US Auto Industry - The Jurassic Auto and Idea Park - by P. Sainath
The logic of "too big to fail" keeps Big Auto and others of its like going. There is never any debate here of whether they should have been allowed to get as big as they did. President-elect Obama says he will aid the auto oligarchs who he calls "the backbone of American manufacturing." Sure, with that many jobs at stake, any government must worry about the consequences of letting them sink. No question about it. It's on the basis of that very fear that the Terrible Metal Lizards are able to bargain for handouts from public money. The US economy has lost close to a quarter of a million jobs in the month of October alone. So the thought of many more simply vanishing is scary. The US has already lost over 1.2 million jobs this year. Close to half of those in the past three months alone. So there is a good chance that more public money will be thrown at the auto giants, and that, without larger strategic shifts being imposed on them. Yet, everyone knows this does not mean an industry saved. They could be back soon with demands for still more. At which time, with things being even worse (quite likely) the pressure to save jobs by pouring in public money will be still greater. This is the United States. The money given out in the bailout so far has delighted the tuxedo dinosaurs -- CEOs and senior executives.
As The New York Times notes ruefully in a lead editorial: "Just weeks after the Treasury Department gave nine of the nation's top banks $125 billion in taxpayer dollars to save them from unprecedented calamity, bank executives are salting money away in billionaire bonus pools to reward themselves for their performance." Other bailout bandits have held meetings at resorts costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.
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