The Big Three car manufacturing companies of GM, Ford and Chevrolet have jumped on the asking-for-a-bailout bandwagon. Blame it on the American culture of credit. Americans live on loans and mortgages. Most do not purchase via cash. And because the US government has already bailed out US banks and mortgage companies, here come the US auto industry’s top three likewise asking the US Congress to unhook them from inertia to the tune of $34 billion. This is the amount they deem would keep them in business-as-usual.
The US financial crisis, spawning an even bigger global economic meltdown (thanks to greedy financial middlemen in Wall Street) has reduced American confidence in spending. Which, at every angle you look at it, means that the Americans are not, will not, and cannot spend as much. If the necessities are even on the brink of quandary, much less is how vehicle purchase would be. But, yes, the US federal government is, indeed, bailing out the US auto industry.
One wonders if the US government knows that what bailing out the auto industry really means is bailing out the auto industry unions that have been cashing in on so-called welfare of auto industry workers, more than producing cars. The unions have demanded in the past (and got what they demanded) such welfare benefits as funds for laid-off workers, massive retirement programs, unemployment benefits, and health care. The unions have actually killed the auto industry capital and ran the US auto industry, once the biggest and brightest in the world, to the ground. And now that the order of the day is bailout, they have also requested for their share of the pie.
Via Forbes.com
