Join Ed and Allahpundit on Facebook!
GreenRoom
- IRS To Pro-Life Groups: You Know You’re Gonna Have To Give Up This Whole Protest Thing, Right?
- Two House Dems demand Lerner resignation after using lobbyist to stage modified limited hangout
- Feelgood video of the day
- New liberal idea: Let’s raise $660 million online in a month to buy the LA Times before the Koch brothers can
- Of Course It Troubles Me. Are You Kidding Me?
- Friendly reminder from the White House about ObamaCare: “It’s. The. Law.”
- Caption this: Umbrella cover
- NFL player takes a whiz on the IRS
- Video: How to prank an entire city
- Video: Holder doesn’t know, Carney can’t comment
Hot Links
|
|
Feeds
© 2006-2013 Hot Air Network, LLC | Designed by The Blog Studio | Terms of Use | About | AdvertiseMobile Site>
Blowback
Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.
Trackbacks/Pings
Trackback URL
Comments
Comment pages: « Previous 1 2 3 4 Next »
LMAO. Yeah, they’re going to make up for the loss of three major American auto companies. Riiiight.
http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=F#chart1:symbol=f;range=5y;indicator=volume;charttype=line;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=on;source=undefined
nickj116 on December 16, 2008 at 11:56 PM
…says the guy who just said…
MadisonConservative on December 16, 2008 at 11:57 PM
wise_man [reading note from MadisonConservative]: See. You. Soon. Id- . . . Id-. . . idi- . . . idi- . . .
Entelechy: Idiots.
wise_man: — huh?
[pause]
Entelechy: It’s for you.
Tuco on December 16, 2008 at 11:57 PM
I didn’t catch this until just now.
Oh, the irony. Practice what you preach, bud. Practice what you preach.
MadisonConservative on December 16, 2008 at 11:59 PM
Really? And you’re the one talking about American ingenuity? I guess that applies to everyone EXCEPT the Big 3 huh?
nickj116 on December 17, 2008 at 12:01 AM
American ingenuity includes the little caveat of “If you fail, you’re supposed to start over, not have your failure kept on the edge of oblivion by taxpayer funding.”
MadisonConservative on December 17, 2008 at 12:06 AM
All the major Japanese car makers manufacture their cars here and sell them here. They are as American as GM.
And they are making money. Big time.
platypus on December 17, 2008 at 12:11 AM
You are saying that American ingenuity ONLY applies to the failed big three and that nothing could ever rise in their place. Those assembly lines, that often sit idle now with the failures running them, will be running full steam ahead when they are under the control of new fresh start companies that can actually make a profit by keeping those lines moving. The new companies won’t be held hostage by past bad decisions.
Buddahpundit on December 17, 2008 at 12:12 AM
It doesn’t matter what Bush knows or doesn’t know. Capitalism is superior to socialism. Employing Marxist principles to bailout Capitalism is like using a rock and a stick to fix a finely tuned machine, or like using an eggbeater to play flamenco guitar.
There’s nothing Bush could possibly know that would alter the economic harm he’s inflicting on this country.
FloatingRock on December 17, 2008 at 12:15 AM
Just because they are manufactured here doesn’t make them as American as GM.
mycowardice on December 17, 2008 at 12:15 AM
Oh, I don’t know. Considering that they are actually profitable, efficient companies, I’d argue that they’re more American.
FloatingRock on December 17, 2008 at 12:20 AM
nickj116, my good socialist man, since it would seem that all my central planners want to leave me to do higher paying central planning in America, would you be up to taking one of their places over here on my staff. I won’t be able to pay you that much unless oil prices go back up but we do have subsidized Vodka and an especially good health care system.
PootyPoot on December 17, 2008 at 12:20 AM
Why not? And if not, then what does make a company American?
platypus on December 17, 2008 at 12:20 AM
If all else fails, hit it with a Big Hammer.
Murphy9 on December 17, 2008 at 12:24 AM
Indeed. Because they have no unions to contend with, have quality cars to sell, and have sane leaders, with balanced retribution for their efforts.
We can’t bail them out, time after time, for no different results. That is the definition of insanity, and at our cost. Get farked, all of them. I’ve had enough of pumping blood into a bleeding patiens who refuses to have the blood stopped.
