$15 Billlion Is Pathetic--Now More Than Ever You Need to Buy American

It looks as if a kick-the-can bailout of the Detroit Big Three is about a done deal. Still, that's about $10 billion less than what they were (a) asking for (b) originally promised under a pre-financial crisis plan to retool their plants to produce cars that would deliver higher fuel efficiency. It's almost $25 billion less than the revised figure that they floated last week. I mean, let's call a duck a duck here: $15 bil gets GM and Chrysler to maybe next spring, at which point they can revive merger discussions. By then, Ford should be feeling the pinch, as well.

Contrast these figure with the hundreds-of-billions in cash suck the financial sector, which played roulette with subprime mortgages, is getting. The financial sector, such as it remains, is selling goo. Gunky funky garbage-y goo designed to endow the seventh homes of hedge fund helmers and to line the bespoke pockets of MBAs who swaggered into Wall Street investment banks with visions of mega-bonuses dancing in their heads. There's no meaningful future in this gunk, just as their has been no profit in trading equities in a normal market since, oh, I don't know, 1964. It's bubble-bubble-bubble now, with a Federal Reserve horror of inflation jacking the system, a program has delivered nothing so much as the more feared inverse, deflation. Too much money chasing too few goods? Yeah, how about no money chasing bottomless excess inventory.

And sooooo...what's afoot now, exactly? Looks like a last-ditch conservative putsch to bankrupt the Big Three so that the UAW can be done away with forever. The Big Three may actually be on baord with this. But as far as an endgame goes, it means more $15-an-hour, disposable contract labor in right-to-work Southern states, building Toyotas and BMWs, and A LOT less $50-an-hour unionized workers in the Upper Midwest.

Forget about the vanquished opportunity to get the taxpayer into a Green deal with the domestic automakers. This paltry bailout is more of a stay of execution. Let's hope the new administration comes into Washington with a more courageous industrial policy. As it stands, this is a sad day to be an American and love cars.