gm

From the treasure trove of conservative apocalyptic predictions that actually sound pretty good comes this piece today in the neocon magazine, Commentary. The article describes the ideologically driven conditions being placed on General Motors as a result of the government bailout, arguing that “GM will be used to pay off various Democratic interests and constituencies.” [...]

Car manufacturers looking for a bailout in December pledged to meet standards they now call unreasonable.

When Senate Republicans last week blocked Democrats’ efforts to bail out General Motors and Chrysler, which say they’re near bankruptcy, the White House was quick to swoop in to announce that it would lend the help that Congress didn’t.
Aside from the comedy surrounding that development (the Bush administration’s original refusal to help the automakers was [...]

A GM bankruptcy would be unprecedented, and probably controversial, because the company owns physical assets worth about $160 billion, directly employs 90,000 Americans and is an integral part of the U.S. economy. While the White House has signaled that it may come to the rescue in the short term, the pain of downsizing the auto giant would have a ripple effect across the economy.

Nearly a month after the executives of the Big Three automakers arrived in Washington on corporate jets to ask Congress for a bailout, a group of auto workers made the same trip by carpool. Their mission was the same, but the blue-collar image they projected was strikingly different.

In 1979, with Chrysler at the brink of failure, Lee Iacocca famously cut his salary to $1 per year in recognition of the federal help that eventually saved the company.
Fast forward nearly 30 years, and several lawmakers have put the Iacocca challenge to the CEOs of Detroit’s Big Three, who are in Washington this week [...]

If the auto industry fails, the pain will be felt across the country and throughout the economy — not just in the Motor City.

As the Wall Street bailout program morphs from one helping banks to one benefiting insurers and (perhaps) automakers, the Bush administration is having a hard time explaining what rules are dictating the process — and where it’ll draw lines of eligibility.
It’s an unlikely spot for a conservative White House that once lived and died railing [...]

A spate of gigantic mergers sparked by the recent global crisis has overnight reordered the American economic landscape — if not America itself.