Entelechy on December 17, 2008 at 12:25 AM
And I have never, ever, owned a foreign car. Nor do I intend to. I just want sanity restored, and not pay for hot air, over and over again.
Entelechy on December 17, 2008 at 12:28 AM
bleeding patiens = bleeding patient
Entelechy on December 17, 2008 at 12:32 AM
Are GM’s assembly plants in Mexico more American than Toyota’s plants in the US?
That reminds me. How could they have even begun these bailout discussions without demanding that these companies move all of their foreign operations to the US? The US taxpayer should prop up jobs in Mexico also?
Buddahpundit on December 17, 2008 at 12:35 AM
Good question.
FloatingRock on December 17, 2008 at 12:37 AM
Well, that’s one way to solve the illegal alien problem.
platypus on December 17, 2008 at 12:48 AM
Asher on December 17, 2008 at 12:50 AM
Hey, I thought this blog was free?
Now, in the interest of levity and good cheer, a video of a fat cat jumping into boxes and sliding across the floor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfGOlEizUUs
Asher on December 17, 2008 at 12:56 AM
I think when you headquarters are in Japan, you ain’t very American to begin with.
So I’d say that GM’s plants in the US are more American than both the Toyota plants in the US or the GM plants in Mexico.
mycowardice on December 17, 2008 at 1:23 AM
All of you preaching conservative principles are floating on Reagan Cloud 9 in Conservatopia.
If you really think that any other car company in the world is a truly private company in a pure free-market with a perfect competitive environment, you are dreaming like little girls eating cotton candy and staring slack-jawed at My Lil Pony videos.
Every Other Car Company in the World is a semi-nationalist state entity. No other industrialized nation in the world, except us, would let their automotive sector die on the vine.
There are many ways to measure wealth in an economy. Here’s one that not many think of: How many times in one year does one (1) dollar bill change hands? The higher the frequency is means more health and wealth in the economy. Not too many people think of metrics like that.
Well, last summer the flow of money … pretty much… stopped.
The flow of money …. STOPPED.
Do you people understand that??? It s t o p p e d…
Do you understand? Do you know that that has not happened in our oh-so-vaunted free market economy before? ever?
When you are a doctor in an ER looking at a soon-dead live human person being on the gurney in front of you, do you begin lecturing in his ears about living a healthy lifestyle and eating lots of broccoli…
or do you get out the effin paddles and yell “CLEAR!”
Thank God for W and his disregard for his own personal popularity.
silverfox on December 17, 2008 at 1:25 AM
That is just not true. Consumer spending hasn’t taken anything like that much of a hit at all, except in Chicken Little land and panic leads to bad policy.
You don’t do that unless the patients heart has stopped. You’ve been watching too much TV.
I think that he did this to try to preserve what little is left of his personal popularity. Although he just may not know what the frack he is doing.
MB4 on December 17, 2008 at 1:34 AM
We shall see. And if you’re proved wrong, please be big enough to apologize.
platypus on December 17, 2008 at 1:37 AM
Bankruptcy would be the proper analogy to “get out the effin paddles and yell “CLEAR!” Enabling the GM and Chrysler and the UAW to just go on as before, just heavily subsidized, would be comparable to sticking a funnel in the patients mouth and pouring in more alcohol.
MB4 on December 17, 2008 at 1:40 AM
Try a little experiment and let us know how it works out for you. Find a friend or two and pass a dollar bill amongst yourselves ten times and then total up your proceeds. Continue passing the buck, this time deducting the requisite share for the government on each pass, and count how long it takes before you’re left with only a penny.
Your economic theory doesn’t work because government doesn’t create wealth, it can only confiscate and redistribute it.
FloatingRock on December 17, 2008 at 1:44 AM
When you are a doctor in an ER looking at a soon-dead live human person being on the gurney in front of you, do you begin lecturing in his ears about living a healthy lifestyle and eating lots of broccoli…
or do you
get out the effin paddles and yell “CLEAR!”drain all of the blood out of a healthy bystander, leaving him pale and dead, to save the poor mans life?silverfox on December 17, 2008 at 1:25 AM
FIFY
FloatingRock on December 17, 2008 at 1:49 AM
BTW, a liver transplant every few months would also be needed.
