Anyone else noticed that somehow the banks and brokerages and so on getting all the huge bailouts don’t seem required to come up with a plan for "long term economic viability", but somehow the Big 3 do? Why is that? If it’s true that this financial crisis is such that banks can’t be expected to be viable on their own, why is it that Detroit has to be?
Last Thursday I was at a friend’s place and I did something I rarely do: I watched the 24 hour news shows. They were covering the failure of Congress to come up with a bridge loan for the auto companies and what struck me was the sense of anger and hostility that almost all of the talking heads displayed. They were skeptical and dismissive of Detroit’s request for help, and it showed in the tone of their voice. I found it very odd: Detroit was asking for 25 billion, not 700 billion, and yet the media was far more hostile to them than they had been to the financial sector when Paulson came begging for 28X as much money.
This despite the fact that letting the big 3 go under would cost about 3 million jobs, and probably doom the US to a depression. Even Obama’s plan for new jobs is only 2.5 million jobs in 2 years, and that assumes no other job losses.
I think the hostility probably arises because the media is so isolated from blue collar workers and from the sorts of people who buy American cars. White collar to the tips of their manicured fingernails, few reporters have worked in blue collar jobs; associate with blue collar people or have anything in common with them. On the other hand, with the core of the broadcast political media living in Washington and New York they’re not just familiar with, but interbred with America’s financial elite.
Such built in bias is the only way I can explain this blase attitude towards what would be an economic apocalypse for America: the loss of a major export sector, 3 million jobs and the devastation of entire state economies, with no state in the union spared the fallout when the dealer networks collapse.
I can think of nothing more likely to ensure that this turns into a Great Depression than letting the car companies go under. So I think the government had better figure out how to make them viable, even if it costs a couple hundred billion or so. Given that the government has committed 7.7 trillion dollars to the financial sector this is literally peanuts. But the consequences of failing to do so will smash through the real economy.
Oh, and as a special message to the broadcast media’s talking heads: boys and girls, go ask your advertising departments how much advertising comes from auto companies, especially from the local stations who buy your network’s shows. Then take a long look at your throats in the mirror, because it’s those throats you’re cutting with your hostility to helping out ordinary blue collar Americans rather than your white collar friends.
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Dead on Ian.
answer is plain as the nose on that face there
Bush lied about jobs. He’s no doubt lying about the bailout. We can only hope that Bush doesn’t screw up so badly this time that Obama can’t fix things.
I think the hostility probably arises because the media is so isolated from blue collar workers and from the sorts of people who buy American cars.
And *make* American cars.
And who actually *pay* income taxes, so that those high-priced talking-heads don’t have to.
Everyone needs to think long and hard about the implications of a foreign power buying up a distressed automaker with their hordes of U.S. dollars. Having an American owned manufacturing base (even if it is “publicly owned” or “nationalized”) is absolutely vital for national security.
In WWII, existing factories and assembly lines were retooled for war purposes. If we were to loose the factories, tools, and expertise needed to manufacture heavy equipment, then we’ll be in it deep.
My name is Jane and I made Ian watch cable TV.
Ian – I do think that is a real problem – in 1975, I got a job typing such arcane information as orange juice futures and dressed chickens for a newspaper in Upstate NY. I worked alongside the ‘copy desk’, which was still headed up by a creature with the title of ’slot man’. He offered me a job after a couple of weeks editing copy on weekends. He’d worked his way up to this from a job as a pressman. Half the people in the newsroom at that time did not have college degrees – they’d worked their way up. I don’t know if there is anyone in MSM now who has ever worked a blue collar job, has had someone in their family who was blue collar or has had any contact with industrial workers. People now go to ‘journalism schools’ to supposedly learn how to do this stuff, but it seems now that they know less about doing the real job of journalism and more about stenography. Back when I was working for ‘the slot man’ – those guys would have been called ‘flacks’…and despised.
your hypothesis is probably right ian but i can’t help but think much of the bias comes from republican talking points that simply trickle down and out every day from rove and cheney to limbaugh and hannity and are simply adopted as right on the basis of party affiliation.
Good Morning Ian and Firedogs,
our Teddy Partridge once commented (and I wont do it justice)that plenty of these folks had moved up from lower middle class/ middle class roots and they were easily set off and threatened – as if somehow the mere mention of working class would send them tumbling back down in to the world of public schools and coupon clipping -
Maybe we really DO worship money. (More than our cars.) Tax breaks for companies that send manufacturing jobs overseas certainly indicates a deep comtempt for labor of any kind. Maybe this IS who we have become.
Bingo. Add electronics to that, too.
mr cbl has been shouting this very point from the rooftops since ‘84
Re that $7.7 trillion, the Fed announced today another loan facility this one for $200 billion to try to free up the consumer credit market. So we are now up to $7.9 trillion and counting.
