I know the mayor of Fenton favors the buyout, but I always consider that city when I think of automakers. Chrysler has cried and cried for concessions and Fenton has abliged. Within two years of the last blackmail move by Chrysler, they are bailing on Fenton and moving jobs to Canada.

I have no confidence that American automakers will do what they say. If somehow they do stumble upon a better car, it will be built outside the United States. The American automakers are very similar to the airline industry. A successful business model is staring them in the face and they continue to ignore it.

Liars and thieves.

I think that potentially, yes we could. I know this sounds like sacrilege to free marketers out there, but consider the unique way our market is broken.

Thanks to the unprecedented corporate payouts for the top executives, and the new creative ways we can bet on stock, the market no longer rewards a “long term” approach. The long view is old fashioned – the new darling of Wall Street is short term gain. If you are daring enough (read take enough risk), you can bubble the market and cash out before a crash. Personal fortunes equivalent to the GDP of small nations have been made this way in the past few decades, while companies that have been around for over a hundred years have shut their doors. Some say that the big three are victims of their own bad decisions – many millionaires disagree with you. They knew that SUVs were doomed – a short term blip (bubble?) in the long view. But by focusing on those products, they drove profits higher, and reaped fortunes doing it. So what if the companies are in the toilet now – they are all RICH!

Faced with a market like this, sometimes it takes true leadership – a vision if you will – to guide the troubled companies “out of the wilderness”. The government can see the vital need our country has to ween itself from foreign oil, and if they bail out the big three we can guide them (as in the bailouts before) to make cars for the Long View. We have gone to the moon – but it took the Government to do it. We can break our addiction to oil, but it may take a similar national push – a focus on the benefit of our country instead of the profit for a few.

Besides, as Kurt pointed out in the top of this post - we’ve always gotten our money back before. Faced with the economy we have now, this may be the best investment we could make!

…..Mr. Greenbaum I would certainly hope that in return for Federal help the American Automakers would be required to improve their fleet fuel performance. Sounds like a good idea.

But let me ask you and the other readers this, what are you asking of the Wall Street Bankers in return for the ten times larger amount of money they received?

Seems to me the white collar businesses gets a free pass from the press and the blue collar ones don’t.

My question is if we give them a bail out will they bring the price of their cars down so people of medium pay can afford to buy them

no bailouts, loans , or concessions until they close the plants in Canada and Mexico and reopen Fenton and the rest of the plants that have been idled or closed in the United States.

No.1-How is this bailout going to make you and your product more efficient? Why have you not been doing so before? No.2-I would imagine you would/should ask the Oil Companies for a loan, for you seem to be more in tuned with their demands than us little taxpayers!

Big time groveling.

“More fuel efficiency”

All three currently make and sell for foreign markets models that are MUCH more efficient than what they can sell here. One of the reasons? Government mandates. Go to Europe and most of their car sales are diesel powered. Medium and large size vehicles with diesel engines would sell here as well if they would (or could) sell them.

Oh, forgot something.

If the government is involved, you can bet your bottom dollar that we will get crap for cars. Everything the government touches, they screw up. Hell, these clowns cant run a cafeteria for themselves, much less a car company.

…………..I forgot something too. How are we going to pay for these bailouts?

The Detroit bailout is a lot of money no argument about that, but its chump change when compared to the 800 pound gorilla WALL STREET BAILOUT.

Is the government going to expropriate our 401k type retirement plans to pay this off?….I would not rule that out, where else is there enough cash to finance this?

This country is owned by a big club…and you and I aren’t in the big club….George Carlin