The Obama administration has lost patience with General Motors and has demanded that it restructure before it will get any more government help. That seems logical enough. Yet, when both the Obama administration and the Bush administration have given hundreds of billions of dollars to banks, that money came with no strings attached.
In demanding General Motors’ CEO Rick Wagoner’s head, President Obama announced:
“Year after year, decade after decade, we’ve seen problems papered over and tough choices kicked down the road.”
It is a statement that he could have equally applied to the banking industry. Yet, time and again, when faced with asking the banks to restructure as a condition of getting bailout money, the government has balked. It seems that accountability is only demanded of American industries that actually produce tangible products. It does not apply to the Masters of the Universe who have made gambling legal in all fifty states by simply calling it “trading” in “derivatives”.
It should not be a surprise to anyone that the Obama administration is unable to tell the banks to do what they must do. After all, hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money is being doled out to the banks by this clown. Until this clown, and other similar-minded clowns, leave the government for clown school, nothing will change.
Today General Motors, long the engine of American middle class prosperity, got a much deserved slap by the federal government. Maybe tomorrow the banks will get a slap or two. But I doubt it.
sad
The banks will get theirs soon enough. Much needed regulation is on the way.
Robster, a lot of the regulation is getting watered down. I’m not optimistic.
I worked at GM for 6 years, in Engineering. Wagoner has taken a tremendous amount of cost out of the system. Gently and relatively slowly. The speed is what’s the issue. Fritz has no choice but to slash and burn. It’s going to be ugly.
Yes, it does look like its going to get ugly. A lot of hard working people are going to lose their jobs and a lot of businesses that depend on GM are going to get hit hard. Michigan is already hit hard with unemployment. It looks like the worst is yet to come.
The only people I dont see getting hit are the banks – they keep getting their money for placing bad bets while telling the taxpayers to go F*** themselves.