Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, chairman of the congressional oversight panel for the Wall Street rescue program, decried the decision, saying a Chapter 11 reorganization, not loans rewarding decades of mismanagement, would have been a better decision.
supposedly the uaw has to make some changes and upper management loses private jets and what not, but i still think they should have went bankrupt, like the above quote describes. survival of the fittest and the free market at its best, yet the government wants to support those bad decisions.
like the walmart car thread, someone would buy the gm and chrysler car lines, with good business ideas and no uaw.
the government says we “need” alot of things. what we need is a slap in the face, some really hard times for a while, just to wake everyone up and set things right.
like the mortgages (which i work in the industry) lets give someone who clearly cant afford their 500k house after the interest only period expires a modification to set them at 1% for a few years, or extend their mortgage out to 40 years. or they say my property value has dropped by half, can you take some money off the principal? ive seen that happen, what happens when property values go back up? will they repay what they agreed to? no the bank has to take the hit. bs. thats is not going to teach anyone anything. i seriously have a hard time not to hang up the phone when someone calls in and says 'oh i cant afford my 1.5 mil house, please help" go fuck yourself buddy. sell your house, go into foreclosure or bk or what ever you need and live in your car for a while. i am sick of hearing people live above their means then cry for help when it catches up on them.
same goes for the auto industry. i dont see bmw, mb, honda, etc, needing a hand out. and i bet ford is just doing all they can to say they dont need any help for marketing sake. ditch the union, restructure ceo pay and benefits and run a business. if it fails it wasnt meant to be.
who cares if the big 3 fail? how many people have actually bought a new car vs. drive a not new one? and if they fail there are thousand of used cars waiting to be driven and an aftermarket parts and repair industry ready to go.
but whatever, its all a moot point now that they are going to get a reward for dealing with the uaw and having an exorbitant pay scale.
But the flourishing of the transplants didn’t come without significant taxpayer help. Shelby’s Alabama, for example, secured construction of a Mercedes-Benz plant in 1993 by offering $253 million in state and local tax breaks, worker training and land improvement. For Honda, the state’s sweetener surrounding a 1999 deal to build a mini-van plant was $158 million in similar perks, adding $90 million in enticements when the company expanded the plant three years later. A 2001 deal with Toyota left the company with $29 million in taxpayer gifts.
Alabama is hardly alone. Corker’s Tennessee recently lured Volkswagen to build a manufacturing plant in Chattanooga, offering the German automaker tax breaks, training and land preparation that could total $577 million. In 2005, the state inspired Nissan to relocate its headquarters from southern California by offering $197 million in incentives, including $20 million in utility savings.
In 1992, South Carolina snagged a BMW plant for $150 million in giveaways. In Mississippi in 2003, Nissan was lured with $363 million. In Georgia, a still-under-construction Kia plant received breaks estimated to be $415 million. The list goes on.