MB4 on December 17, 2008 at 1:50 AM
There are professional economists, and I am, certainly, not one of them. But I’ve not seen one HA post that educated me in that regard.
The only way to function in modern times is to have a modicum of trust in the professionals. I don’t think Hank Paulson et al have done this for shitz and giggles. So far, I’ll trust them. So far.
I think… that they’re trying to do “bankruptcy, but, shhh, don’t call it that,” so as to not scare the customers.
I think the Big 3 got swamped by a perfect storm for which they are blameless. The maddening thing is they are innovating and inventing ahead of some of the competition. The maddening thing is they are verging on a renaissance of technology.
Will it be like so many other things that we invent, like VCRs, that we invent and the Japanese buy off and run away with it?
I want my Chevy Volt, damn it! (lol)
silverfox on December 17, 2008 at 1:54 AM
…and preserving him thusly indefinitely on the verge of death, having stolen the funnel and the money for booze from somebody who will go hungry without.
FloatingRock on December 17, 2008 at 1:55 AM
The metric is the average for all dollars passed in one years time.
I don’t have a theory cuz I’m not an economist.
silverfox on December 17, 2008 at 1:57 AM
You can still have a theory. My general point was that it’s an overly simplistic one, to the point of being wrong. If passing dollars around is one of the most important measures of an economy, then hyperinflation will improve the economy because more dollars will be passed around.
And MB4 is right, that spending isn’t actually down that much in the greater sense. It didn’t “just stop”. It’s just lower than it was before. When people barrow and spend too much money they eventually have to cut back and pay down their debt. It’s the natural order of things.
And this is why chicken little and his friend Bush shouldn’t be trusted.
FloatingRock on December 17, 2008 at 2:05 AM
And hopefully, instead of obsessing about using the credit card or a second/third mortgage to buy another big screen TV, people will spend more time with their friends and families or reading books or working on hobbies—and most importantly, remembering, if not learning for the first time, how the real world works rather than the Utopian fantasies that all too many now prefer.
FloatingRock on December 17, 2008 at 2:13 AM
Interesting points here that I have observed:
1.) GM’s (General Motors)finance arm -GMAC Bank- also seems to run the following mortgage broker http://www.ditech.com/about/. Could the housing market bubble implosion have done more harm to GM then we know?
2.) Toyota is no longer a “foreign car” anymore than Ford,GM, or Daimler-Chrysler are “domestic cars”. Chrysler Corp is partially owned by the German Daimler Corp and all foreign carmakers especially Toyota have plants here in the US that make the cars we buy-just as the Big 3 have plants in Russia, Mexico, Canada, and several former Soviet States! It really doesn’t matter where the headquarters for the multinational corporation is….just what kind of product they make.
In my case I find that Toyota and Volvo (Swedish car company) make some pretty damn fine cars based on the fact that I can (and have) driven 2 different Toyotas that were old enough to remember the 1st Bush Administration (one of which is my current vehicle a 1991 Toyota Camry) and a 1994 Volvo which saved my life when I was first learning to drive 4-5 years back. The only domestic I ever had (ironically enough a Ford) quite literally had the transmission explode on me hours from home leaving my stranded with friends for a week.
The Big Three (or at least Two of them) are probably going into the crapper sooner or later….I’d rather it be sooner on their own heads then later with my cash!
Finally I leave you with the
Big Three Business Philosophy Enjoy!
SgtSVJones on December 17, 2008 at 2:24 AM
I could have been a bit clearer in my rant. I only offered that metric as an example of how most of us don’t even perceive how healthy the economy is. As for hyperinflation goes, I can imagine an ecomomy with fast-moving dollars and stable prices.
The consumer economy, for sure, did not just stop. But the money at the top did. The lenders who lend to the lenders who lend to the lenders…. who lend to us… stopped lending to each other.
silverfox on December 17, 2008 at 2:33 AM
LOL. Are you an Aussie?
OldEnglish on December 17, 2008 at 2:36 AM
This was the logic used by some during the New Deal, or at least by the apologists afterwards. But since (minus the Reagan years) we have moving towards statism.
