yes, very eloquently stated. you must be an expert.

oh, as opposed to you know... the people who actually have data, have done the analyses, have had a first hand play

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You mean the people who keep CHANGING the data, and fudging the numbers to say "hey look it wasn't that bad". BS. I am not drinking their federal kool-air; looks like you're swimming in it.

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Oh please, Steve Rattner was part of the auto task force put together by the Obama administration. It's clearly laid out right there in the story. It's in his best interest to show the decisions made by the administration in as good a light as he can. That's the whole reason for all this "jobs saved" talk you hear about so much. They only bring that up since they can't show any actual jobs created. It's done to put a better spin on things, especially since it's basically unprovable so they can claim it without ever having to back it up.

It's pretty clever really, but that doesn't make it any less dishonest. Plus, I'd like to see how they feel when it's turned against them and used by the other side in the future.

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you still miss the point. its not that the jobs were or werent saved because they would go to others.

While chrysler may have folded like a cheap tent (and that probably havoc enough), GM would have structured a bankruptcy on their own.

The only thing the democrats did with the government bailout was save the union contracts and elevate the union position at the expense of creditors and end up with their hands in 2/3 of the american auto mftrs.

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It is true that in the end we would have ended up somewhere.
But your simplified approach leaves out the years, possibly decades, of trough based economy which would have been going on in the US before the recovery.
And yes, those peoples jobs were indeed saved.
Though some time down the road they might have gotten jobs back with other auto makers. Or maybe their kids would or maybe somebody else would.
But for the immediate future it is not like everyone would have bought foreign cars to make up the slack.
It is more like for the immediate future we could have been talking about the best way to run soup kitchens on massive scales.
But yes... in the end the cycle would have come 'round.

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Well, the trouble is that everything was set up like dominoes because of the credit market being so tied to investment banking, which was over-leveraged 30:1. I too am upset with businesses getting my tax dollars because they failed at running a business well, and would not have cried to see them all go bankrupt. At the same time, I do believe the economy is in a better position because of the bail-out. i.e., I would not vote for the bailout, but I appreciate why it was necessary.

But your premise is wholey wrong. If GM and Chrysler had failed, there would be less competition, meaning fewer need for other car manufacturers to hire employees. You'd buy a Toyota because that's all you could buy, too bad if you have to wait 6 months for it to be built. Ford would have failed, because they used the same suppliers as GM and Chrysler. Suppliers could not profitably produce parts because they have no mass production contracts, so those jobs are out. Less money flowing in the economy means less need for bag-boys at the grocer, etc, etc.

The truth is, even though government intervention sucks, sometimes it is necessary and helpful, and stimulates or renews competition. I would not have been upset to see the government not intervene, but that's because I have savings and am prepared for some hiccups.

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The problem with averting disaster at much cost is that it is so anti-climatic.
It will be curious to see how many the right can swing to this "there was no real problem, it is just tax and spend" way of thinking in the coming elections.
The reality is that somebody just snagged your sorry butts before you tumbled off a cliff and now you are whining because they ripped your jacket in the process.

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You have a very simplistic view. Think about how a government operates. Any government requires income in order to provide services to its citizens. Be it municipal services or national defense, the things you take granted... the things you take for free, all cost money and must be paid for. Those things are paid for by tax dollars.

A sudden loss of jobs en masse would mean sudden loss in government funding for all of those things. It won't affect just those who are unemployed but also those who remain employed. It would also set off a ripple effect, further government cutbacks (more jobs gone) and any private sector businesses that deals with the government (even more jobs). This means even fewer tax payers in the system to fund services; a vicious cycle. And all of this would happen rather quickly in succession. The state of CA is the perfect example of what I'm pointing out here is fact, not theory.

Demand could shift to other marques, and I put emphasis on "could". With wide-spread job losses, who would be in the mood for buying new cars (regardless of marque)? Law of supply and demand. In the condition where the economy is worsening, there'd be less buying power for the consumers. That means low demand which leads to lack of sales, and more job loss (for the automakers, dealers, parts suppliers and every thing that is associated with that industry).


