Quote:
Originally Posted by Phanuthier
Obviously like you, I don't want to see them bailed out.
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That is the big problem in my mind.
The conservative in me 100% agrees because (as you well know) that capital should be allocated to winning American business and winning American producers that can step in and fill that output void with their high value American products.
The problem is that there is not anyone to step in! It is all foreign manufacturers with better technology, better management, better innovation and (therefore) better product.
You let them collapse and there is nothing domestic to take their place. So the logic starts to fray? To not save them is to essentially forfeit a massive part of your industrial base to other nation states. A nation like America simply cannot be in that position. (< which goes beyond economics and markets, it starts to compromise your ability to provide industrial output in major wartimes for example.)
It is not a good decision to have to make. I am glad I am not the one to make it.
I would almost like to see those companies fail but then provide government seed capital to 2 or 3 start-ups with really progressive management teams to buy the Big-3's technology (out of bankruptsy). At least then you are working to rebuild that capacity and innovation inside of America but on a clean slate? New management, new (non union?) workers, no debt, new factories, etc.
So in short, it is not even losing the money that bothers me (though it does), it is the fact that even if you don't spend the money there is not really any American company benefitting from it like theoretically (in a closed system) they would.
Thus: You are screwed if you do the bailout and you are screwed if you don't do the bailout so.... you don't do the bailout I guess? Yet it is so far from being a triumph of capitalism... ?
Claeren.