Michael Moore is 100% correct on the auto bailout issue
Moore is sometimes a bit over the top, but on this issue he is right:
I’ll tell you, it was hilarious just watching these CEOs there (Tuesday) and (Wednesday) testifying in Congress, saying that, you know, that the problem wasn’t theirs, you know, the cars they were building. It was the financial situation that we’re in now.
The problem is the cars they’ve been building. They’ve never listened to the consumers. They’ve just gone about it their own wrong way. I’ll tell you, you know, I’m of mixed mind about this bailout, Larry, because I don’t think these companies, with these management people, should be given a dime, because that’s just going to be money going up in smoke or off to other countries.
GM is currently building a $300 million factory in Russia right now to build SUVs, right outside of St. Petersburg. That’s where your money’s going to go, no matter what they say.
The biggest problem the auto industry has is bad strategic thinking. They were unable to foresee high oil prices, the rise of hybrids, the rise of environmental consciousness among buyers, etc. Strategy is about steering (pun not intended) for the future; the auto industry in this country has done a horrible job of it.
On that note, I think Moore’s answer is a bit suspect:
President-Elect Obama has to say to them, yes, we’re going to use this money to save these jobs, but we’re not going to build these gas-guzzling, unsafe vehicles any longer.
We’re going to put the companies into some sort of receivership and we, the government, are going to hold the reigns on these companies. They’re to build mass transit. They’re to build hybrid cars. They’re to build cars that use little or no gasoline.
We’re facing a national crisis, not just an economic crisis, but a crisis of the polar ice caps are melting. There’s only so much oil left under the Earth. We’re going to run out of that, if not in our children’s time, our grandchildren’s time.
There’s got to be a plan set out to find other ways to transport ourselves in other ways than using fossil fuels.
The problem is that I don’t think the government is any better at steering than the auto industry. The government should be building mass transit anyway, not GM.
Other blogs/analyses:
November 21st, 2008 10:19
He sounds like he’s been reading some of Mitt Romney’s writing…
November 21st, 2008 10:59
What’s interesting about this bailout thing is that it seems to be pretty unideological. Sure, you have your hard-core free market people who want to see no bailout whatsoever. And you have some socialist types, like myself, who would like to see a bigger bailout, with conditions, than is being proposed. But most folks fall in the middle. They know something needs to be done, the government should have some role, they just don’t know exactly what it should be. This is why you see people like Romney and Moore coming close to each other in their recommendations.