Some of this is cultural too – my father used to talk about going to the synagogue when he was a kid in New York (ok, this was the 20s and 30s) and the junk dealers, and machinists, and sewing factory folks coming in late from work on Friday and stopping to wash their hands when they came in, with greasy caps and so on (no yarmulkes for them). All of them aspired to have their kids go to school ‘to be somebody’. When I was growing up in the 50s and 60s, in our little schule in Upstate NY, we had some farmers, a ‘metals dealer’ (heh, same guy was the junk dealer from the 30s), and a machine shop owner. None of their kids went into the same business/trade that their fathers did — all of them went to college(and one of them ended up as a Hollywood writer and producer for Murphy Brown as I recall). But they were taught from the ground up to despise what their parents and grandparents did – having dirty hands was not something they were taught to aspire to. Which is understandable but dumb because now, we need technically trained people, machinists, etc. like crazy, but everyone’s been taught that ‘the trades’ are not something to go after and for kids who are not classroom inclined, they grow up to feel they are failures.
First off, if you have a anchor or regular slot on TV, you are making way into the 6 figures, as do their producers.
that said, it is also a bigger triple play: the anti-blue-collar bias and the villagerness of NYC, PLUS the fact that they have no idea what is going on in the financial world. They know there was a housing bubble and the repeat the concept that people who couldnt afford houses were given mortgages to buy them, but they do NOT understand credit default swaps, slicing/dicing and resale of mortgage and debt components.
But the wealth and celebrity component caps it off.
Smart and tenacious I knew, but cruel Jane? I didn’t know you had it in you ; )
Shame on you! Go stand in the corner.
OT
For you of little faith and for others wondering in these troubled times what to give thanks for on Thursday, I give you this from the New York Post’s page six:
The Chinese will still advertise
I think that is most of it. Media hacks repeat the Conventional Wisdom and most of that CW comes from right wing talking points. Since Republicans are virulently anti-union and dismissive in general of the real economy, this becomes the CW and it is what the media repeat.
I would point out too that the corporations which own the media look on workers as the enemy in their own operations so it is not difficult to extend and generalize that dislike.
Saw that at Huff Post and smiled. I am not a nice person. :)
That is really mean.
I cannot even stand Sunday Morning broadcast TV for more than 15 minutes.
Fot that matter, even NPR’s copy on the auto bailout raises my blood pressure.
I say this as someone who has never purchased an American car in my adult life.
Rank and file Americans lost interest in government primarily because they feel they cannot influence the course of events. The financial industry (I use the word “industry” in its loosest sense) gets several blank checks, continues to pay the same management large salaries and parties on. Outrage is no where to be seen.
The auto industry, on the other hand, produces something. We need its tools and capacity for a variety of reasons, yet they must justify a government investment. Perhaps we are manic depressive and want the depression that licks at our heels.
We the people have lost control. Maybe we never had control, but we had legislators who respected the trust we placed in them. That’s gone. The question remains. Can we get control back?
That’s what I’m worried about too.
Take a look on Kucinich’s take on this:
http://kucinich.us/index.php?o…..8;Itemid=1
He’s on fire. One of the only congressmen who DIDN’T vote for the bailout…as we asked them not to do.
Ironically i didn’t got into the papermaking trade like my Dad works in. But, i consider working in a pharmacy as much of one. There’s also the fact that of all my coworkers i’m also the most mechanically inclined of the 7 of us back there. I doubt i could do the factory trade, but this is something i consider challenging. I just don’t get my hands dirty on it. I also knew pretty early on that i didn’t have the temperament to work in a mill or a factory. So i went into something i could do.
The media(which i had considered working in, then turned away in disgust), has completely forgotten its roots. I really can’t, as my family is a mix of factory workers and farmers. With the latest generation in a myriad mix of blue collar and white collar jobs on both sides.
Two days in a row Ian, I have to say I think you’re right on the money.
The problems run very deep and it’s going to take more than an Obama in the White House (even if he was adding genuine progressives to his cabinet) to fix what’s taken 30 years or more to break.
A few years ago at a Club Med I met a bimbo who had taken a journamalism degree at USC. She was very pleasant, and had nice teeth, but was totally ignorant. Did the weather report for a local station as I recall.
The Reagan administration succeeded in co-opting the press to be an unofficial organ of government. Journalism school is the entree. It helps to have connections, which is how Jonah and Bill and Tucker got their gigs. They have assimilated the ethos of the DC social elite, that they can no longer distinguish the real world from their high-school society. The Obama administration is going to come as a huge shock to them, because their status as king and queen-makers has been undercut by his election, for which he owes them nothing. The other thing: from what we’ve seen so far, success in the New Washington is going to depend on what you can do, not who you are. This will be the biggest shock of all.
