Quote:
Originally Posted by roachboy
so overnight the senate deal on a short-term bailout/loan for the "big 3" collapsed.
it seems there are a few main explanations, but the main one is: the senate republicans are playing chicken with the automobile industry because they want to use this to fuck over the uaw.
i find this to be a shocking development to wake up to this friday morning.
what do you see as happening next?
there's little doubt that the central problem has been at least stated outright by members of congress over the past week or so--what detroit is actually asking for is a coherent federal-level industrial policy---but the way in which this has been managed, and its timing, seems to have also been an attempt to use the context created by october/november's ad hoc reactions to collapse in the financial sector to get help with fewer rather than more restrictions. given that one cannot simply conjure an industrial policy--rather it really needs to be thought out--and given the situation, i actually thought that the only real alternative was the alternative that seems to have been done in by the senate republicans---split the immediate from the shorter term, and add this to the transition tasks--to develop such a policy and propose an administrative arm. the
"car czar" seemed a really stupid idea, a stop-gap....
what now?
i expect the administration will act unilaterally as the consequences of a collapse of the automobile industry are too high.
but i am amazed that the right's desire to use this to fuck over the uaw would result in this...
|
Hell if I know what happens next. I know it seems completely fucked up that the Wall St. guys can show up with little or no plan and get 700 billion. The auto makers show up and nada. Were they asking for 700 billion? No they wanted to 15-35 billion to keep the doors open. This seems to me to be the GOP trying to break the UAW. Look at the GOP senators who fought this the hardest, they all have large foreign, non-union, auto makers with plants in their states. Gee no conflict of interest there. or maybe they're fighting it and it's just a coincidence those guy were the one fighting it the hardest. Personally I rarely believe in coincidences.
We sent billions to Wall St. What do they make on Wall St? What have the tax payers gotten for those billions? Seems to me guys actually making stuff in this country just got told they don't matter. I think they matter. They end up losing their jobs and everyone in the area or related to the industry will have massive loses. The reports I'm reading this morning have the market tanking and the dollar falling off a cliff.
I think the resulting actions by the UAW might make the recent events at the Republic Windows and Doors plant look like a family picnic.
Someone *cough* Bush *cough, cough* needs to step up to the plate and tell these fellow GOP members this is not an option. We need someone driving this bus. Unfortunately the current man in the drivers seat is Bush and he's got a record of putting buses in the ditch, not getting them out of the ditch.