns bailout?
I’m pretty bitter about this. I’m going to get my guns and go to church.
@ EngineeringTheAtom
The difference between Bear Stearns and this is very few stockholders are likely to vote for her, but by publicly proclaiming a bailout, she hopes to grab the votes of Rust Belters and union types.
If only pandering were against the law…
@ NeonCat93
Very much agreed; just found it interesting on the macro scale. A bailout is a bailout, doesn’t much matter whom is the recipient.
Solutions for America!
American Leyland here we come!
By the way didn’t she rail against the Bear-Sterns bailout?
Bear Sterns : The ineptitude of a lot of poor people puts a few rich people out of jobs so the Federal Reserve steps in with a $30b loan.
Detroit : The ineptitude of a few rich people puts a lot of poor people out of jobs so the Federal Government says “screw ‘em”.
If Bear Sterns was ok, why not GM? Bottom line is NEITHER of them should should be bailed out. Both were ruined by horrific mismanagement, and both would wreak havoc on the economy if they failed. Chase is going to cherry pick Bear’s assets and dispose of the rest. So, there will be plenty of fallout anyway.
Pandering politicians? Don’t they all? Hillary just happens to a bit more shameless about it.
Hillary made a Christmas commercial. It showed her wrapping presents. They were government give aways. She is very generous with my money.
# jpc0067 :
April 14th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
“I’m pretty bitter about this. I’m going to get my guns and go to church.”
JPC, good one, had me ROFL.
“OK, we’re going to keep GM and Ford afloat. Doesn’t this mean that we have to take decision making power away from the execs at these companies?”
If you take the Chrysler loan guarantees as an example, there were many restrictions on Chrysler according to Lee’s autobiography. That was one of the reasons he pushed to pay off the loans early. The feds took away the corporate aircraft for example. Imagine Mark Fields having to fly coach.
Bailout will help nothing, just drag time. reminds me when Fed printed out 200bn dollars a month ago out of the blue to save plummetting Nasdaq and Dow Jones, well, it stopped the decline…for a couple of days, then the temperature dropped again.
You can`t save the patient, if he is bleeding, and all you do is add blood to his system. You need to stop the bleeding. And that bleeding in attitude that is started in families, in schools, in lack of hard jobs, sweat, sense of achievement, honour and divinity of natural sciences that is a cradle of material, tangible things on the earth.Not only CEOs are to blame, I want to remind you that none of the CEos is failing when dealing with low-tech industries, see, Colgate-Palmolive, Phillip-Morris, MobilTexaco, etc. So i would blame all the people involved- careless, shortsighted executives, average engineers,scared and average managers, average workers at assembly line- and average product at the end.
well, duh. A central tenet of the Communist party is that government owns the means of production, and determines what gets produced. So naturally she wants the central economy to build more tractors.
Robert,
From what I understand a few companies have been given government hand outs over the past 7 years. Haliburton? Blackwater? ring any bells?
Ronin,
Go check ideologies. Far Right leans towards Fascism, far Left leans towards Socialism. If you really believe that it’s going to go to one extreme or the other it’s time for a reality check.
We need more aggressive antitrust so that no-one gets so big they have to be bailed out.
If we let Chrysler die, Ford and GM won’t need any bailouts.
For several more years, anyway…