Buy a Detroit lemon

Detroit Chiefs Plead for Aid

The heads of the Big Three automakers of Detroit pleaded on Tuesday for emergency government aid to stave off potential collapse, but after four hours of testimony, it appeared they had not persuaded enough lawmakers to move quickly on a bailout.

Senate Democratic leaders said they had not been able to muster the support for legislation that would provide $25 billion to the troubled auto industry from the Treasury Department’s $700 billion economic rescue fund.
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The cause of their misfortunes was not management mistakes, they said, but the weak economy and the inability of consumers to obtain credit to buy cars.

The executives from General Motors, Ford Motor and Chrysler seemed stunned by the general lack of confidence that lawmakers showed in their companies.

Really Detroit? Stunned? You've been hemmoraging money for years, your sales have been slipping for years, you had no business plan beyond "sell huge cars", you stood in the way of making changes towards fuel efficiency standards that would have helped you, and you've openly scoffed at and derided the one market that could save you right now: hybrids. It's all just a credit problem?

Maybe it's the fact that you're all asking for $25 billion and the combined value of your entire companies isn't even $10 billion. How exactly does bailing you out sound like a smart prospect when you're asking for more than double the entire worth of your companies in bailout money? But they swear if you give them the money they can retool and totally won't be some unsustainable zombie company that can only survive through massive government bailouts.

There is a plan to take $25 billion from the $700 billion clusterfuck and give it to Detroit, but Hank Paulson is hugging that money tight and squeezed out a yelping "Nooooooo!". Apparently he has further plans to flush it down a large toilet. But I bet they'll get their money, mostly because they could shitcan 3 million jobs. Then they get to do all the shit they should have done a decade ago on the taxpayer dime. But hey, I totally bet they won't try and stand in the way when CAFE standards are raised or hybrid mandates are made. Honest.