
This morning
President Bush gave the GM and Chrysler the money they were looking for. Regardless of how
Americans felt about a bailout, or what the US Senate had made clear, President Bush unilaterally gave TARP funds to these two failing auto manufacturers. $17 billion, to be specific. And the oh-so strict requirements placed on the companies? Come back in three months with a solid plan in place for restructuring; oh, and if you get a chance UAW, consider ending the jobs bank program in place now. Awful. There are no strict requirements placed on these companies or the UAW and basically, the White House circumvented Congress and gave the companies what the
US Senate said no to a week ago. This is very frustrating in itself, but add into the fact that part of the provisions in the funding is that the US government can be a stockholder in the companies, effectively nationalizing the domestic auto industry. Fun! Welcome to Socialism 101: first step, nationalize major industries (i.e. banks and auto manufacturers); second step, create a national welfare state by redistributing tax revenues across the board; step three, create an inflated government that touched more aspects of daily life. Now, many said Obama would usher in socialism. Of course people may be right in that aspect, who would have suspected that George Bush would be the first to initialize that process. This is just terrible, and somewhere, guys like Hugo Chavez are laughing hysterically right now.