Auto-matic

So, the anticipated transfer of billions to the automakers has now been authorized. Let's review what's at stake:

• The Industry: the big three are creating vehicles few people want to buy. This is of their own volition. For a long time, many people wanted $50,000 SUVs that went less than ten miles on a gallon of gas. Not so much anymore. Just as with Wall Street, we are being asked to pay for their sins.
  
• GM: The right wing wants to use their problems as a stick to beat up organized labor. There is the fraudulent claim that workers make $73/hr in wages and benefits. Untrue. This number is the result of dividing ALL worker costs (including hundreds of thousands of retirees) by the current work force. In any case, labor only represents 10% of the cost of a GM vehicle. If those workers all agreed to work for nothing...and the price of GM vehicles thus dropped immediately by 10%...would they be more attractive in the market? No.
• Chrysler: This is the true crime. Chrysler is not owned by shareholders, it is one of the many properties managed and mismanaged by a private company called Cerberus. Holdings include everything from Alamo Rental Car to Formica to Albertson's Food Stores to Remington firearms to the now-defunct Mervyn's department stores. It is run by John Snow, former Secretary Treasury Secretary under the current Bush, a simple tool in the financial den of thieves. Its intellectual luminaries include Dan Quayle, who is simple in virtually every sense of the word. Now, the point here is that Cerberus has a lot of money from their myriad other holdings that they could themselves use to prop up Chrysler. So, why don't they? Well...they don't want to. Isn't it so much easier just to use taxpayer dollars?
• Auto workers: Yes, letting the auto companies fail will cause job loss not only from those employers, but in related industries across the country. There truly would be a ripple effect. But what has anyone proposed that would convince even Dan Quayle to believe we are not just delaying the inevitable?

Put this in classic gangster B-movie terms. Vinnie, your bookie, has just agreed not to beat your head in with a pipe because you made a weekly payment of interest on the thousands of dollars you owe him. But you haven't retired a dime of the original loan. Vinnie will be back next week looking for full repayment...and you haven't got a clue where you're going to come up with the money.

America...say hello to Vinnie.