Obama On Bail Outs: Failure Isn’t Possible
July 29, 2010
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Posted by Michael S. Langston
Here we go again…. yet another marketing campaign by the Obama Administration to tout bail out packages that has yet to do anything they’ve previously promised (DA Post here) as a rousing success. These silly marketing games seem to work well for politicians, but what logic tells us is that you can’t prove a negative. The Obama Administration can tout bailout monies spent for any reason in to any success they please because proving that it would’ve been better without the money is a nonexistent hypothetical situation for which we can only guess.
& with upcoming elections, for which Democrats currently seem to be in some trouble (polling data here via RealClearPolitics), they will continue this regardless of any true facts which show the opposite. This week, with some gall, they plan to use the auto show in Detroit (here via Policito):
When the president travels to Michigan on Friday, he’ll tout the revival of General Motors and Chrysler since the auto companies received billions in federal aid and government-assisted bankruptcies….
I say with gall, because they fully intend to tout even more success with blown money when the only major car company to NOT take bail out money is doing better than their rivals (here via Star-Tribune):
DEARBORN, Mich. – Four years ago, Ford mortgaged everything down to the blue oval logo to save itself. Now, even as Americans remain skittish about the economy, it’s reaping big rewards and stealing business from stumbling rivals.
Ford said Friday that it made $2.6 billion from April through June, its fifth straight quarterly profit. The company, which reported record losses in 2008, now predicts it will end 2011 with more cash than debt.
With its two longtime Detroit rivals still finding their way after spending time in bankruptcy last year, Ford, which never took government bailout money, extended its success story…..
Yep, instead of using this time to stand up for the ingenuity, the self reliance, the perseverance of private individuals working without taking tax money, they will use this to tell us all how much better off we are than if they hadn’t.
Oh… and in case you might be one of those people who know about Ford’s success, they have an answer for that as well (here via Detroit News):
Washington — The Senate’s top Democrat argued Ford Motor Co. probably would have collapsed if the government hadn’t bailed out its top two competitors….
So there you have it, even with logical evidence to the contrary, not only did the all knowing government help out two companies that are still barely surviving, but also completely fixed a company for which they contributed nothing directly.
Categories: Business, Critical Thinking, Economics, Free Market Principles
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Tags: Auto Industry Bailout, Business, Economics, Obama Administration, Politics
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We all respect Ford whistling in the dark, and I think It has secured customer loyalty. I personally think that GM and Chrysler should have remained unfunded by the tax payer but the supply chain may not have survived the catastrophe of their failure. It remains unknown whether the best approach would have been to financially bail out the auto parts industry. Your interesting link from The Detroit News speaks of this dilemma:
In December, Ford executive chairman Bill Ford Jr. met with President Barack Obama and praised him for rescuing GM and Chrysler.
“The way he stepped in with GM and Chrysler and preventing the collapse of the supply base was something they did swiftly and forcefully and it worked,” Ford said.
Yeah, there’s the rub. We’are all talking about this version of reality against an alternate version of reality which doesn’t exist.
& Ford certainly doesn’t live in a vacuum, but for what is the administration taking credit? Two companies still barely hanging on for which were given billions of dollars (still yet unpaid)? High unemployment rates (higher than they predicted)? How about all the money to the banks to increase rates of lending which hasn’t happened (though shouldn’t of, shrinking credit in the face of a recession is normal)? What of opportunities lost?
But let’s take them at their words. The said their money would do X, it hasn’t. Yet according to them it’s still successful, because in their world the alternative would’ve been worse. I guess what I’m posing here – is what exactly is that information based upon other than “I thought it was the right idea and since it can’t be proven wrong, it must have worked”?
It’s sort of like the Iraq war. President Bush might actually end up historically speaking ok, if Iraq ends up ok. This is the way things have worked for centuries, so I’m pretty confident it will work this way again. He won & fought a successful (assuming it ends that way) war.
Yet to be honest with ourselves, we should still be asking whether this war of choice was a good one and whether it was necessary. Again, alternate versions of reality and such make this difficult (ask most people & he’s either Hitler or saved us all), but it’s a more important question worth pondering than letting the assumption be that we were correct so long as we “won”.
In the finality of this – we can make the wrong decisions and end in the right places and make the right decisions and end in the wrong places. The decisions themselves have to evaluated through mechanisms other than simple results or we end with “the ends justifies the means”.
Side note: For Ford’s comment, I’m not sure being nice to POTUS means anything specifically other than “please don’t fix us like you fixed GM/Chrysler, the financial & health care industries….”, but Mr. Ford Jr. may well believe that without the bailouts GM/Chrysler wouldn’t be there either.
I say this because I’m not sure if he personally believes this is helpful to Ford. Being able to purchase bankrupted assets and losing competitors I would think would help them in the long run, but again – parallel universe talk & now talks about possible motives – both unknowns for us all
In the finality of this – we can make the wrong decisions and end in the right places and make the right decisions and end in the wrong places. The decisions themselves have to evaluated through mechanisms other than simple results or we end with “the ends justifies the means”.
I love that quote. It applies to panoptically to life.