BUSH SAYS: "OK TO SAVE WHITE COLLAR JOBS………..FORGET BLUE COLLAR"

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/81568

As has been properly stated by the President-Elect Barack Obama, "In America, there is only one president at a time."

Obama has been very clear about this and he continues to go out of his way to stay out of the public eye. This should allow President Bush and company, the freedom to properly deal with the US financial crisis until it is officially the responsibility of the Obama administration on January 21st, 2009

Unfortunately, my current question, along with millions of other Americans is, "Who the hell is in charge of this mess today?"

More than a month has past and with nearly $300 billion committed in the initial bail-out effort, and many of the nation´s financial arteries still seem nearly as clogged as they were before. Some of them, in fact, appear to be getting worse.

Loans are still scarce, and for many people, getting scarcer.

Home mortgage rates have barely eased. While solid corporations can now borrow money again for those crucial short-term, day-to-day bills, the other trickier forms of financing remain elusive. Hard-pressed companies are still virtually shut out of the capital markets.

The financial blockages, real and feared, were on display during the recent spasmodic weeks on Wall Street. After one week, with three days of losses, each worse than the one before, stocks tumbled to their lowest level since 2003, and then bolted higher in the final hours.

During this period, President Bush showed little or no interest in dealing with these issues while in the final hours of his last watch.

BAIL-OUT FIASCO:

At first, the White House had referred to this "bailout thing" as a "credit market issue". Then it became the "banking crisis issue", and now it has morphed into the "economic crisis issue".

The only thing that has started to become clear is that regarding a possible auto industry bail-out that would keep 3 million Americans working, the Democrats are pushing hard for it while the White House is pushing back.

President Bush has made it very clear that he and his administration are only concerned about "white-collar" workers, not "blue-collar" workers.

The incompetence that has been shown for the past eight years of Bush politics just continues to rear up its ugly head in Bush´s final days and his "supposedly dealing with the worst economic crisis in US history".

Bush´s Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson is currently not willing to consider helping the auto industry with a bail-out loan that will save 3 million jobs that are attached to that industry. Not to mention the effect that letting the US auto industry die would have on the loss of those tax revenues and the effect and tax-payer cost of having 3 million people receiving unemployment benefits and on food stamps. (FYI: The taxable wages for those 3 million jobs is valued at $150 Billion dollars per year. That´s a lot of tax dollars, not to mention what it´s worth to America´s economy.)

Secretary Paulson "is" willing however, to stretch the meaning of the term "bank" by extending bail-out protection to entities such as American Express Corporation.

Fundamentally, he and the Bush Administration see government as only saving; "The institutions that deal in money, but nothing that might keep the middle-class worker out of the unemployment lines or from being put on food stamps".

As expected and as an example, conservative opinion writers such as Charles Krauthammer, of the Washington Post, say that the auto manufacturers problems are their own fault and giving them a bail-out would mean "nationalizing" the US auto industry and taking them over. (And of course, it wasn´t the fault of the Financial, Banking and Mortgage Industries for "their" problems....yeah right!)

Krauthammer´s statement is a major misstatement, but he also says that if the taxpayers bail out Detroit, "Liberals have always wanted the auto companies to produce the kind of cars they insist everyone "should drive": i.e: small, light, green and cute. [and by nationalizing] They would have the power to do it.

He goes on to say: "In World War II, government had the auto companies turning out tanks. Now they would be made to turn out hybrids. The difference is that, in the middle of a world war, tanks have a buyer. Who will hybrids? One of the reasons Detroit is in such difficulty is that consumers have been resisting the smaller, less powerful, less safe cars forced on the industry by fuel-efficiency mandates. Now Detroit would be forced to make even more of them."

Comments like this really make me wonder how these people can still make a living putting out garbage like this.

Yes, Detroit was late in producing their hybrids, but: "Who will buy the hybrids?????"

Just ask Toyota and Honda why they currently can´t make enough hybrids.......

It´s because, "They sell so fast, that they can´t keep them on the sales lots".

Yes, we could all stand around, waging our fingers and saying; "shame on you" to all of the; auto, financial, bank, credit and mortgage industries for getting themselves into trouble, but what good would that accomplish?

Instead, it is appropriate that the requirements for receiving any tax-payer bail-outs should have stipulations attached, but not corporate "nationalization"!

One should probably be to stipulate that all of the companies in the bail-outs must replace their top management that had made the decisions that caused the problems.

It should also require that many of the auto manufacturer´s Union agreements would need to be reviewed and brought up to 21st century standards.

But saving the major financial, credit and mortgage market players, while ignoring the few large US manufactures, including autos, that are still left in the country, is not the answer. The US auto industry and all of these other organizations, and their workers, are "all very critical" to the US economy.

The issues between the conservatives and those of us to the "left of center" is very clear, and yet we are still very far apart.

Philosophically, the conservative Bush administration sees the $700 billion rescue as an emergency measure to save the financial sector on the grounds that finance is a "needed utility". No responsible government would let the America´s electric companies go under and leave the country without power. By the same token, government must save the financial sector lest credit will dry up and strangle the rest of the economy.

On the other side, the Democrats see that both the financial sector and the manufacturing / working-class sector need to be dealt with, in order for the economy to come to a reasonable balance. Basic economics dictate that if there is no manufacturing, having credit to offer the market place or the consumers is virtually irrelevant.

In other words: "If you close a factory that is building a product, then there are no workers being paid. Therefore, there is not only a lack of product to sell, but there is no factory or working consumers that need any loan credit or the need to borrow money from the financial community."

(I seem to have remembered this concept from my Econ 101 Class, from years ago, while attending College. Perhaps Mr. Krauthammer needs an economics refresher course….?)

THE FINAL GOAL?

Is the current administration´s final goal to put millions of Americans out of work, to lose those auto-industry tax revenues and for the United States to step away from manufacturing automobiles? If so, they should apparently continue heading in their current direction.

However, I would suggest that being that this was an industry that was invented in America and employs millions of Americans, the appropriate approach would be, during this crisis, to support both the financial and the manufacturing sides of the equation.

"Now is not the time to throw the baby out with the bath water."

If only January 21 could get here sooner.