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Sunday, December 21, 2008

Government Helps Those Who Won't Help Themselves

This is the stupidity that government intervention in markets engenders: Cerberus Capital Management LP, which owns Chrysler, is refusing to put more money into its failing company because competitors Ford and GM are not taking similar measures to save their rotting empires. This is an absurdity, and our tax dollars should have no part of it. Here's a snippet from CBS News:
Congress urged Cerberus to infuse Chrysler with capital earlier this month, but the company rejected the plea, noting that Ford and GM were not being asked to inject more capital into their flailing operations, the Journal reported.
Here's a simple question from a simple man: If the Big Three's own investors are refusing to put more money into their operations, why should the government contemplate putting taxpayer money into it?

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/12/18/business/main4675171.shtml?tag=topStory;topStoryHeadline

8 comments:

Ben Sutherland said...

Absolutely, Silverfiddle. You are right. The absurdity of this bailout and the ways that those with power and wealth use both to look after one another at the expense of the rest of us is really kind of flabbergasting.

This is exactly why Milton Friedman favored free markets, actually. Because he knew that as soon as government gets involved, it tends to favor those who have the most powerful connections. And he was right.

Your question is exactly the question that the President should be asking himself, right now, if he wasn't so busy ingratiating himself to the Washington intelligencia and powers that be.

The whole thing is so absurd it makes me sick.

And, somehow, we still look to such for how America and our lives should be run.

Maybe what people need to do is develop more confidence in their ability to be responsible for their own live and to, thus, look to Washington to follow their lead rather than looking to follow the clearly incompetent lead of those in Washington.

Canadian Pragmatist said...

If you're blaming the president (and I know that the house/senate or whatever is majority democratic), but if you're going to blame a republican president, don't you also have to blame republicanism?

Afterall, politics isn't about theory, but practice. A lot of people say that socialism is great... in theory, but where ever it's been practiced, they couldn't even produce toilet paper; it was a disaster.

Don't you think that it's a little bit too sly to shovel off responsbility for the failing of a republican president on liberal ideas that he supposedly took as his own.

All I'm saying is that if you really look at the past 8 years, honestly, and unbiasedly (or as unbiased as possible) you'd have to conclude that republicans and therefore republicanism has failed the USA and in turn (because the USA is such a huge economic force, etc...) the whole world?

Instead of preaching that the country needs to become more conservative, why don't you say that the country has to solve its problem using the best policies available, be they conservative or liberal?

It just seems like the worst of what is called "politics" (sly tactics, avoiding responsibility, etc...) is taking place on this blog as much as in congress.

Finntann said...

Might I point out to you that the Republican party and Democratic Party in the United States represent Social Liberalism and Conservatism respectively, and that both parties advocate Republicanism. The United States after all is a Federal Constitutional Republic, and neither party is in anyway opposed to that philosophy.

That said, in any party some politicians represent the central political philosophy better than others, there are conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans. To indict an entire political philosophy based on the great actions or failings of one man is naive at best, at worst it is a cheap attempt at the furtherance of one's own political agenda.

I suggest you follow your own advice of letting the best policies prevail and attempt to outline your political philosophy based on it's merits as opposed to the failings or shortcomings of one man.

Before consigning the party of Lincoln, Roosevelt (Teddy), Eisenhower, or Reagan to the scrap heap, might I point out that your endeared Democratic party produced such notables as Buchanan, Johnson, and Carter, and even that darling of the dems JFK started the Vietnam War.

On that subject, what is the greatest failing of George Bush that you seem to think part and parcel of the Republican Party? The Iraq War? Which is what most seem to despise him and the Republican Party for. Should I point out that since the US Civil War (Which can be attributed to Buchanan)and the formation of the Republican Party in the United States that pretty much all the wars we have been involved in have started with a Democrat: Spanish-American War (McKinley), WWI(Wilson), WWII (Frankin Roosevelt), Cold War(Truman), Korean War(Truman), & Vietnam (Kennedy), Kosovo (Clinton). What have the warmongering Republicans brought you? Grenada (Reagan), Panama (Bush I), Kuwait (Bush I), and Iraq (Bush II)?

If you want to discuss history, honestly and unabashedly... I think you really ought to consider looking at more than eight years.

And remember that catchy Democratic Party catchphrase from the late 1840's of "Fifty-Four Forty or Fight" (Polk).

Cheers!

~Finntann~

Finntann said...

Oh, and P.S if you are really interested in whose policies are whose... try tracing back the policy origin of sub-prime mortgages, I think you'll find it doesn't lead back to Republicans.

Silverfiddle said...

President Bush and the Republicans in congress failed us by abandoning conservative ideas.

As Fintann pointed out, Republicans are supposed to stand for conservative values and Democrats for liberal ones, but in the actual political arena those pure ideals get muddied.

A corollary: Don't confuse liberalism with Democratism and don't confuse conservatism with Republicanism.

All the more reason to limit government. I don't want a Republican jacking with our economy any more that I want a Dem doing it. If you're getting screwed, it really doesn't matter whose doing the screwing...

Canadian Pragmatist said...

I don't know what republicanism means. I'm not American, so these distinctions are non-sensical to me.

My only point was that if a Democrat like Carter fucks up, I'm not going to say that he didn't represent real liberal values, but that he fucked up, and lets give the other side a chance.

You seem to be saying that Bush fucked up, but so what he wasn't a real republican/conservative/whatever, and you still blame liberal ideas for his fuck ups. How is this naive, or cheap? Take responsibility for your party which you problably voted for to further your political philosophies. That they didn't do what you wanted them to do is not an honest way to shake off responsibility.

Silverfiddle said...

They didn't follow conservative principles.

Russell said...

chicken little said: "I don't know what republicanism means. I'm not American, so these distinctions are non-sensical to me."

and yet you post about it as if you know something. you know, it's ok to keep your mouth shut about subjects on which you know little. some would call that wise.

that fact that bush is a republican does not mean that he is a conservative. note that colin powell, nominally a republican, voted for the most liberal major-party presidential candidate in the history of american politics.

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