Americans have famously short attention spans. Media frenzy will carry a story for a week or so, maybe a couple of weeks in extreme, unfolding situations, and then Breaking News will sweep that one away for another. TV Talking Heads stations will then come up with compelling names for the story: “Terrorist Horror in Mumbai” or “StormWatch 2008” or whatever, with reporters in network logo rain slickers standing in hip waders in swirling waters, until the next one comes along. You can get caught up in it – I spent much of Thanksgiving’s long weekend watching that horror in Mumbai and I recall vividly wasting an entire Labor Day Weekend horrified, watching Katrina drown New Orleans (to the consternation of family and friends who wanted me to ‘Get a Life’).
Now it’s BailOuts. One explanation for the stunning Congressional denial of a $15 Billion Dollar BailOut to US AutoMakers, after handing over some $350 Billion or so to Wall Street (dare I say, “Pirates,” without giving up journalistic objectivity?) with virtually no strings attached and very little transparency (can you list the recipients of that money and how much each received?) is BailOut Fatigue. Enough already with the handing out of my and your hard-earned, but apparently easily spent, taxpayer dollars.
If you ask the average man or woman on the street about the history of BailOuts, they will say (if old enough): Chrysler. Interestingly, Congress did not BailOut either Lockheed in 1971 or New York City in 1975, when both needed a helping hand. In 1979, Chrysler sought $1 Billion from the Carter Administration and Congress. Time Magazine recognized Lee Iacocca (soon to be a Household Name) as the Man with the Plan who could save Chrysler, if, and only if, Congress would pony up the Do Re Mi: “Now Chrysler appears to have one hope: to stay solvent in any way possible until lacocca, who is to auto sales what Patton was to tank warfare, can bring forth the cars to save the company” (Time, Aug 20, 1979).
We all know (if you’ve been around for a while or you are a history buff) how that one turned out – Chrysler survived, thrived, paid back the money early, and life went on into the 80’s, 90’s and 00’s. Then, this Fall, Congress, Bernanke, Paulson & Co. went BailOut Bananas, handing out hundreds of Billions, and committing hundreds of Billions if not Trillions more, and scared us all half to death with threats of skies falling and life as we know it ending, if the money was not immediately appropriated and distributed to eager FatCats, with virtually no strings attached or conditions to be fulfilled.
Now, after all that frenzy of giving away of taxpayer money, we have watched US AutoMakers grovel, beg and finally be denied by Congress, although they have apparently succeeded in getting the Lame Duck Administration to soften their hearts and find $15 Billion in still unspent TARP money – conveniently, there just happens to be $15 Billion left unspent out of the first $350 Billion, just laying around (in small, unmarked bills, in a brown paper bag, perhaps?). Are they deserving of even this? Will it just be money thrown into the wind because the US AutoMakers haven’t a prayer of making it without huge systemic changes they are either unable or unwilling to make? Likely, yes and yes.
But, the prospect of exactly what a failure of the US AutoMakers means for our severely crippled economy right now is becoming better appreciated as the job loss numbers and layoffs skyrocket – right in time for Christmas. If you want some idea, go and tour huge vacant industrial plants by the droves in the MidWest; read “When the Cars Go Away,” in the OpEd NYT of Saturday, Dec. 13, 2008, about touring the old Packard Motor Car plant in Detroit, shuttered since the 1956 closing of the company, and still there, crumbling away, all “3.5 million square feet of space in 47 connected buildings” stretching “for almost a mile north to south.” Let the US AutoMakers fail and there may be one of these giant mausoleums rotting away for decades to come right in your town and all across the Rust Belt and beyond.