I thought stay the course was finished
Stay the course! I thought that was finished.
November 7, 2009
In November 2006 the Republicans lost control of Congress. Within the next 60 days, The President suddenly agreed that the course must be changed and “The Iraqi Surge” was the new buzz word. The Surge worked; changing course worked as the voters thought it would.
Today, our President seems to be enamored with the same “I want to prove I am right” philosophy. Whether it is Afghanistan, Unemployment or the deficit he is going to stay the course that he has set. Like the previous President, he ignores the voice of voters at the polls or in the polls. He must be smarter, better, and more clairvoyant than those mere voters.
Do we have to wait for November 2010 plus sixty days for a change?
Unemployment is particularly vexing to the general populace. Signing extended unemployment benefits or and extension of the new home credit have proven to not help with unemployment. The president seems to think it will since he just extended both. In fact we can see no government efforts to improve unemployment other than bailing out banks which has done nothing but fund additional bonuses for those that did not lose their jobs because of bankruptcy which the US taxpayers funded.
Meanwhile the unemployment rate grows and the real unemployment rate is between 18% and 20%; the worst since 1983. Our economy is losing jobs at the rate of 150,000 to 250,000 per month and there is nothing on the horizon to stop the loss.
The GM Bailout
The Government continues with this disastrous effort. The taxpayers bought GM with upwards of $70 Billion for this poorly managed Company and what has been done with this investment? They have shuttered plants and retired brands that the taxpayers own. In doing this, they have spent more money, well in excess of $200 Million doing away with the assets and related jobs that are owned by the taxpayers. In other words, we paid them to do away with jobs and assets that belong to our citizens. Saturn and Pontiac alone account for upwards of 200,000 direct and indirect jobs. Finally, they have announced putting money into China, India, and Germany. These are foreign investments with taxpayer funds.
An Alternative – Change course
Can we change course on the GM investment? Of course we can. One organization that has consistently suggested a course change is Savingpontiac.org. The organization has proposed through letter writing, emailing, calling, and face to face meetings with Congressmen, The UAW, Ron Bloom, Timothy Geithner, The Presidents Automotive Task Force and numerous state level officials that one or both of the Saturn and Pontiac brands be spun off with serviceable, excess manufacturing capacity to profit focused management.
This can be accomplished quickly and would provide jobs almost immediately with assets that the taxpayers already own. While it would require modest loan arrangements with our Treasury Department these loans unlike the GM loans would be recoverable and covered by assets that come with the transaction.
On Friday, I saw a press briefing by The President. In the presentation he said he was confident that we are on the right course for the economy to recover. Translation: We will stay the course. I suspect that we will need to wait until January of 2011 before we can make any meaningful changes to the programs in place that would lead to meaningful employment opportunities. Why do we have to wait? LET’S create jobs now!