I’m saving some popcorn for the day Gibbs takes one of them down in public.
No screw up. This was planned. First the coup, then the first “shock” – 9/11, Now, the economic “shock”. It’s all for the “Masters of the Universe”. I hope they like it on Mars…I hear NASA has found some water there.
Your remarks about the media’s bias against the blue collar worker, which they are now euphemizing as “working class”, is highlighted in the NYT feature on 11/22/08, “New Economic Fears Arise in Michigan”.
They interviewed a B&B owner, and a construction administrator who owns a home on six acres. A photo of her rather up-scale living room is featured in the article. She has been looking for job for more than a year, but admits she is far from destitute.
There is simply no room in the media for features about the truly destitute who have lost jobs and homes and are living with relatives or in their cars.
It seems as if major media are only trying to arouse sympathy for people who are most like whom they view as their audience. And that is why the lowest income group is rarely mentioned.
Who do you suppose she voted for? Didn’t she claim if McCain won the nomination she’d campaign for Hillary? Perhaps more importantly, did she manage to vote in the right precinct this time?
My Congressperson Carol Shea Porter, that wonderful woman, did not vote for the golden parachute either…. and that was one of the main reasons she was reelected. If only there were more Democrats with the gumption to fight the bushies and their lying evil thieving ways.
Now Jane, she is obviously one tough lady, we need her fighting for what is right.
The lighting under bridges is not that good for shooting video.
It’s about busting the unions.
Prediction: congress & Obama will accept no auto industry bailout unless it includes busting UAW contract.
Ding.
I hope we’re not bailing out NASCAR with that money. Al those cars going around in circles, wasting gas…
If i heard correctly, the Big 2.5 CEOs were also willing to take major paycuts until they could get their companies feet back on the ground again. They’re willing to make concessions, and bow to the oversight a helluva lot more than the banking institutions which are getting yet more money thrown at them as of today. It wouldn’t even take a fraction of what they’re throwing at Wall Street to help Detroit get back up again, and NOW they want even more concessions?
They all screwed up and i’m pretty sure the people who need to know among teh Big 3 know it well. Their fault and i’m sure there are ways to penalize them without completely wiping out what’s left of the US manufacturing base. I wont’ even start in on the fact that Michigan’s one of the last states with a fairly strong Union base because of the Big 2.5.
Where are those military units located that are for population control?
Won’t be needed. Population has been cowed. Besides, they just let us vote and the voters will give Obama many Friedman units.
I’m off again. BBL.
This no doubt explains Obama’s harsh treatment of Joe Lieberman for his piss poor performance chairing the Homeland Security committee.
I noticed that some “pundit” said that union workers are making $74 per hour…oh, my, my…this is exactly the kind of anti-union propaganda that is driving this thing. The powers that be want to make sure that auto industry workers get back in their place and make minimum wage ASAP..it is obvious that the heads of the Big 3 are not hurting financially. All of this is a kind of Reaganian propaganda, last ditch neocon effort to destroy the middle class….i.e., BS.
Jane, you’re a cruel taskmaster (*g*)
Bob in HI
Not to mention Lieberman’s stellar performance regarding Katrina.
So what can we do about it?
Seriously, waiting for Obama to solve all our problems isn’t a viable option even if all our projected hopes were being manifested in him.
What can we personally do to help?
This is a take on what the media is saying vs. reality
http://mediamatters.org/
The media have become used to spouting diametrically opposed ideas. Bush stole the 2000 election but that never stopped them from reporting his “policy” of bringing democracy to the Mideast. They would castigate China for its human rights record without blinking at our own use of torture. There is nothing unusual in this. I remember watching cable news and counting how many times in a single minute the media got something wrong or did something like the examples above.
Franken-Coleman Recount, 11/24/08: Exponential Challenges and Ballot Crazines
PWs up
BTW…did anybody watch W’s talk to the troops in Kentucky about an hour ago? Tooooo…funnny!!! At the end (I hope somebody Tivoed it)…George turned around to shake the hands of the troops behind him…two women were behind him…one shook his hand and said something and the other one cringed away from him, like don’t touch me, then W pushed his way between them for a photo-op…the one on the right was clearly disgusted to be shoulder to shoulder with him…OMG…the looks were priceless.
The issue with the Big 3 carmakers is a bad business model (they make lousy cars). Even without the subprime-triggered crisis, they would still be losing market share and money because of a broken business model.
Admittedly, this is a domestic political issue in the US due to the prospect of people losing their jobs. But would the US bail out Toyota if the latter was also in a similar situation – I don’t think so.
