The spectacle of Wall Street fifth columnist paper pushers in the Administration and a lawyer who’s never even represented a commercial enterprise deciding the fate of American manufacturing speaks for itself, as they say. Along with class condescension and utopian, nebulous green fantasies.
Detroit never really had a chance in the end. The game was and is rigged. ‘America’ as a political construct is a puppet to the remnants of the viral and bloated still financial ‘industry’ with its ‘products.’ Detroit must play by different rules. Even if they knew better, the Administration would still have torecognize another political reality — ‘Americans’ (and especially their so-called political elites) are not only economic illiterates but as we’ve all talked about here before, largely unproductive arbitrageurs.
To paraphrase Trotsky to Obama, ‘You may have no interest in running GM [insert litany of future famous brands soon to carreen into imminent failure here] but GM (or its shards) has an interest in running you.’ 60 days won’t matter much either way. The government will be running things via clumsy macht or the semi-covert technocratese of a bankruptcy proceeding. Here’s a test – when you’re with friends, see which topic sends them into a coma faster, bankruptcy details or probate. On the other hand, one really can’t be sure this crew won’t make things even more ruinous. Many of them were on the case and blew it re Bear Stearns, Lehman, AIG, Merrill, BofA, Citi, yada, yada, yada.
We happen to think the GM issue will be soon a Bear Stearns memory. Larger pot holes loom ahead. As usual, Naked Capitalism sums it up well — Wolfgang Munchau from the Financial Times is particularly gloomy about the global economy, even for him.
While I agree with his concern, that a contraction can slip into a vicious circle, focusing on recapitalization as the primary policy response is wrongheaded. The Swedish in their salvage operation not only took over dud banks and hived off the bad assets, but they restuctured those loans and sin [sic] some cases even extended more credit to borrowers. And bailouts to banks without banking reform is a bad idea (and I see the Geithner talk of new measures as window dressing to appease the public in the hopes of eliciting support for the inevitable next round of rescues).
G-20 will be a yawner. Obama is determined to try and re-inflate the American balloon to its artificial bubble consumption levels and the Germans don’t want to play. We can’t afford the game anyway and the Germans know it. We’re trying to think of when an American president had such a weak hand to play before. We might get some of those fridge magnets to guess the vapidity of the statement of principles. We can only pray some B roll footage of Obama and Michelle cruising through what used to be Londonistan will at least be visually diverting.
In the interim, we continue to muse on a much more pressing matter, something that came up in a conversation with a pundit and convulses the Germans to er, boot: poor Jennifer Anniston forced to break up with John Mayer because of his Twitter addiction. Or the lastest Steele-ism. It’s a toss up.
Anon says
Washington Harbor in Gtown is below water and we recall, back in the day, one of the engineers telling us that it was only a matter of time before something bad and sewage related happend – But it can be a great place at night in the early summer. Until the collective odor of the absurd slickster wannabee whatever scene becomes overwhelming and one wishes for a sewage corrective to the collective perfume stench.
Anon says
The absurd and comically malicous Michael Goldfarb glees that Bibi has layed down a marker re Iran to Obama. We think Obama will sail past and nothing will happen. Any attack on Iran is obviously against US interests (w/ see Cheney’s Abrams is now saying Iranians might enjoy being bombed) and its just a matter of letting the national security establishment play the sane opposition, while offering Bibi rhetorical blandishments.
Bibi overplayed his hand with Clinton too re Rye River and he damaged himself.
Dr Leo Strauss says
re Bibi, one wonders what he is focus group testing now. “It’s 1938” was overplayed and now is meme elevator music. If he was smart, he’d find a way to link it all to Dharfur, green energy and the environment — his cabal would know it is is meaningless window dressing but he’d probably pick up alot of naive useful idiots.
Tehran as tree-killing, starvation-promoting, mosquito-net denying bully (which also happens to want to irradiate and mar the natural beauty of the Med) kind thing. Israeli-macht politik as clean coalish.
Of course, that would treble the Buchanan brigades’ frenzy. So there’s that bonus, too.
Anon says
Leo – so how are the Cherry Blossoms this year in the IC? We think we got a couple of weeks left to check them out – But we recall this to be the best place:
http://www.gazette.net/stories/040407/potonew212837_32330.shtml
Dr Leo Strauss says
The blossoms are just beginning to come out. The Bunker, of course, is in an undisclosed location, but let us just say that ‘we can see them from here’ as it were. We usually try to capture them every year on camera but all the nearby Japanese diplomats and assorted members of that eco-system put us to shame in their devotion and gadget enthusiasm.
Springtime is possibly the one undeniable time this town can be called world-class beautiful. (Parochial denizens aside). Even some of the decaying bridges over the Potomac look resplendent. Summer is a brutal reminder they sited the federal city on a swamp. Winter is a monotony punctuated by terror alerts at flakes as Obama dryly observed. Fall, almost as brief as Spring, offers vistas further south towards Skyline drive.
So one must savor each day as it comes. Great link.
Anon says
So Pat finally got around to flagging Obama going t Notre Dame (maybe he read this blog).
As usual Pat engages in some wishfull thinking and selective outrage – He calls Obama the most pro abortion President ever. Yet, we recall two times seeing his McLaughlin colleague and Eleanore nemesis Monic Crowley stress to her book audience that nixon was pro choice (as was she) and was very much opposed to the anti abortionist within the GOP – Leave aside pro choice Ford and his wife or Bush 41s real feelings (and Babs) – all pro choice in fact. Reagan claimed to be against abortion, but did nothing save appoint Sandy O”Conner and sign the biggest abortion liberalization law when Gov of California. Then Gee Dubs with his political shift from his pro choice congressional run was never convincing.
Ofcourse Pat has no evidence – because its all code to the worldnet types.
Ofcourse Pat was silent when his pro choice GE colleague Tweety got his honor from Fordham
Anon says
Overheard on NPR this morning —
“So what does Obama have to do? Produce a green car with a health care plan in the glove compartment? hmmm?”
“That would be nice …”
Anon says
We certainly know nothin’ of the sweden plan save what Krugman and some others say – But we think Krugman is partly using Sweden as a rhetorical ploy/play because Sweden’s problems were relatively small compared to ours and they were able to sell off some bas assets into a Kudlowian global bubble economy which no longer exists.
That’s why we think Geithner’s bad plan is still the best plan – It’s politically plausible and can be adjusted down the road.