You telling me I'm lame is like me telling you that the best part of you ran down your momma's leg.............while both may be true, they are both personal attacks and off topic.

__________________

I needs government help to live.
I must be a liberal.

I must include myself among those who think that you have missed the point entirely. The "financial system" that exists today actually produces no wealth--it simply redistributes the wealth created by classic capitalism. Capitalism requires money, to be sure, but it has been an effective system because it invests the money to manufacture, build, or create things. It is this process of manufacturing, building, and creating which actually produces wealth by adding value to raw materials.

The manufacturing sector is not "outdated" by any stretch of the imagination. It is manufacturing which created the wealth that contemporary money managers so cavalierly redistribute among themselves. It is manufacturing which created the wealth which raised so many Americans to unprecedented levels of human prosperity and made our nation the envy (and the magnet) of the world. It is the manufacturing sector, not the financial sector, which must be restored if we are to resume our place at the head of those nations which provide opportunity and prosperity to the masses. That was (and still is) the genius of Capitalism. Far from opposing a bailout of the auto manufacturers, I propose that it be extended to encourage growth across the entire manufacturing sector. What we REALLY need, in effect, is a "Marshall Plan" for American industry.

I'm not surprised about your uninformed statement about the Big Three, but I am surprised that you drank the bank bailout Kool-Aid without questioning its safeguard of YOUR $700Billion.

I'm against giving a blank check with MY name on it to ANYBODY. The US auto industry has been restructuring for years. With the creation of VEBA, they finally had a solution to their out of sync legacy costs that would let them compete with their foreign competitors on a level playing field. Unfortunately, the perfect storm hit before those changes could be realized. The gas crisis, combined with tight credit cut sales of ALL automobiles severely. Instead of selling 16million vehicles in 2008, the total will be more like 11.5Million.
Contrast that with what happened in the financial industry. Mortgage brokers made bad loans to unqualified people, collected big origination fees up front, bundled the mortgages into large packages and sold them to large investment funds that didn't even know the source or risks associated with their purchases.
So, I ask you. Given the two scenarios above, which do you believe is more deserving of our help?

__________________
843rd Bomb Wing - Strategic Air Command
"Peace is our Profession"

"Human law must rest its authority ultimately upon the authority of that law which is Divine. . . . Far from being rivals or enemies, religion and law are twin sisters, friends, and mutual assistants.
" - James Wilson, U. S. Supreme Court Justice and Signer of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution

Trouble is THF, I can't see how Amwrican manufacturers can compete in our "world economy". We have passed the baton long ago.

__________________

I needs government help to live.
I must be a liberal.

The banks, but not in the fashion that it was handled. They have the money, but it hasn't led to restoration of safe (safer?) lending.

__________________

I needs government help to live.
I must be a liberal.

Since I hadn't been posting here in quite a while, I thought that the rules against personal attacks must have been loosened. after the above exchange. Was my assumption in err?

__________________
843rd Bomb Wing - Strategic Air Command
"Peace is our Profession"

"Human law must rest its authority ultimately upon the authority of that law which is Divine. . . . Far from being rivals or enemies, religion and law are twin sisters, friends, and mutual assistants.
" - James Wilson, U. S. Supreme Court Justice and Signer of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution

I'm not saying I love the bailout but I do think doing nothing would have been a disaster. So go ahead and sell me on how awesome the big three are. I would love to hear it.

Then you must not be aware that the United States is STILL the largest manufacturing nation in that "world economy." We not only can compete effectively and successfully--we are doing it in hundreds of products right now. It is well known, for example, that Toyota, Honda, Nissan,, Mecedes-Benz, and BMW have recently built and are profitably operating automobile manufacturing plants in the United States. How can you then argue that the auto industry in this country is dead? We continue to be the leading producer of components in many heavy manufacturing endeavors--Caterpillar, for example, has no peer in the production of heavy machinery anywhere in the world, Boeing (which has been woefully mismanaged of late) continues to be the giant among aircraft manufacturers, while Lockheed, McDonnell-Douglas, General Dynamics, and GE also play important roles. Our technical expertise is unrivaled, and we are continually creating not only new products but new ways to produce them. We can let the Chinese manufacture all the toys Mattel and WalMart can sell, but we can still beat them where it counts. I think that you badly underestimate the value of both the American worker and the American educational system. We are the most productive people in the world. Let's start acting like we realize that.

I was against both ideas and our government has no business handing out money to 'save' anybody.

They can ban me or whatever, I posted a legit topic and I get this fucking childish crap. It gets to making this place really not worth it.

__________________

I needs government help to live.
I must be a liberal.

The only committment Obama had was getting elected.


Now that he's in all of that rhetoric is out the window.

__________________
It's hard to stay mad at someone who makes you laugh - Jay Leno

You have a few misconceptions.

First of all the money wasn't given to anyone without any strings. The strings are that they have to play ball and they forced some of the institutions to take the money.....whether they wanted it or not. New regulations will start coming down the pike forcing banks to loan to unqualified applicates or whatever rules Congress deems necessary they want enforced.

