The Auto Bailout: The Facts for a Change

An issue has gained traction on the campaign trail over the past couple of days which I thought was dead and buried.  Because it should be.

President Obama has begun touting his bailout of the auto industry, especially in Ohio, in an effort to burnish his bona fides in a quest for another four years.  There's a lot of autos built in Northern Ohio and this subject is important.  He says he saved the auto industry, and moreover, that Governor Romney wanted to deep six Detroit and everything having to do with cars.  Obama says if it had been left to Romney, there would be no American auto industry.  He says if Romney had prevailed we'd be buying our cars from Europe and Asia.  Such a load of crap...

First, Romney wasn't in charge.  What he said he'd do had nothing to do with anything.  He had nothing to say about the issue.  But he did have an opinion and he expressed it.

Second, Romney early and often stated that the auto industry should be taken through a managed bankruptcy.  He's a business guru, as a matter of fact, and his opinion should carry some weight.

 He stated that Federal taxpayers' money then, and only then, should be made available to guarantee any loans the car companies would need to emerge from that bankruptcy.  And that would have been the logical, intelligent, efficient and cost-effective way to do it.  Via that plan the auto industry could have shed its obligations and trimmed down to fighting weight.  Chief among those obligations was their union contracts which put them in a box in the first place.   

Obama, on the other hand, had relied on union bucks to get elected, and would need them to get reelected.  That's why he defied 200+ years of American tradition...and laws...by stealing the car companies from their bond and stockholders and giving majority ownership to the UAW.  Think of that.  He took preferred, protected bond money and stock owner's positions and gave them the finger in return.  He screwed GM's and Chrysler's ownership in this manner and then gave majority control to the unions that had systematically hosed these companies over the decades to the point where they were no longer competitive.  Why, in fact, they were in such a bad shape to begin with.  But it gets worse.

Obama wound up GIVING Chrysler to Fiat!  Get that?  He gave an American car company to an Italian car company.  Why?  No one knows.  But conspiracy theorists like me believe that there's a pile of money somewhere for somebody that explains it all away.

Why didn't he give Federal money to Ford?  Ford didn't need it, or want it.  Ford hired Alan Mullaly, Boeing's vaunted CEO, and then borrowed more than $25 billion on everything it owned of value, to include more than $100 million on the value of the Blue Oval.  Because Ford was smart enough to have foreseen the doom, and worked around it, it didn't need Obama's help.  So why, I ask, did Obama not give Chrysler to Ford, another American company?  Or at least Nissan, or Toyota, or Mercedes-Benz, or Porsche, or Mazda, or Subaru, or any of the other off-shore manufacturers which have set up shop building their cars on our dirt?  Yes, why?

So, Obama sold out our car companies to give his union buddies a payoff.  Romney wanted to save us having to do that.  And the net result is that we are now more than $36 Billion Dollars in the hole because he did.  Have you heard of Ally Bank?  It used to be GMAC.  It (Ally) still owes the American taxpayer more than $8 Billion in loans it hasn't repaid.  And won't.  And GM?  More than $20 Billion.  And Chrysler?  More than $8 Billion.  Obama screwed each of us.  Romney would have saved the car companies and saved us billions of dollars. 

Have doubts?  Go to www.WSJ.com and research Romney's Op-Ed piece from late 2008.  His letter spells out exactly what he would do...exactly what I've specified above.  So Obama's lying?

Yes.

So, who should get your vote on the 6th?  I'll leave that up to you.