Serving the nation or running for re-election already?
You had to ask? I've been watching and listening to the House hearings yesterday and now the Senate.
If nothing else, the speeches are definitely campaign speeches. Barbara Boxer brought herself to near tears. A shameless debacle.
A small aside to this GM thingy... Seems that I remember that GM borrowed $14 Billion Dollars about four years ago, to bring their pension plan up to standards required by the PBGF... and that at the time they had been behind in funding the plan by 24Billion...
(Was in the same year that Congress passed a "holiday law" that allowed all companies to stop paying into the PBGF for a year in order to improve their profits.)
This whole scene is very, very ugly.
There has been considerable discussion on this thread about the amount of Pension Benefits that are involved in developing the numbers for GM. Like it or not, these benefits were legal requirements and were supposed to have been paid for along the way. The fact that the management sidestepped their obligations to do this (and the government failure to call them to task) is one of the reasons why I feel such animosity towards the management, who took the money to pay their own salaries, and the congress who took the lobby money to overlook the legal responsibilities.
As far as GM is concerned, the bailout monies should not go towards continuing bad management, but towards the pensions of the millions who may lose their retirement money, when the PBGF goes broke.
IMHO, if the automakers don't receive a bailout, it would be a great start to a new paradigm, since there are surely enough wise investors who would not let the market for 15 million cars/year slip by without putting the manufacturing complex back to work.
It would be nice to see the good old boy network shut down and to begin a new management team. I believe the bailout money would be better spent on bridging the income for the workers, while a court ordered bankruptcy operation begins.
