Friday, May 01, 2009

Chrysler - the bad bet of President Obama

You know what's really sad about the economy? What really angers me about the bailouts? The way that the Obama Administration, Congress, and the Bush Administration have all wasted our money.

Yes even the anointed President Barack Obama is complicit in the waste of money that has been the bailouts and stimulus package. While President Bush started this waterfall of taxpayer money, and Congress has failed in every respect on these matters, President Obama has jumped in with both feet on making this a costly mistake since day 1.

Chrysler has now declared bankruptcy. They told America they would back in November of 2008 when they didn't get the full bailout they requested, along with the rest of the U.S. automakers. Rather than allowing the automakers to do the inevitable, the Government has thrown away our money in amounts that are near incomprehensible. Chrysler alone is responsible for some $10 billion of our money that will now not only fail to send our kids to school, or buy new homes, or build new businesses, but has effectively vaporized.

Of course there will be a cheer from Democrats since the American Government now owns 8% of Chrysler. What a bargain. They paid more than top dollar for a miniscule percentage of ownership, that currently is worthless. But don't worry, the Government can always buy more with your taxes and printing as much money as it wants. Your kid didn't need college anyway.

This is not a joke. I'm being serious. President Obama announced to the nation, along with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, that the only way to save American jobs and fend off a depression was to keep the automakers out of bankruptcy. That was a big part of the $1.29 trillion that President Obama spent in the first 100 days. Yet bankruptcy is what has happened.

Can you imagine $10 billion dollars? Does it make sense? Imagine a stack of dollar bills that reaches to the moon and back, with lots of money left over. That's how much money just disappeared.

Had the Democrat leadership just said no, and allowed the car makers to fail there would be that much more money available to help people survive this outcome. There would be that much money ready to help new smaller businesses to pick up the pieces of the failed companies and create new jobs and innovation. But the Government knows better than you or I. The Government can manage everything better - though facts to the contrary abound.

Think about this. If the Government is wrong about the billions it gave Chrysler, which has been proven by the bankruptcy, what else is it wrong about? That a depression will not be the outcome of this action? That they wasted more of our money on bad ideas than AIG, the automakers, and most of the major banks combined? That the total of the Congress and the President have less knowledge and acumen in the world of business than your local paperboy?

Each of the political parties is culpable in this mess. They all have played their part in creating this fiasco over the past two decades at least. But I must say that all the polispeak of President Obama stands out the most. Because the buck stops at the President, and his assurances are the ones that have failed the biggest right now.

I am pissed off because of in my forced ownership of Chrysler (via the bailouts using my cash like yours), I gain nothing. Had I made the choice of what to do with my money, I would have kept it in my pocket. Or gone out to a small dinner and helped the economy. Or added it to my investments (though future taxes on those investments would surely be more than the some of money I started with). I might even had given it to charity (though the tax on that gift might have been more than my charitable gift now that President Obama raised the taxes on that too).

Simply put, the President and the Democrat-led Congress made a bad bet. If they were a publicly run corporation I'd have shorted their stock long ago. But instead of their stock price going down, national unemployment is continuing to rise, my tax bill is increasing, I'm paying a mortgage of other Americans on top of my own mortgage, and I get to fear for my ability to maintain just what I have. Because they made their bets with my money, and yours.

This will no doubt be spun to blame everyone but the current Administration and Congress. There will be no end to the flowery views of future green cars and some abundant productivity in the future. But the fact staring us all in the face is that all those dreams would have been just as true, and likely, without an extra $10 billion in debt for the nation.

Labels: , , , , , ,



Ask for ad rates

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home

Ask for ad rates