What’s good for the country is good for General Motors, and vice versa

That was the famous misquote of Charles E. Wilson's actual comment before the Senate during his confirmation hearings after being nominated to be Eisenhower's Secretary of Defense. Although his actual statement was much less arrogant, the statement does have some validity. I read somewhere that every employee of the Big Three Automakers supports some 12 jobs out in the economy. And those are just in the local communities. If you add in all the jobs in the automotive sector of the economy, and all the jobs that those jobs support, the automobile supports at least 50% of the US economy. Now, if the Big 3 go toes up, it will not mean the endo of all those jobs in the automotive sector because other economic entities will step in to pick up some fo the slack. However, most the actual production jobs will end up off shore, and that will mean a huge hit to both the viability of our economy and our balance of payments deficit.

I gotta tell you that I get hugely irritated with jerks who go off spouting shit about letting the evil Automakers crash and burn without giving any thought to either the consequences of letting them die, or what would be needed to bring them back to vigorous health. A healthy automobile industry supports both jobs in the general economy plus their stock underpins a huge portion of investment capital in this country. I'm not talking about speculators (or, to use the current euphemism "traders") here. I am talking about all those pensions and retirement funds that have a huge chunk of Detroit's stock. If Detroit goes down, a good portion of the American workforce is going to see their hopes for a comfortable retirement go down with it.

So here is the real dilemma: Trying to rescue the American economy is such a hugely complex undertaking, that there is no way for mere mortals to actually come up with a set of plans that are guaranteed to work. Anything that we, as a society working through our leaders, do will be, at best, a dice roll--or, rather, a series of dice rolls. Some of them will work; will be sevens. Other initiatives will not accomplish what we hoped they would, and, for those, the best we can hope is that they are neutral...that they are not fatal mistakes...snake-eyes or boxcars. We can't let the sheer overwhelming complexity of the task freeze us, because that too is a dice roll.

I don't know what we should or shouldn't do, but I do know that we have to do something. My preference is to take actions that support the industry but do not reward the people who got us to where we are today. Personally, I think that the executives of the Big 3 should all be required to take a 5 year pay cut...to what the average line worker makes...as a condition of any help from the public sector. They are the geniuses who saw the SUV a cash cow. Now let them taste some of what they brewed. But no matter what, we must do something that attempts to work for a positive outcome.