See, I am one of those tree-hugging granola heads who DOES want to see Detroit make some progress about more ecologically sensible energy-efficient product mix in order to get more funds. I also want urban development patterns that just require fewer cars but that is a different problem: the automakers and their well-rewarded unions could certainly build buses as well.
I am also having one of my periodic bouts of needing to feed witless blundering bureaucracies truly astounding mountains of paperwork over amounts of money that would vanish in nanoseconds at bailout rates and I was thinking about the vast disproportion between the paperwork required of me per dollar returned and the free handouts going to the world of banking and finance.
My basic bottom line: just exactly what outcomes are we expecting of all these handouts? "Getting the credit markets" moving" sounds really amorphous and divorced from human indicators such as better public health, improved schools, reasonable public safety, and this especially so when all the bankers are doing is turning around and giving each other more bonuses after screwing up badly enough to need handouts in the first place.
So what performance indicators SHOULD we be rewarding?
DC
On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 8:41 AM, Charles Brown < charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> wrote:
> More billions in search of solution
>
> http://www.freep.com/article/20081126/OPINION01/811260328
> Out Tuesday came the latest government effort to stop the economic
> meltdown, this one putting the nation on the hook for up to $800 billion
> more in an attempt to start credit flowing again. Will it work? Who knows?
>
> Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who had lately seemed to be a man
> lurching from one costly solution to the next, is now counseling patience.
> Let's give it some time, see what happens. Keep the vault closed for a
> while.
>
> Remember when $1 billion was an unfathomable sum? That seems to be pocket
> change in Washington these days as the government and its bank buy up bad
> loans, bail out badly run companies and borrow ever more money in what
> appears to be a frantic attempt to keep a deepening recession from becoming
> a depression. And the almost knee-jerk answer to every mega-billion-dollar
> solution is either "because we can't afford to do nothing" or "too big to
> fail."
>
> (Except, of course, when it comes to the auto industry, where they can hold
> hearings, let huge employers twist in the wind, and insist on a plan for
> long-term prosperity before freeing up loans that amount to a fraction of
> what's going to banks, mortgage companies, insurers, etc.)
>
> Tuesday's moves involved the Federal Reserve buying up to $600 billion in
> mortgage-backed assets and lending up to $200 billion to investors who have
> bought securities backed by consumer loans such as credit cards, auto and
> student loans. The premise continues to be the government taking
> responsibility for shaky debts so that the people who made the loans or back
> the loans can stop worrying and start lending again -- but more smartly now.
>
> It's true that the government, even with a lame-duck president in his final
> weeks of office, should not, cannot, stand idly by waiting for a new
> president while the economy collapses. But is what's gone on so far really a
> comprehensive, long-term plan on the order of that being demanded from
> Detroit, or more like a fire brigade trying to blast water on blazing homes
> one at a time before they bring down the whole neighborhood?
>
> The incomprehensible amount of money that has moved in recent weeks between
> Washington and New York is supposed to be an investment in America's future.
> Why does it feel more like a giant shaky mortgage?
>
>
>
>
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