In what I can only describe as a pathetically conceived dog and pony show designed more as PR for Joe the Plumber than anything remotely resembling their personal reality, representatives of the Big 3 auto makers came to Washington, again, today, to do their Chicken Little dance. This time they drove from Michigan to DC instead of flying their corporate gulfstreams. Having received no small amount of static for that elitist stunt last week and apparently wishing to avoid the repetition of that mistake ala their elite dumbass counterparts at AIG, today they drove their companies' pathetic hybrid vehicles (not even their own cars) to DC as part of their loan application. Apparently we are supposed to be "wowed" by their "foreward looking vision" and "modern business plan" and products. It would be amusing were it not so pathetic.
They came today, multi-millionaires all, asking for money....more money from you and me. They want lots of money, but they claim all they want is a loan not a bailout....a low interest loan which they want U.S. to finance, on their terms..... and they aren't really asking, they're threatening U.S. Yet again, we find U.S. Companies claiming they are "too big to fail" ...demanding immediate funds and warning that their failure will take us all down. Again, U.S. Companies, fat with executive salaries and perks, suffering from strategic myopia and executive mismanagement, ask U.S. to subsidize their business failures and to do so on their terms. But I've got some terms I want to propose....some ideas, really, a framework for debating not just HOW we rescue this industry, but WHETHER we rescue it and WHY?
First, let's figure out who we really care about. Is it the corporate executives and major shareholders who reaped big $$$ by making the "hard decisions" that have brought their companies to this brink? No, fuck them. When push comes to shove, those executives and the major shareholders who benefited from short term profit driven strategies to the detriment of the long term health of the corporation, point the finger at American Labor as the scapegoat, suggesting that bloated salaries and worker benefits keep these companies from being competitive. This, they say .... while earning 7 and 8 figure salaries and ignoring the admission and culpability implicit in their argument. It was never "them" that made those companies great. Obviously not or those companies would, in actuality, "be great" and they would not be in Washington at all. In point of fact, those companies remain great despite the miserable executive management precisely because of the efficiency and productive capacity of the American work force employed in those companies. It is labor's ability to manufacture and produce vehicles domestically that is worth saving...and with it the jobs of those who perform and support those tasks. It is the domestic productive capacity and employment of American workers that is of value, not the dumbshits who find themselves in charge of it at present.
If we're rescuing anything, we're rescuing that.
It is not and never should be our goal to preserve a private ownership structure that rewards executives and profit hungry boards of directors over the long term health of those companies and our nation...no reward for the constant outsourcing to foreign vendors, the constant trimming away of wages, benfits and working conditions for American workers...no reward for these tricks of the trade, used simply to ensure ROI to investors.......which brings me to my next point. When a company or industry is "too big to fail" it is too big to be left in the hands of a profit driven few. When our national security can be threatened by corporate mismanagement, then national security requires that we maintain a stake in that management process, to effectuate and protect the security of our nation that will remain ever at stake and only as healthy as the health of the company, itself.
Does it not seem a sad byproduct of deregulation and the watering down of anti-trust and anti-monopoly laws that we even have companies so HUGE that their death threatens us all? Is that smart business? All your eggs in one (or a few) baskets? These companies consolidate wealth and power, then wield it to shape and manipulate a market for a singular purpose...profit. The system created has been one based on continuous consumption ....a consumption feeding frenzy where the American citizen is placed on a treadmill, purchasing on credit, widget X, Y or Z, which then becomes obsolete and must be repurchased as widget X, Y or Z 2.0. Not enough money, just use credit. That's the system they are so invested in, the system they seek to perpetuate, the system they want you and I to subsidize. In the words of Barrack Obama....ENOUGH.
Given the manner and method of complicity in driving this system, eschewing energy independence or meaningful efficiency for vehicles until this critical juncture, I say this first to the Big 3 Auto Makers:
Go ask the Oil Companies for your $25Billion loan. They're your buddies, right? Your companies are such great investments, right? Surely, you auto and oil companies, joined at the hip on every other issue, should be so joined on this one. Besides, each of your oil company counterparts have reaped RECORD profits quarter after quarter after quarter during the Bush Administration. So go get a loan from them and leave U.S. alone.
Not interested? Not good enough? They won't lend to you? Don't they love America? Well, if that's the case, my second suggestion begins with this premise: if the company's imminent failure TRULY poses a crippling threat to our economy, then I would demand as a condition for any taxpayer loan, bailout or other action that each of those companies be nationalized on an emergency basis and the executive managment and boards of directors replaced with government administrators tasked with the singular goals of ensuring that our domestic auto production is reinvigorated and with an emphasis on the highest possible efficiency standards. In this way, we safeguard our domestic productive capacity as well as the labor and supporting industries.
I suppose at some point we might privatize the companies again...under the right conditions....on the right terms....but I fail to see how we can simply hand over a pile of cash and hope that the executive management of these companies will somehow get it right this time. Are we supposed to bet on those odds or do we not have a duty to act? If the crisis is as big as they say, doesn't the answer suggest itself?
Folks should realize....the people have the leverage when push comes to shove. What they are asking us to do is enable them....forgive their past sins...subsidize their mistakes....give them another chance. Hasn't anyone watched Intervention? Enabling never solves problems.