Thursday 20 November 2008

This is not your money, Congressman [update 1]

Message to American car-makers, to would-be supporters of the car-makers, and to everyone that's standing behind the car-makers with their hands out waiting for some action as well: Bailouts are immoral. Bailouts are impractical. Let Ford fail -- and let all the rest of them as well. If their costs are too high and they're wasting resources on stuff that people don't want to buy, then let them go to the wall, and let those resources be put to better use.

And a message to the politicians: these aren't your billions of dollars. This is not your money. Yes, I'm talking to you, you immoral, thieving numb nut.

UPDATE: "There can surely have been few more pitiful spectacles in recent times than the heads of the Big Three American auto-makers going cap-in-hand to Washington to beg for taxpayer money," says Lindsay Perigo.

"The sight of these three supposed stalwarts of American capitalism pleading for politicians to rescue them from the workings of the marketplace with the plundered earnings of productive citizens must surely have Mikhail Gorbachev scratching his birthmark. Time was when such captains of industry wouldn't dream of bowing and scraping to the power-lusters and parasites on Capitol Hill. Now it seems their self-respect is non-existent as they shamelessly solicit coerced money with which to continue producing inferior cars and coddling the obscenely bloated United Auto Workers Union."

8 comments:

Berend de Boer said...

In the previous Great Depression they bailed out the rail roads. I suppose it's at least progress we're now bailing out the car industry.

Let's hope at the next Great Depression they're bailing out the space industry...

Peter Cresswell said...

If they keep up with the bailouts -- $5 trillion so far thrown down a black hole -- we'll never ever see a space industry.

Berend de Boer said...

I must say bailouts don't scare me as much as a Republican senator saying that my money is his. If he is prepared to say THAT on TV, what must they be actually thinking in Washington?

Libertyscott said...

There is a delightful pushback going on by (mostly) Republican Senators and Reps. It probably will happen, combined with pork to placate those fuckers - but I hope the battle is delayed until after the new lot are sworn in.

Clunking Fist said...

Space industry? You mean the taxpayer funded atempts to send men to Mars?

Anonymous said...

Berend

Which Senator? What did he say? Please elaborate.

LGM

Clunking Fist said...

LGM:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZyAd_rJAx4

or

http://tinyurl.com/5hqdth

Anonymous said...

Thanks. I'll go see it.

LGM