Rental car companies join the bailout queue
Update: See this followup post for more information.
The rental-car industry may be next in line for a federal bailout, the Wall Street Journal reports today. Enterprise, Hertz and their competitors want help financing their new-car purchases, and they apparently figure that what’s good for Detroit should be good for some of Detroit’s biggest buyers.
The TARP reform bill passed by the House last week would authorize loans to the rental-car companies, the Journal says. The case for aid seems to rest partly on the companies’ own plight, and partly on the argument that they could boost auto sales. Chief executives of Enterprise, Hertz, Avis and Dollar Thrifty made their plea in a letter to House leaders:
The impact of the declining economy on our business has already resulted in significant cost reductions, staff cutbacks and facility closures. In addition, our industry faces significant near term financing challenges. … We therefore believe that government action is necessary to help restore access to capital.
Of course, many industries could make the same case today, but the government can’t bail out everybody. If we bail out the rental-car companies to help the automakers, should we subsidize the airlines to help the rental-car companies? (After all, cheap air travel brings more people to the Hertz counter.) Should we give Boeing some special financial aid to help the airlines? We’re on a slippery slope here, and it’s hard to see where it might end.
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David Nicklaus has covered St. Louis business for more than 25 years. His column appears three days a week on the Post-Dispatch business page. 
All for bail outs, next it’s the tire companies then oil for making tires and asphalt for the road companies then me so I can drive the car. Enough is enough.
Truly unbelievable. . .
Maybe people just don’t want to rent cars anymore? What if we would have bailed out the horse and buggy manufacturers back in the day? Money well spent? This is like natural selection . . . government should not be decided which species (businesses) will survive. Survival of the fittest should prevail. Think of how many small start ups are dying off because the big hogs are getting bail outs. Leave the car industry alone at let the next generation of car manufacturers who will listen to their consumers (ie, fuel efficient cars) take over and squash the big 3.
Let’s cull out the herd. The weak should go. The strong survive. OH, I forgot we can’t do that. Change
BRING IT ON!!
Let’s just cut to the chase. Mr. Government please give every U.S. citizen 18 and over a $30,000 a year living expense, free healthcare, free education, free housing, free entertainment (concerts and gladitorial games for the unwashed masses)
Those of us that wish to make more can, or just like Canada with free healthcare I can still hire my own doctor if I wish as long as I can afford. I mean do you really think that 60k a year incomes are using free healthcare? It’s all about what you can afford.
I’m very serious, why are we screwing around with this capitalism/socialism left right paradigm? Extreme Capitalism does not work because of greed and extreme Socialism does not work either (although there has never been a true socialist system, it’s always been butchered be communism and fascism)
There is more than enough money in the government, just look at all the waste already and that does not include the 2 billion a week saved in the “war on terror (I mean the war of lies and fear)”
I’m so tired of hearing right wing talk radio nutjobs squawking about how Obama is going to make us into socialist by spreading the wealth or giving free healthcare (for the record, it was Hillary that proposed free healthcare)
And I’m tired of hearing left wing nutjob bloggers believe that one man can change the world and the (fake) economic collapse.
Bailouts don’t work (just ask Paulson to tell us where the first 350 billion went) This was the biggest heist in the world. And a tax holiday won’t work because you would have revolution and blood in the streets if taxpayers were able to keep 30% of their paychecks and then Uncle Sam tried to take it away again. Some of you might already know that every penny of your income tax goes to pay the debt of the Federal Reserve. So here the Fed prints fake money buy adding zero’s to computer systems and then all of us get to pay it back with an undisclosed interest rate - it’s the most brilliant scam ever.
Watch Freedom to Fascism, wake up and get mad as hell
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1656880303867390173
Has anyone noticed that gas is almost $2.00 a gallon again? How about a “Personal” bail-out?
Automakers don’t make any money on fleet sales anyway. In the past the have intentionally cut back on such sales. See http://money.cnn.com/2007/02/03/news/companies/gm_cuts/index.htm
The Federal Reserve is as “FEDERAL” as Federal Express
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AR2EtMteHCg&feature=related
As long as private banks control the money supply, manipulate markets, set interest rates and have the keys to the US treasury to bail themselves out at will, we will all suffer. There is no better time than now to put an end to the Federal Reserve Banking system. Clearly it is a failure ran by the greedy.
TARP money was just a scam
LOL…. Before Hertz ask for a bailout, maybe they should cut the pay of Frissora…. his salary of $1 million should be enough when his company is strggling, stocks are in the toliet, and he is laying off thousands of people. There is no need for him to be #98 on Forbes list with total comp of near 15 million……
rental companies just need to have their pushy agents sell more of that overpriced insurance that your own insurance and credit cards provide.
I CAN’T BELIEVE OBAMA BAILED OUT DETROIT AND WALL STREET!!!
WHAT A SOCIALIST!!!!