There is only one car among the Big Three worth saving...the hydrogen fuel cell powered Sequoia SUV.

I would shut down all of Detroit except for the factory that makes Sequoia hydrogen cars.

Then I would regrow the industry with seed capital money based on that single car.

They took jobs away from hard working Americans for the sake of profit. Now they want those same hard working tax paying Americans to bail them out. Okay bring the factories and jobs back to American workers that bet their life on the jobs you offered. Bail out, sure but only if it puts Americans back to work. You gave away our jobs and forced us into relying on credit all the while selling fuel guzzeling high profit vehicles at an enormous profit. As U.S. Americans are we really that gullible? Third grade math will tell you if we don't have jobs, we cannot pay our debts. If the big three can't sell over priced gas guzzelers than they are out of a job!

Says!....Make the very successful, profitable oil companies bail out the auto industry.  Since they killed their business model trying to sell gas guzzlers...to benefit their oil company board room mates and fellow investors.

He didn't say how this could be done.

But we have an answer oft repeated on this blog.  Divert the 18 billion per year in subsidies to oil companies to contracts with the auto makers to produce 1 million economy plugin hybrids per year for government use.

That's 18k per car, that way consumers could afford them too.  And auto companies would get the steady financial infusion they need year after year.  Taxpayers would be even.

Majic green job revival acomplished!  At least the automyive end of it.

Diverting coal, nuclear and fuel farming subsidies would allow similar orders of solar cogeneration, ground source heating/cooling, smart grid, and distributed cogeneration devices.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

Given the looming reality of Peak Oil, with its inevitable annual decline of global supply at several percent per year,
what exactly is the point of pouring billions into renewed motorcar production ?

And hypothetical hundreds of millions of electric cars would be using what exactly for their power supply ? Coal ? Nuclear ? Solar Thermal ?
And what massive new grid capacity for that power's distribution ?

Better by far to accept that the "Great Car Economy" {Thatcher, 1988) is over,
and to put those $25 Bn of bailout funds into the launch of sustainable enterprises by redundant car-makers.

Don't forget they got $25B in October.

But reborn in a new body is. Taking the setting your house on fire analogy: We certainly put the fire out and try to save lives but we don't rebuild the house and even if the owner has insurance, if they find out the fire was arson, the company doesn't pay (at least I think that's how it works). Aside from more efficient cars, there are so many ways those billions could be invested that would provide millions of jobs while manufacturing goods that we need to rebuild infrastructure, retool energy production, switch from trucks to rail, implement widespread public transportation (even out in the "boonies" like where I live, like in Europe). There are so many opportunities!

There are indeed "so many opportunities", but ironically the US is no longer in a position to invest in them on a scale to transform the society.
Reagan's coup against Carter foreclosed on that option.

The real wealth declined years ago, (along with the C20 protestant work ethic), and the virtual wealth, namely international creditworthyness, is next to go.

As elites worldwide strive to maintain the tottering global house-of-cards financial structure, US treasury bills are still respected,
but the thought of loading foreign creditor Govt.s with enough of them to fund the proposed transformation of US industry,
well forget it.

The transformation that America can afford is to a simpler, lower tech, lower energy, more localised way of life.

Aiming too high is a sure way of missing the trail altogether.

Good oped by Herbert. "Drop dead" is a punishment scheme devised by the bitter sore losers.  Lose millions of jobs?

Punish the bad bad autoworkers who abandoned the Reagan GOP?  The "right to work" states want those auto jobs so they are willing to let Detroit fall.

This is ridiculous political posturing.  Reform the auto companies, that's the key to reviving our manufacturing, job, and tax base.

Listen to Obama and become the reform we need to see, get on with it auto industry, unions, and Michigan politicians.  A coalition is need, not a patchwork of infighting over flawed talking points.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

Friedman said he wanted board rooms and execs replaced with a government panel?  Really radical.  I think it was on Chris Mathews Canis.  I will try to find the clip.  

Reich, former Clinton labor secretary and Obama advisor, says that auto unions will have to give some ground too.

No one is talking mass production contracts funded by oil sibsidy diversion.  Yet.  Is it coming?  Kutcher has opened the mass media to the possibility.

A good exchange with JC Winnie on my site on this topic.  Is it going viral?  Hehey.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

The fact that the Republicans are on the right side on this issue (almost certainly for the wrong reason, but that's beside my point) shows how far right Obama and the Democrats have moved.  Progressives need a real choice, like the Green Party, not pro-corporate, anti-environmental parties like the Democrats and Republicans who are not willing to do anything that would substantially change the status quo.

Obama's "change"?  What a joke!