auto bailout

Touring Empire's Ruins: From Detroit to the Amazon

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 08:52:52 -0400

by Greg Grandin

The empire ends with a pull out. Not, as many supposed a few years ago, from Iraq. There, as well as in Afghanistan, we are mulishly staying the course, come what may, trapped in the biggest of all the "too-big-to-fail" boondoggles. But from Detroit.

We Don't Need the General Motors Corp.

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 11:03:05 -0400

by Mike Ferner

Times are anxious indeed, but simultaneously we are face-to-face with an extremely rare chance to replace our transportation system with something we can literally live with.

Bad Bailout Backlash

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 09:20:28 -0400

by John Nichols

Thirty-six members of the U.S. House -- Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives -- recently wrote to President Obama asking him to stop the White House Auto Task Force from taking actions that are harmful to American autoworkers, auto dealers and the states and communities impacted by plant and dealership closings.

GM Nationalization: The Path Not Taken, Choices Still Ahead

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 09:40:23 -0400

by Robert Weissman

Whatever the woes of General Motors -- and they are substantial -- it does not follow that the government needed to drive the company into bankruptcy. With at least $50 billion in government supports undergirding the new GM, the Obama administration auto task force deciding GM's fate could have steered the company away from bankruptcy court. If it had so chosen, it could have acquired the company outright -- a much better course to advance the legitimate public interest in rescuing GM.

Getting the GM Bankruptcy All Wrong

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 11:53:34 -0400

by Ruth Conniff

To read the mainstream coverage of the GM bankruptcy, you would think President Obama's main enemy--and indeed the enemy of progress for the whole country--is a unionized labor force in the auto industry.

Good thing Obama and his one-person task force on dismantling the auto industry--31-year-old Yale Law School student Brian Deese are ready to stand up to the automakers and the union, we are told.

The GM 'Precedent'

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 10:54:37 -0400

by Harold Meyerson

"Any idiot can nationalize a company," the great American socialist Michael Harrington used to say, disparagingly. For socialists of Harrington's generation and thereafter -- the socialists and social democrats who have governed most of Western Europe off and on for the past 30 years -- nationalizing companies hasn't really been part of their playbook. To be sure, they long since nationalized a range of services -- most prominently, health insurance -- that remain in private hands in the United States.

Bankrupt Thinking

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 09:39:29 -0400

by Robert Weissman

What in the world is the Obama administration thinking? The GM bankruptcy -- entirely avoidable -- seems designed to hurt every constituency it is supposed to assist.

The 'New GM': Layoffs, Factory Closing, and Offshoring

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 07:59:09 -0400

by John Nichols

The trouble with the whole "Nixon goes to China" theory -- which is grounded in the calculus that big progress is made when a politician goes against type to address a seemingly intractable challenge -- is that sometimes the "bold" gesture is really just more of the same.

Goodbye, GM

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 08:13:53 -0400

by Michael Moore

I write this on the morning of the end of the once-mighty General Motors. By high noon, the President of the United States will have made it official: General Motors, as we know it, has been totaled.

As I sit here in GM's birthplace, Flint, Michigan, I am surrounded by friends and family who are filled with anxiety about what will happen to them and to the town. Forty percent of the homes and businesses in the city have been abandoned. Imagine what it would be like if you lived in a city where almost every other house is empty. What would be your state of mind?

Outsourcing Top Management: The Lesson of Fiat-Chrysler

Tue, 05 May 2009 08:40:06 -0400

by Dean Baker

The media coverage of the auto bailouts has focused on the need for union autoworkers to take big pay cuts, causing them to once again miss the real story. The Fiat-Chrysler deal shows that the pay problem is at the top, not the bottom. At the end of the day, the new Chrysler is still likely to be producing most of its cars in the United States. What the new company will be getting from abroad is technology and top management.