12-04-08, 11:21 am
As the Big Three executives return to Congress to plead for new loans to bail out the auto industry, political debates erupted again this week over whether or not the federal government has managed the economic crisis adequately. Should taxpayer dollars should have been used to prop up the profits of Wall Street banks, while allowing the US economy to collapse further by refusing to prevent the failure of any one of the major auto companies?
The newest reports suggest that there is little congressional support for passing a bailout package for auto using funds from the massive $700 billion boondoggle passed in October. For their part, however, Democratic leaders have asserted that bankruptcy for the automakers is not an option.
Republicans have blamed workers and unions for the crisis in auto, ignoring the fact that the credit crunch has led to a decline by 37 percent in new auto purchases by consumers over last year. The credit crunch, of course was not caused by union workers, but rather a systematic deregulation of the housing market that allowed big Wall Street banks to push ill-advised loans and repackage them as securities.