Okay, let's say things are a bit more positive and there is demand. For business to shift to other marques take time. Want proof? Just look at sales figures for Ford alone for the past 12 months. It didn't look good until the past 3 months or so.

Our economy (including the government) isn't a collection of isolated categories and entities. It's all interconnected. What happens to one part of it can significantly affect the rest.

If think small/weak government is the utopian ideal, move to Afghanistan. Let's see how long you last there.

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You have to realize that the whole city of Detroit was at risk. Sure a lot of "lost" jobs are eventually offset by the newly created jobs elsewhere, but it's only right that the government stepped in to keep the jobs in the country.

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Would you rather have only 1 American automaker left instead of 3?
There used to be 20 of them, by the way.

Even Toyota asked for a bailout from Japan:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/03/toyota-seeks-bailout-from_n_171303.html

Should Toyota not exist either? ( all cracks of sudden acceleration aside )

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montym:
Agreed he is an interested party. But does that mean he's automatically wrong?

I can understand skepticism, but saying he's wrong because he's on the inside and he'll be sorry later when "the other side" inevitably shows it seems like one assumption piled on another.

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@ LS2LS7:

I didn't once say he was wrong, I said dishonest.

Sure there were jobs saved. Jobs are saved everyday all over this country by any number of actions taken by governments, companies, and consumers etc. Just me going out an puting gas in my car to drive to work can be construed as saving a job somewhere down the line. Without my demand there, what would happen to the supply chain? It gets to a point of ridiculousness.

It's sort of like when someone wil leave their dirty food tray on the table at a fast food place and clam that it's job security for the person cleaning tables. Did they then "save" that person's job?

It's the fact that it's unprovable that is what I find most dishonest. Their jobs saved number jumps around all over the place depending on when you hear it and from whom. They can't even come up with a solid figure because it's a fake stat that they can use to make things look better than they really are.

Regardless, my main point was towards Tom who seems to be taking Mr. Rattner as his word while failing to notice that he was the head of the task force put together by this administration so anything he says would have to be taken through a filter. He's not an unbiased news source.

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@tuna: it's kind of like Rush saying that if health care reform passes he's moving to Costa Rica. Costa Rica, of course, has fully socialized medicine. So, he should move to the more libertarian Somalia. I'll buy him a one-way ticket, too.

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Jobs will never come back to Michigan who would want to invest in a state where unions have so much control over the state government and have driven up cost of doing business there. In spite of high unemployment it costs more to operate facilities in Michigan than in places like Texas.

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"...there would be more demand from other marques, and they would require more jobs. "

Yup. Overseas though. I for one like a job in the US.

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@geo.stewart you say "GM would have structured a bankruptcy on their own"

Not with the credit markets frozen as they were, and to an extent, still are.

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You are right about the jobs but stupid about the location. They would be in Japan, China, and Korea.

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I agree the stat is very soft. Although I would point out that makes it as difficult to argue against the bailout (from a jobs perspective) as for it.

The guy is a politician, so he's slime in my book. But I don't know he's being dishonest automatically if he says the bailout saved jobs and it did. Whereas, if he says it saved jobs and it didn't he is being dishonest. So to me the question as to whether the bailout accomplished its goals (saving jobs) worked does matter.

I hear you about the parable of the broken window thing. But if people are hired to bus tables, in a way people who leave tables dirty are contributing to a new job (hire). I would also mention they usually expect to pay more (and thus pay for the hire) because they don't have to take their own time to bus the table. So I don't have any problem with that argument.

The question is at what point does it make sense to spend money on make work to keep people employed. This is not an easy question to answer. I think it will come up a lot because a lot of the people still unemployed right now are construction workers. And they won't be employed again until we start building a lot more structures. But does that mean we should return to building houses in suburbia that people don't really want like we were before? To me, no. I'd rather see those people unemployed (and presumably find useful work elsewhere some day) than create another housing bubble just to lower the unemployment figure.

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@ Luis

One way ticket? Hell, I'll paddle a rubber raft to get him there myself. Then, take the one way ticket to fly myself back to California.

An America without hypocritical boobs like Limbaugh is a better, stronger America.

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