So lemme get this straight - Obama and his financial wizards give Wall Street how many hundreds of billions, with few real strings attached, and then go after Detroit and G.M. over a few billion in loans? They must still believe that Wall Street is the economy, they're too spineless to stand up to the money lenders and High Lords of Finance, so they're going to act tough by interfering with an industry that actually produces things! Mr. DeLorenzo, putting aside his ever-present hyperbole, sums it up well in his March 29th entry. Does Wagoner deserve some blame? Sure. And nobody's going to lose sleep because a multi-millionaire is out of a job. But the double standard is certainly troubling. It's yet another depressing example of insiders cashing in, while the political sleight-of-hand directs the public outrage over all of these bailouts towards an appropriately hapless target. The truth is that if GM was one of the favored Wall Street brokerages or investment banks, Wagoner probably would be working for Obama at Treasury instead of getting fired by him.
Coupled with the administration's adherence to some of the previous administration's bad habits regarding secrecy, detention, and the surveillance state, and my disillusion is beginning to spread.
Update: This blog post might convey my meaning better than I did (although my post was first!); not that Wagoner didn't deserve to go (I really can't say, since I've never run a car company), but that this administration is guilty of gross inconsistency/hyprocrisy in its dealings with Detroit and Wall Street. [Elected officials inconsistent and hyprocritical? In other news, the Sun will rise in the East tomorrow.]
Update II:A few more thoughts (from various perspectives) from the Electronosphere about Obama, Wagoner, U.S. industrial policy, et al:
2 comments:
I don't have an issue with Wagoner getting fired. In my book, the guy is an idiot. Any fool could have seen that GM was too bloated and needed to cut 4 or 5 divisions 10 years ago. If GM didn't want its exec's jobs on the line they shouldn't have accepted the government's money. I'm glad the government is attaching strings to this money. Should they be attaching strings to the Wall Street money - yes. But that doesn't mean this is a bad move. The auto extremist is an idiot.
Let me help with this disparity:
Industry Donation % of total
Finance/Insur/RealEst $37,145,513 15.1 %
Transportation $1,467,077 0.6 %
this is a simple case of 'shoulda PAID me, bitches!' Goldman Sach dropped (directly, who knows how much more through subverted routes) a cool $million on putting him up, and have since recieved 10 Billion in bailout, although to be fair they ARE lookingn at giving 7 billion back (i amagine so they can get away with not having thier bonuses capped as one of the strings attached. Maybe not a smoking revolver, but certainly a finger pulling at the strings...
source:
http://www.opencongress.org/people/show/400629_barack_obama
and more:
http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00009638
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