V15J on December 17, 2008 at 3:56 AM
Quoted for truth. Bush let the two stooges Chairman Hank and Chairman Paul lead him down this hell path.
Dritanian on December 17, 2008 at 5:38 AM
enough I have defended you on plenty, but enough.
rob verdi on December 17, 2008 at 6:25 AM
Amazing! Let’s just abandon all sense and lead ourselves to a major economic disaster that will top all others because we want a legacy that is as good as Hoovers?
Go back to the ranch George, take Paulson with you and stump break that SOB.
conservnut on December 17, 2008 at 7:12 AM
Oh my gosh. I have to bite…
Nick, I empathize. It concerns me that these companies which are American stock would go down. But, what troubles me the most is how hamstrung they have been for so long, unable to produce adequate product to compete side-by-side with foreign companies. That is heartbreaking. If they get bailed out, it rewards the wrong. If they get restructured under chapter 11, they stand a fighting chance as a business to clean house and rework their infrastructure.
But, your point is that this would catastrophically kill our economy. This hinges on the premise that these three companies are thee ONLY industries in the US which is total crap. These three are BIG industries…but…we are a nation now of experts. We are skilled and ready to work. We have great ideas and are, largely, hard working. Cars and car parts are also not the only place where machine shops get there business. A lot, yes, but the entire country? THE ENTIRE USA? No. If any blame is to be laid, it is not at the feet of “failed Bush econ. policies” or capitalism. The two major issues were the DEREGULATION of behemoths called Fannie/Freddie and other bureaucratic monstrosities (Um, liberal meddling into areas they need not be) and the labor unions and related lobbying (liberals meddling into areas they need not be.) It benefits them to have crisis, if anything a “generated” crisis…as Biden forewarned. How the heck did he know? hehe. So that they (ala, Rham Emanuel) may “throw long and deep” and usher in some crazy anti-american tripe we wouldn’t normally be predisposed to swallow. Any of this ring a bell?
About Bush and like-minded “republicans”: true conservatives have been aghast for a looooooooooooooong time over this man. He took a dramatic turn to the left, even though he never once earned the praise of his new found constituencies. This is why I now fear the second term…
So, just because this is a RINO president alongside some RINO republicans and democrats does not make this a “consensus” with some crazy fringe conservatives hopping mad on the side lines. No, it makes it a traitorous union between two sides, with neither on the side of reason and logic. Truth is stumbling in the streets and people cannot handle solid doctrine any more in any capacity…
…anyway, that is my .02
Mommypundit on December 17, 2008 at 7:16 AM
1) He never had any free market principles.
2) He hasn’t saved the free market, he has further damaged it.
MarkTheGreat on December 17, 2008 at 7:27 AM
Why is my post saying it is awaiting moderation? I have NEVER seen this before. Hmmmmmm.
Mommypundit on December 17, 2008 at 7:38 AM
+1
The fact is we are in the process of winnowing down bad debt, only the insane Moonbat media could look at this as “a bad sign”….
if only the Feds would do the same thing.
sven10077 on December 17, 2008 at 7:56 AM
Fact is a bailout to the big three will make zero difference. The failed business plan the operate under is not sustainable.
Our government is over 57 Trillion dollars in unfunded debt. Handing money out to every failed business is only going to worsen the situation. Our politicians have destroyed the greatest democracy the world has ever known with their pandering and entitlement policies. This country is nearing total collapse and all we can think of is what is in it for me. Time to lock and load!
trs on December 17, 2008 at 8:10 AM
And how many French or Italian cars have you seen on the road lately? European makes are basically limited to luxury automobiles and little else. Ford competes quite well in Europe for the average buyer and Buick is a top seller in China.
I’m not sure exactly what your point is. Nationalizing the US auto industry might guarantee some union jobs, but you’d end up with a Fiat or a Trabant. And everyone would be paying for it…even if you didn’t own an automobile.
This is insane.
Asher on December 17, 2008 at 8:55 AM
Hell yes! Get rid of the UAW and you have half the problem solved. Then get rid of the terrible mgmt. people who couldn’t stand up to the UAW and voila! a functioning auto industry.
cjs1943 on December 17, 2008 at 9:49 AM
Comment pages: « Previous 1 2 3 4 Next »