Put me down as a no vote
The auto industry bail-out is a very complicated issue. I’m not going to go into the details here. But I am strongly against any plan that puts Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barney Frank in the role of telling experienced auto industry executives how to run a ginormous industrial manufacturer.
We can disagree about whether or how the executives mismanaged their businesses. But I doubt that any of us would agree that the government is better able to make the kind of decisions, in a timely fashion, that the big three need to make.
The industry isn’t sick, but the old, big three are. They are paying a huge price for decisions they made when they had an oligopoly. Now that more sleek competitors are in the market, those past decisions are coming back to haunt Detroit. When they have their back against the wall, they will be forced to make changes to their business model or they will die. And let’s not give the UAW a pass. With labor costs nearly double what the non-union competitors bear, management and labor must make difficult decisions if they are going to survive.
I don’t believe that these difficult decisions can or will be made if politics are added to the mix. If Washington wants to bail-out the industry, then they should offer the bridge loans with a few responsible loan covenants the way a bank would do it. If they don’t have faith in the decision-making ability of the company’s management, then make a change one of the covenants. But an auto czar in Washington? That’s simply un-American.
