Legal Commentary

Bailing out the Automakers

By Professor University of Miami School of Law

This article by Jake Brewer, GM Goes Grassroots. A Son is Torn. deserves wide readership.

It pretty well describes — but much more personally and passionately — how I and lots of folks feel about the auto companies: From my point of view they’ve been screwing up routinely since about 1965

Remember ‘Unsafe at Any Speed’? ‘Safety Doesn’t Sell’? The campaign against pollution control? Against fuel efficiency? Against small cars? The lack of interest in alternate engines? The inbred nature of the automobile bureaucracies? The bailouts of the past? I remember it all. And I don’t see why I should spend a dime to benefit auto executives. I do get why there may be strategic reasons to protect the auto companies — defense industries, US workers, supply chains, pension funds, danger of foreign vulture funds buying hard assets at bargain prices, and more.

If we do a bailout, there needs to be some consequences for a generation of failure in the management suites. And I wouldn’t exempt the shareholders either.

Full post as published by Discourse.net on November 22, 2008 (boomark / email).