Gettin' It Done - 7

"Saved the US car business" may be overblown hyperbole and graceful understatement all at once.  Government shouldn't be in the business of propping up failing enterprises.  There is such a thing as a life cycle, and it applies to companies and to whole industry sectors as well as to people (also to countries, but that's a different post).  So I'm always worried that throwing tax dollars at a business problem is just postponing the inevitable.  It's a really tough call, but sometimes you have to pull the plug.  All that said, if you don't have the capability to produce stuff that you can sell, then you don't have an economy.  Lose your manufacturing base and you're on your way to losing it all.  Not understanding that concept was one of the hugest mistakes we made in the 80s and 90s.

I'll admit right now that I was all for Free Trade agreements like NAFTA,et al - thinking it'd be good for us if American businesses had to compete just like everybody else; if we couldn't build better refrigerators than the Japanese, then we should get our butts kicked - damned unions blah blah blah.

I was wrong.  Not so much wrong about Free Trade - if you do it right, then the whole free trade thing really is a good idea.  But that's just it: "if you do it right".  About all we've managed to accomplish is to turn Ross Perot into a prophetic messenger - and you start to get an idea of the monumental-ness of your fuck up when that happens.

So the very stark difference in the basic instincts of Obama vs Romney when it came to making a decision on what to do about Detroit tells me most of what I need to know about these guys.  Obama sees what's happened and understands that we have to do some things aimed at leveling the field so we're not always playing up hill.  Romney sounds like he's stuck in 1989, still thinking (like I did) it doesn't matter if we don't make anything here anymore, because the workforce will just retrain itself and become managers; or everybody'll borrow some money and go back to school; or they'll finally open that shoe store their mom always wanted them to try.

7. Turned Around U.S. Auto Industry: In 2009, injected $62 billion in federal money (on top of $13.4 billion in loans from the Bush administration) into ailing GM and Chrysler in return for equity stakes and agreements for massive restructuring. Since bottoming out in 2009, the auto industry has added more than 100,000 jobs. In 2011, the Big Three automakers all gained market share for the first time in two decades. The government expects to lose $16 billion of its investment, less if the price of the GM stock it still owns increases.

I still don't like bailouts, but you have to know how to make the better choice from a very short list of shitty options.