Rattner Defends Bailout With Old Talking Points
Ford did not receive a government bailout. Not directly. It would have gone down the tubes along GM and Chrysler, if they would have been allowed to die, Steve Rattner, the head of the auto task force, told Bloomberg.
Said Rattner:
“Ford would have closed because it wouldn’t have been able to get parts, because the parts industry in this country was in arguably worse shape than the assemblers.”
Rattner repeated another favorite talking point of bailout supporters, namely that the U.S. government was the only entity that could save the domestic automakers because no one, including banks that were dealing with their own financial crises, was willing to put private capital into GM and Chrysler at the beginning of 2009.
But then, as the head of the taskforce, what should he say?
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I don't think anyone seriously believes that nothing should have been done about the grim fates of GM and Chrysler. It would have been politically impossible to let them fail totally, and for proof of this, just note that President Bush approved of a bailout plan just strong enough to give Obama the reins. Obama's plan seems to have been designed to keep GM out of bankruptcy court, but GM wound up declaring bankruptcy anyway. So it seems like the bail out money itself was pretty much wasted. So how about this? GM should have declared bankruptcy on its own, the government should have offered debtor in possession financing if no private bank would have done it, and the normal bankruptcy procedure should have been followed. At least that is my impression. Is there anything wrong with my plan? That probably would have given bondholders a lot more money and unions less. But there would have been many fewer accusations of cronyism and it's possible a lot of the bailout stigma could have been avoided, or at least reduced. D
Arguing about the auto bailout is a moot point. Once the feds decided to bail out the very first financial institution, they were pretty much forced into bailing everything out, including Ford, BTW, since they were the only Detroit automaker that received the $6.9 billion DOE 'loan' to develop fuel efficient vehicles.
Original article: "Watch me generate 100+ comments regurgitating last year's counter-talking points" I agree completely
Better yet, see this: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/10/10/50-Billion-Bailed-Out-General-Motors-vs-Bailout-Free-Ford