Holy crap! I'm getting a sense of deja vu from General Motors' cries for taxpayer help in the form of a government bailout.
U.S. car companies have had decades to change to leaner companies with better and more fuel efficient cars that consumers would buy, but did they do the smart thing?
Hell no.
Instead they hitched their wagon to bigger cars and refused to look around the corner at the coming oil shortage and the alternative energy push.
Should we bail them out? Hell No!
Of course the economy will take a hit. Of course workers will suffer.
Those are the consequences of poor management decisions over decades and consumers who've bought into the whole Hummer/SUV/Land Rover phenomenon.
Whose fault is it that U.S. auto manufacturing has shed jobs affecting the whole economy? It's management's fault. They could have made better, more forward-looking cars that people wanted, but they chose to maximize present profit at the expense of future viability. That's poor management and the cost of these bad practices should not be externalized to the rest of us. The free market should deal with this, not the U.S. taxpayer.
Let them fail. Maybe the actual threat of failure will provide the necessary impetus for them to do what they should've done all along...being a real American company. Americans are in front of the market instead of being behind the curve and getting hammered by excess and inertia.
GM's timing is highly suspicious. They stood back and watched what happened with the bank bailout. Now, their hands' are out. They're hoping a lame duck Bush will help before Obama takes office.
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