What will it be like 5 years from now if the US auto industry goes down and the Unions become impotent?
What will the effect on the rest of this country be?

Will we have lower wages?

Will we still have an average 40 hour work week?

Will we still have overtime wages paid after working 40 hours a week?

Will there be such a thing as a paid vacations and paid holiday’s?

Will we still have OSHA?

Will we get the new green laws that planet earth needs so badly?

Will there be a snow ball effect and other large corporations do away with good wages and benefits?

Will more companies employ people from those temp worker agencies to avoid giving benefits?

We have just elected many public officials that ran on health care and green clean renewable energy agendas. Just before this all falls into place we are left with a rushed public debt of 700 billion in addition to the huge military debt of war and incompetence of the past 8 years from the Bush administration. Was Bush’s presidency a fluke, he just was not smart or did the past 8 years play out as planned? During his lamb duck season he is now writing laws to hurt and stall our plans and progress. Now we have a rushed decision to make to help the auto industry. Doesn’t it seem strange that GM might go bankrupt so soon before we get national health care, which is one of the excuses they use of needing money. And the other is retirement payments. Looking out 5 years from now, would GM be sitting pretty with National health care? Where were they on this issue, for or against it? This may be their only time they can claim health care as an excuse for bankruptcy. Is that why it is so dire to have help now BEFORE Obama takes the office of Presidency?

Rahm Emanuel has just challenged american business to support universal health care. I challenge Rahm Emanuel to really make a difference and support a single-payer system. He knows that this is what is needed, especially now. Further, Hillary should nix the State gig, stay in the senate, and work with Uncle Teddy on health care. That is where she is needed. Want to free up american business–and american citizens–with one stroke of the pen? Single payer is needed. Use this dire emergency to push it through.

I’ll just pass over briefly that the kind of solution that Glantz likes is one that while it would wreak havoc and misery on millions is a golden opportunity to hedge funds which love to pick over the pieces of large companies and sell them off at a profit. So thank goodness he can be objective about all this and has no horse in this race.

That said, I think that the US auto indutry sucks. It has sucked for decades. And we don’t need Glantz telling us that. But it is precisely financial analysts like him who have pushed GM executives into making stupid short term decisions over longer term more sustainable more responsible growth. These analysts rewarded GM with buy recommendations for building SUVs and gas guzzlers because GM could make more profit per unit on these. They didn’t say GM is making a mistake here and should be pushing for greener more fuel efficient cars or that it should be lobbying for universal healthcare to ease its financial burdens. Nope, but now it is all about cutting up all the automakers, trashing the contracts, and selling the parts to the Japanese. Gee, I never saw that coming.

The truth is at the moment I don’t care if GM and Ford suck. As I said, they have been for a long time now. What I am interested in is their impact on the larger economy. And yes, keeping them afloat is a big jobs program. So what? And if we can use this moment and the clout it gives us to send them into more responsible directions, fine. But they are only one piece of the puzzle. Glantz is correct that if autoworkers produce the cars there needs to be people out there with money to buy them and there have to be banks to lend them money.

Now this is the curious thing. People like Glantz have no problem letting the American auto industry fail. But that industry was doing OK until it got hit by first the spike in oil prices and then by the credit crunch. I would argue it should have seen both of these but it was responsible for neither. Both were in fact products of financial markets. If you have been around here any time at all you know I have written at length about excessive speculation in oil markets (item 365 of my scandals list) and the housing and financial crises (item 87). What I find so jarring about analysts like Glantz is that they have no problem seeing the collapse of parts of the real economy but when it comes to the paper economy, the banks and financial institutions which created this mess which both we and GM are suffering from, not so much.

So while it is interesting to know what these analysts are thinking, it is important to realize
1) their view is limited
2) they have major conflicts of interest
3) they are engaged in a lot of CYA right now
4) it would be lunacy to follow their advice without understanding 1-3.

If Congress was serious about saving the big 3, they’d take away the tax breaks for the foreign auto manufacturing plants in the USA. Impose tariffs. Encourage unionization of US workers in the foreign plants in the southern states (Jimmy Carter, a southern pres. hated the unions and began the decimation of unions). Passage of Universal healthcare would greatly enhance american companies competitiveness with foreign companies.

They won’t do this due to the purchase of US treasuries by the same foreign entities who flood US markets with foreign goods. It’s a one-way flood of foreign goods onto US soil. 70% of US treasuries are held by foreign governments; #1 China, #2 Japan.

Regardless, I tend to trust their opinion on issues of auto safety, reliability, and over all quality.