Silly Little Country

The Comedy Begins - the REAL Shock Doctrine

And it will not be funny nor pretty.
The US Congress moves in to begin nationalizing the no longer so big three. David Harsanyi has reservations.

"We don't want government to run companies," Barack Obama, who supports a bailout, recently said on "Meet the Press." "Generally, government historically hasn't done that very well."

Generally? Washington is now ready to sign off on the business plan of auto companies and buy into industry. If that's not "running" the economy, then what is?

Not long ago, incoming White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel claimed that we "never want a serious crisis to go to waste. This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before."

Does this mean a czar for every sector of the economy? Because this brand of economic planning has been tried, and it has failed — not "generally," but every time.

For what it's worth, I have a GM car I bought three years ago that I like.
Felix Salmon has another worry, and I agree, as we are already seeing this in Canada.

And of course it doesn't stop there. Just for starters, think for a minute about the car czar's responsibility for Opel, and the negotiations which are going to start up between the US and German governments over the European marque's fate. On the one hand, Opels are clearly the kind of thing which Congress wants GM to make more of. But they want GM to make those cars in America, not in Europe. And GM has already asked the German government for money to keep Opel going.

With every relevant government striving to hold up its local automobile companies, we can be guaranteed we will all piss away a fortune on cars that won't be sold at a profit.

Labels: bailout, cars

posted by Alan Adamson @ 6:25 PM