More and more bailouts! Does this stupidity every stop? Someone, quick, pinch me, this really is not happening right? Come on, this has to be a nightmare! The word of the day kids is “Trillion”, that is “$1,000,000,000,000”. Yep, we are quickly heading to reach eleven of those in debt. That is more than $33,000 per living USA citizen. If you are a family of five, your household debt run up by the government will soon be, over $166,000! Makes you feel warm and fuzzy all over right? NOT!
Since we have a GDP of about $14,000,000,000,000 (14 trillion), that would mean it would take almost the entire GDP to pay off the debt.
Back in September our government approved a $25,000,000,0000 ($25 billion) bailout of the auto industry and now they say it is not enough. GM is burning over $2 billion per month. How do you deal with those kinds of numbers?
How much money does it cost to build an auto manufacture anyways? Those numbers are not millions, but billions! If you want to throw money we do not have around, how about giving $25 billion to Tesla Motors and seeing how an auto manufacture can really fly while making our transportation section no longer dependent on fossil fuels?
http://www.autonews.com/article/20081106/COPY/311069882/-1/ANA03
Let us see here, just this year we have wasted billions in stimulus checks, then close to a trillion dollars to bail out the financial sector, now we are talking billions more for the auto industry, then the airline industry will probably raise their heads again what for more billions and then who? It reminds me of the old Susan Powers diet mantra “Stop the Insanity”! It seems only in the USA do we reward inept businesses who are completely unable to run their businesses in the black with more money to continue their failed business practices…
Seriously, I know there are a lot of jobs at stake, but why bail out companies that have spent the last few years continuing to ignore the market and pump out fossil fuel hunger vehicles? How about putting the money into an drop-in engine, drive train electric conversion company where they produce a drop-in replacement for many of the current vehicle models that will make the hydrogen/electric hybrids? There are a lot of people who would upgrade their current fossil fuel hungry engines with new hydrogen / electric models that could be charged up at home. Just think of what that would do to the oil prices…
The problem is that our government seems to think there is money somewhere when the pockets are already empty just like most people’s gas gauges. How does more money for failed companies who refuse to listen to the market and change, make any sense? Maybe it is time for them to close their doors and make way for new manufactures to step up and take the lead!
Just look at how hard it is to release a new model of a vehicle. With all the regulation and safety concerns, it takes years along with a fortune to produce anything. I am all for safety, but when it takes years to get a vehicle to market in these days, it is time to rethink this to a reasonable level. We need to get this down to a maximum of three to six months for new models to be ready to roll. They people are ready to move into a new world of electric / hydrogen based vehicles but the manufactures are too busy dumping out more fossil fuel based vehicles. Maybe we should just kick those companies to the side and start over.