The auto bailout is arguably Obama’s best investment

[LuckyTheDog]

The dam has exploded on the U.S. auto sales business, partly because of cheap gas and easy credit, and partly because the average car reached a record-high 11.5 years old last summer.

But history will show that the industry is thriving because it had a government that trusted it could redefine itself back in 2009 - the year President Obama refused to let General Motors and Chrysler die by completing a $79.7 billion bailout that saved the two companies and their parts suppliers - along with the one million jobs that depended on them.

The upshot? Automakers sold a whopping 17.5 million vehicles in 2015, a record, and sales projections for 2016 are 17.8 million. And that's before anyone fully understands the market for self-drive vehicles being proposed by tech companies such as Google.

And to think: It was just seven years ago that Mitt Romney wrote an op-ed in the New York Times that suggested we shouldn't put taxpayer money at risk.

MORE HERE: http://yonside.com/the-auto-bailout-is-arguably-obamas-best-investment/

[former9thward]

1. The bailout began in December, 2008.

About 6 weeks before Obama took office. Obama continued it when he became president.

[LuckyTheDog]

4. That initial infusion of cash didn't do much

Bush was only interested in keeping GM and Chrysler alive long enough so that their brands could be sold off to Chinese manufacturers. It was Obama who really had a vision to save the companies as domestic auto makers.

[former9thward]

6. Well that is one version.

Let's see what that far right magazine, The New Yorker, says.

On December 19, 2008, a week after Republicans in the Senate had killed a bailout bill proposed by Democrats, saying it didn’t impose big enough wage cuts on the U.A.W., Bush unilaterally agreed to lend $17.4 billion of taxpayers’ money to General Motors and Chrysler, of which $13.4 billion was to be extended immediately. He had to twist the law to get the money. Deprived of congressional funding, he diverted cash from the loathed TARP program, which Congress had already passed, but which was supposed to be restricted to rescuing the banks. “I didn’t want there to twenty-one-per-cent unemployment,” he said to a meeting of the National Automobile Dealers Association in Las Vegas last month, explaining why he acted as he did. “I didn’t want history to look back and say, ‘Bush could have done something but chose not to do it.’ ”

http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/an-inconvenient-truth-it-was-george-w-bush-who-bailed-out-the-automakers

[LuckyTheDog]

11. Had that been all that the government did, GM and Chrysler would have been gone

During the last part of the Bush administration, the sale of GM and Chrysler's brands and factories to foreign investors was openly discussed. The Chinese were seen as likely potential buyers. If that happened, shifting most of the production to China would have been inevitable and the UAW would have been toast. The actions of the Obama administration kept that from happening.

[safeinOhio]

2. I remember them saying

Government Motors will only make one and half cylinder engine cars that no one would buy under Obama.

[Facility Inspector]

3. Calling General Motors

"Government Motors" is a conservative trope.

[hunter]

5. No. The age of automobiles needs to die.

Pay all those auto workers to stay home if that's what we need to make it happen.

[LuckyTheDog]

9. That can't happen all at once

It would take a generation of infrastructure building and a lot of political will to end the "age of the automobile."

[ileus]

10. you'll also need to pay all the owners to stay home...

Most folks use those evil devices for something other than towing the boat.

[DesMoinesDem]

7. If losing $15+ billion dollars is his best investment, then he is not a good investor.

[LuckyTheDog]

8. That money was not "lost"

If you consider what the liquidation of the domestic auto industry would have cost the government, $15 billion (and I think it was actually about $11 billion, but whatever) was a drop in the bucket.

The lost tax revenue, plus the cost of extended unemployment benefits, food stamps and other costs would have been stratospheric.