Barack Obama argued that if GM collapsed, jobs would be lost and shipped overseas, dealers would close, and the taxpayer would be saddled with all kinds of costs. Well, Obama is “saving” GM and all those things are happening anyway.
This is not a bankruptcy; it’s the moral equivalent of a bank robbery. The White House didn’t “broker” a deal, but it BROKE the things that make our economic system work: rule of law, respect for contracts, and bankruptcy supervised by the judiciary, as specified in the Constitution.
The discussion today misses the point. It’s should not be about the economy but about what this raw exercise of power means for the future of democracy.
Even the United Auto Workers knows that sometimes it's necessary to bite the bullet to come out ahead in the long term. On Monday, February 23, the UAW and the Ford Motor Co. announced they had hammered out the details of a new agreement to preserve retiree health care benefits without jeopardizing the company's existence. The pact would have Ford to pay the union up to half its liabilities in the form of company stock. Given precipitous declines in auto industry stock prices over the last year, it's a sensible way to avoid disaster.
