This link has been bookmarked by 13 people . It was first bookmarked on 17 Nov 2008, by someone privately.
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06 Dec 08
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19 Nov 08
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Those are among the reasons most analysts and economists, however reluctantly, have concluded that a better solution would be another government bailout--albeit one with lots of conditions attached. Those conditions would include limits on executive compensation, as in the Wall Street rescue, but also more specific requirements designed to push the Big Three toward greater innovation and fuel efficiency. The bailout might also require more concessions from the unions, perhaps over the relatively generous health benefits UAW workers enjoy. And it would?probably mean cleaning house in GM's executive suites. (Vice Chairman Bob Lutz, a notorious skeptic of climate-change theory, should be the first to go.) It appears as if President-elect Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress are thinking along those lines already (although it'll be surprising if they demand concessions from unions that just played such a big role in electing them). But, if the government demands that the Big Three and its workers live up to more obligations, the government--which is to say, the taxpaying public--must live up to some obligations of its own. Companies like Honda operate out of countries that made health and retirement benefits a national responsibility. And the perennially high price of gasoline, a product of high gas taxes in virtually all other highly developed countries, has ensured a steady market for their smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles. There's no reason not to treat U.S. car companies, and car owners, the same way.
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Fogday Studios"General Motors has come to Washington, begging for a $25 billion bailout to keep it and its ailing Detroit counterparts going next year. But nobody seems too thrilled about the prospect. Liberals dwell on the companies' gas-guzzling sport-utility vehicle
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18 Nov 08
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17 Nov 08
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Mark ObrinskyJon Cohn on why we need to prevent GM from failing, at least at this time.
GM bailout economy bankruptcy policy finance detroit business
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see Charlie Rose's interview with Bob Lutz.
bailout automobile industry healthcare government labor michigan
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the debate over a Detroit bailout should begin a larger political conversation, one that sprawls beyond the Midwest and the intellectual confines of lean production techniques and workers' legacy costs. Whatever mistakes the Big Three and the UAW have made, their struggles are a pretty good indicator of why the government--not employers--should be responsible for providing health insurance and why, without broader action to fight climate change, improving fuel efficiency will be a struggle. Naturally, the Big Three should enthusiastically promote these reforms, something they haven't done in the past.
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best estimate is that between 1.5 and two million jobs would be lost. The price of addressing such human misery with unemployment benefits, Medicaid, and other services would be huge, making a $25 billion loan seem like a bargain-particularly if the companies pay it back, just as Chrysler did after its bailout in the 1980s.
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In normal times, with another company, that might be correct. But these are not normal times, just as GM is not any old company. Nor is the simple economic morality tale everybody repeats about the auto industry accurate. Detroit has come a long way since the days of wide lapels and disco. GM, Ford, and Chrysler are taking precisely the sorts of steps everybody says are necessary--or, at least, they were taking those steps until an unexpected trifecta of high gas prices, vanishing credit, and a deep recession hit. Rescuing the auto industry is not, as so many people suppose, a question of giving Detroit one extra shot at transformation. It's a question of giving Detroit a chance to finish a transformation that was already underway.
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16 Nov 08
Ralph MoskowitzNR's take on the auto industry crisis - argument for a bailout (with some strings).
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15 Nov 08
Max KaehnGM can't build cars without parts, and it can't get parts without credit. Chapter 11 companies typically get that sort of credit from something called Debtor-in-Possession (DIP) loans. But the same Wall Street meltdown that has dragged down the economy an
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