gut;1302516 wrote:What's interesting is the bailout has been effective at hurting Romney, particularly in OH and MI (obviously). But that's been one of the more gross mischaracterizations of Romney's views.
However, if you were going to turn back the clock on that one, it's probably an equally effective (and accurate) tactic to say under Romney the UAW would have gotten a lot less.
What a kick in the nuts that, after 4 years of this economic malaise, what could tip the election is paying off the UAW all the way back in 2009.
Under Romney's bankruptcy scenario for GM/Chrysler no one would have gotten anything other than a few pennies on the dollar from a straight liquidation, which is what would have ended up happening.
The reason the government had to step in was the world was falling apart and there was zero private capital available to provide DIP financing to guide them through bankruptcy.
Neither company would have made it out of bankruptcy had we done it the normal way that Romney advocated. The government was the only avenue available to provide them the financing needed to get through bankruptcy.
Letting them go bankrupt likely would have taken Ford under as well as their supplier network is so intertwined with the other 2 that the failure of them would have had a cascading effect that would have crippled the American auto industry.
I detest government bailouts, but in that case there was no one in the private sector able or willing to provide financing to get them through a bankruptcy. It would have led to a liquidation of both companies which would have been an unmitigated disaster for this country.
If it was just a union bailout Bush would have never authorized the first round of money to GM/Chrysler. He did it because he knew neither would make it through bankruptcy if he didn't, and that their failure would have wiped out everyone down the chain and likely Ford as well as a consequence.
Romney has never been able to provide a scenario in which either company survived through bankruptcy without government support, which is why he has been hurt so bad in Ohio/Michigan.
In a normal year he should be up by 5-8 points in this state, but between the autoworkers and those in the supplier food chain there are alot of people in this state whose livelihood is still there only because the government stepped in. Without that financing we would have been looking at nothing but a big auction for all GM/Chrysler's assets and unemployment down the food chain would have spiraled out of control.
Alot of bad decisions were made during that time, but saving the auto industry turns out to have been a good one. People on both sides get too wrapped up in the union stuff, and lose sight of hte bigger picture supplier network (including many small businesses) that we saved because GM/Chrysler didn't fail. Union workers were actually small potatoes in the bigger picture of the entire industry.