Nonetheless, I think Obama is making a mistake pushing for the bail out of GM, Ford and Chrysler. Doing so will be rewarding poor performance.
I agree with those who propose to let the Big 3 file for Chapter 11 and go through the difficult but necessary steps to rehabilitate themselves and become truly competitive. Harley-Davidson’s turnaround success story was not because of government support. Rather, it was the result of a deep internal corporate soul-searching that led to a firm resolve to reclaim lost glory.
Unless the Big 3 fix their broken business model, a bailout is just throwing good money after bad. I am rooting for them to succeed under Chapter 11, so that they can give the Japanese carmakers a run for their money and the car buyers will ultimately benefit from better cars.
I have already cited the turnaround success story of Harley-Davidson. Let me add another one.
In the late ’80s, the global electronics (specifically, semiconductor) industry was dominated by Japanese companies. In terms of market share. NEC, Hitachi and Toshiba comprised the top 3. Only three American companies were found in the top 10 – Texas Instrument, Motorola and Intel. The rest were Japanese or European (Philips).
Intel is fortunate to have a golden product portfolio of microprocessors. On the other hand, TI and Moto realized that for them to remain in the top 10, they had to make drastic improvements in quality and cost. TI strengthened its enterprise systems and partnerships with her vendors. Motorola focused on quality improvements and leadtime reduction.
Both American companies rose to the challenge of the Japanese dominance in their industry. They made great strides in quality – Motorola was the first winner of the prestigious Malcom Baldridge Quality Award (twice actually, in 1987 & 2002); TI won in 1992. Their programs also resulted to better on time delivery – a must in a very competitive market with extremely short product life cycles.
By the middle of the ’90s, the top 6 semiconductor companies in the world were three Japanese, Intel, TI and Moto – not necessarily in that order. Except for Intel who became numero uno because of the success of Pentium, the rankings from 2-6 often changed and were mainly due only to forex conversion. In short, the two American companies gave the Japanese a run for their money.
TI and Moto succeeded because they worked on their weaknesses, had a clear plan and strong desire to compete and fight for market domination. They did not ask for any government bailout or funding.
In the case of the Big 3, US House speaker Nancy Pelosi put it very succintly: “Until they show the plan, we cannot show them the money.” At this point, my stand remains – a bailout is throwing good money after bad, given the past financial performance of the Big 3 and lack of strategic initiatives they are offering for the future.
Chapter 11 will take away the crutches and force the Big 3 to compete for survival and eventually, dominance – if they really want to fight.
Well…this just about explains it:
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/11/25/cnn-labor/
Bullseye, Ian, thanks.
digg
Actually, yes. Why is the media always so intolerable? They ask when politicians will stop bailing out banks. For the auto industry it seems like a case of “we have no money. At least no money for you (Campaign contributors and BFFs are the exception I supppose.)
Apparently there have been bailouts galore since BushI, and Clinton, according to Kevin Phillips.
Actually I thought most reporters are blue collar. Local ones at least.
FWI, as far as the big dailies are concerned, I would offer a slightly different take. Their shrinking readership has so swallowed the anti-union meme that they get attacked when they support the Big 3. Milwaukee is really dependent on the auto industry, but the reader comments in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel are 100 to 1 against helping out the Big 2.5.
Re my #13, the Fed also announced a program to buy up debt from Fannie and Freddie to the tune of $600 billion so that $7.7 trillion > $7.9 trillion > $8.5 trillion is what the government has laid out for the meltdown. My own view is that Paulson and Bernanke are out to equal the entire national debt before they leave.
It’s really sad. But I think there are tons of working poor out there who feel that the auto workers are overpaid. They don’t think their own pay and compensation might be substandard. I think a compensation/wage survey is in order. Hell lets compare it over the past 30 years, with inflation and what not included.
Touche! Forgot about Joe. But I still think the real action will be in the administration, and that there will be a sea-change.
Ah, no one’s taken you up on your offer to discuss alternatives to venting in comments sections of progressive blogs. First you have to answer “Why does your question fall on deaf ears?” You may as well ask why people wouldn’t commit to not going to movies to support the writers’ strike. We the people can have tremendous power provided we organize on the internet and do something to measure the numbers. Suppose we decide to make a statement on single payer health care. How do we count supporters? Not go to the movies, not buy stuff, hold meetings in towns and cities across the nation? Signing on line petitions doesn’t do it because the powers that be figure the totals are rigged and it doesn’t give us an idea of the numbers who stand ready to try to do something. I have no idea what can be done. Being technologically challenged, I don’t know what’s possible. I agree, it’s something to discuss.
No, the U.S. will not bail out Toyota, the Japanese government has been doing that for years, they will not let Japanese companies go under.