Secondly, they only gave out the first $350 bil. The rest of it is still in the Treasury waiting to be called upon by the President for further bailouts. The auto industry got the last of the first $350 bil.

Thirdly, the American auto industries had to kiss Congress's behind and they still didn't get nada from them. The President is the guy that gave it to them. What was the sticking point? Large Trucks and SUVs. The auto industry would have gotten it without any hearings if they had decided to get rid of their SUV line. But since trucks and SUVs are their best sellers that would have been like cutting their own throats. But that is what the Dems wanted.

The President pretty much gave the AAI a short-term loan to get them through the next few months. Then it will be Obama and the new Congress's problem. Then they can bully the industry all they want.

__________________
It's hard to stay mad at someone who makes you laugh - Jay Leno

If you want a detailed answer, start a new thread. I'll give you the Cliff Notes version here.
Consumers won't buy vehicles from a bankrupt company because they would be concerned that warrantees wouldn't be honored. That would cause the number of Big Three vehicles sold to dramatically decrease, leading to more plant closures and more displaced auto workers.
Letting the Big Three declare bankrupsy would have eliminated their requirement to pay its suppliers, causing them to scramble to pay their employees, raw material suppliers, etc., which leads to more layoffs in secondary industries.
Restaurants and small businesses that depend on these autoworkers and suppliers would lose business and become further collateral damage.
Now, let's talk pension funds. A bankrupsy causes all outstanding stock to lose all of its value, leading to disastrous losses in pension funds for millions of people unrelated to the auto industry.
It's been reported that for every auto job lost, there are 10 additional jobs lost in supplier and other locations, so a collapse of the US auto industry would result in the loss of 3 million total jobs. That's not a hit that the country needs. (By comparison, every job lost in the financial industry results in an addition loss of 1-2 people per job lost)

The transplants built plants in the US for three reasons:1. The US limits auto imports. 2. States gave transplants hundreds of millions in tax abatements, property and other incentives in order to do so. 3. They don't have to use UAW labor.

The gov't created the mess when Clinton forced FANNIE MAE to give risky mortgages to unqualified applicants starting in 1997.

I'm OK with hand-to-hand combat when necessary. Unfortunately, I felt like this place was over-censoring. That's why I took a self-imposed sabattical for over a year and just recently decided to try again.

That's exactly right. If you elect an unprincipled pragmatist, you shouldn't be surprised when he acts like one once in office.

New regulations will "START COMING". Thanks for reinforcing my contention that they were given the money without prior strings, unlike the auto industry.
What's your point? The source of the money is irrelevant, we were speaking of the strings attached to it.
You are wrong. Southern Republicans refused to end cloture because the UAW refused to IMMEDIATELY conform to non-UAW wage levels. They wanted to bloody the UAW's nose for two reasons. 1. The UAW pumps $millions into Democratic candidate campaigns. 2. They didn't want UAW workers to make more than their constituents working for lower wages in Transplant plants.
Most politicians don't want to have the death of the US auto industry in their resume. As for reforming the industry, that was in the works long before the financial crisis occurred.

__________________
843rd Bomb Wing - Strategic Air Command
"Peace is our Profession"

"Human law must rest its authority ultimately upon the authority of that law which is Divine. . . . Far from being rivals or enemies, religion and law are twin sisters, friends, and mutual assistants.
" - James Wilson, U. S. Supreme Court Justice and Signer of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution

But that still doesn't explain how the big three are going to manage to be any more viable in the long term than they are now. It's still just delaying the inevitable. The financial system bail out prevent much larger job losses than that. If consumers can't get credit to buy cars, houses, and other goods and then businesses are not able to get credit to make new investments then it would have bee much worse than the bankruptcy of the big three.

I'm sorry but you misunderstood what I was talking about.

You gave the media version of what transpired but the reason the Big Three were forced to prostrate themselves before Congress was because Congress wants to force them to do business the way they want them to. It's all part of their Global Warming initiative. The only reason the money wasn't just awarded to them is because they wanted to tie them to the whipping post and make a spectacle of them.

Democrats in Congress have no intention of allowing their lobbyist's (The UAW) noses to be bloodied. But if the GOP members were able to do so it is a small price to pay considering what Democrats have in mind for the auto industry and the oil industry.

They fully intend on taking them over.

They want to change our mode of transportation to electrical or force the industry into building unaffordable cars that run off of anything other then fossil fuels.

Yes, the Democrats want to make our lives less affordable. They want to enforce regulations that jack up the prices of everything.

Did you know that the Democrats in Congress made sure that China got the Iraqi oil production contracts that were awarded earlier this year because of their insane insistence on ridiculous "Green" initiatives?

The GD Democrats are going to ruin this country, force it into bankruptcy and assure that our lives are more and more expensive every day.

__________________
It's hard to stay mad at someone who makes you laugh - Jay Leno