What did the Automotive Bailout Do to America? In the Name of Fixing the Economic Crisis, Big Government Moved in & Took Deep Control of Big Business to Create Globalism.

Will the automotive bailout work as the big three automakers prepare for the future with the help of billions in taxpayer money?

How can we trust the auto manufacturers to conduct themselves appropriately after they squandered their own resources?

Some say the bailout had better work, since there was such a major outcry when the men and women in Washington decided to pour hundreds of billions of dollars into a collapsing financial industry.

There is some connection between the two as many working people want to purchase a car but cannot get loans in the current financial market.

Suffice to say, banks and other lending institutions are being more than careful about who they lend money to after the sub-prime calamity and the disasters caused by lax regulation.

This particular bailout is a favorite in the Obama administration, a fact the president made very clear during a November press conference.

Obama and his economic advisers see the billions lost in the automotive industry a sign that major infusions of taxpayer money are necessary.

The bailout began with a loan program that made $25 billion available, before any cash was actually dropped into the laps of the automotive giants.

This loan program was offered by the Department of Energy, with funds to be used to produce vehicles with greater fuel efficiency.

Critics say the automotive bailout is simply a rescue of greedy companies mismanaged by those who continued to produce large, inefficient vehicles when the market obviously demanded something different.

Why Keep them Alive

The call has gone out from a few members of Congress and from a large number of citizens to just let the automotive companies declare bankruptcy and reorganize.

Some citizens and a few government officials are willing to let the companies die a natural death or take care of their own reorganization.

The critics of the automotive bailout don’t support the gift of cash and guaranteed loans to help an industry that brought its troubles on itself.

Others argue that the federal government cannot allow these large corporations to fail because of the thousands of union jobs involved and the effect those losses would have on the economy.

The ripple effect, they say, would be catastrophic in an already-crippled economy.

What Do we Get?

Suggestions have been made within government offices and from auto industry observers the taxpayers, via the federal government, should benefit financially if billions of dollars are guaranteed to the big three in a bailout.

These individuals point to the arrangements made between the government and Chrysler when that automaker was provided with guaranteed loans to save its life in 1979.

The government, the critics say, should demand (not ask for) the majority of the benefits from any assistance program, including share in the ownership of the car companies.

This would prevent the money from being handed so directly to those who created the problem in the first place.

Not only should the government get the largest share of ownership benefits, according to the critics, the companies should guarantee that the funds will be used to move them toward production of fuel-efficient vehicles.

In this argument the money must not just go to giving the U.S. public more of the same.

Over and Over

Those people who look at the automotive bailout in a more cynical light ask why the taxpayers should be asked to bail the companies out when this type of help has been tried in the past.

Following this question to its logical conclusion, the cynics point out it has been 30 years since the Chrysler bailout and the companies are no back at the table asking for more.

This means that hard questions must be asked before any money changes hands, to ensure the scenario is not repeated in a couple of decades. One of those hard issues involves size.

The three large U.S. automakers employ far fewer people than some other major corporations. Critics ask why should we support them with an automotive bailout?