Letter to the Editor

The big three have not been open to change for the majority of their existence. Many believe the Tucker Torpedo, a car that debuted in 1947 that would have shifted the auto industry to much safer standards far earlier, were stifled by the big three. When foreign autos were introducing electric and hybrid standards, the big three built Hummers. Today, we hear this phrase, global economy, again and again, and in light of that idea we must protect ourselves against protectionism. After all, the big three in many ways are as American as the burrito. The majority of these so-called jobs have gone over to Mexico and been given to machines. And many foreign automakers currently have production plants in the United States. Luckily for them, they reside outside of the state of Michigan who needs to seriously look at reforming all of their tax and entitlement burdens they place on the auto industry.

They'll argue that bankruptcy will cause consumers to lose confidence in buying a car that they might not be able to get repaired down the line. Besides those who would just rather buy fuel efficient cars, consumers would have plenty of repair and maintenance options when there is so much money to be capitalized on very large market. If the big three went down, I just might go into the business of part manufacturing.

The one thing that does bug me about this charade, other than the fact that we are allowing the Federal Reserve inflate our currency at will, is that when it came to the banks and insurance companies they didn’t call for this dog and pony show like they have with the “blue collar” auto industry. However, this doesn’t change the morality or the erroneous principles of any bailout. To focus the discussion on whether they drive, fly or skydive to Washington is only making a mockery of the situation and completely missing the point.

We’ve already seen the disaster of the TARP. We know how the plans of buying “toxic assets” have changed, what gives us confidence this will be any different? Because of the current imbalances of the U.S. economy, we should be looking at the economic crisis as the solution, not the problem. The transition from borrowing and spending to saving and producing cannot be accomplished without a severe recession, and the bailouts are only making our borrowing bubble that much worse. And if you want to convince me this is a loan, give it out only under an interest rate of 15% or something of that nature. At less than 1%, I myself wouldn’t make immediate plans to pay that back…and there lies our entire economic instability, thank you Mr. Greenspan.

With Liberty For All,