Obama Administration Prepares To “Guide” Chysler Into Bankruptcy
Remember when Obama supported bailouts for automakers because we couldn’t let them go into bankruptcy? Remember when we taxpayers were told that the automakers were “too big to fail”?
Sunday, President-elect Barack Obama said he opposed bankruptcy for the trio but vowed to maintain government pressure on their management to restructure in return for a taxpayer bailout.
It’s a bit frustrating, now that the politicians forced us to foot the bill for billions of dollars in bailouts for the automakers, that the brilliant government solution for the automakers is now…bankruptcy.
But not just any sort of bankruptcy, I guess. Rather, an extra-special government-controlled sort of bankruptcy.
DETROIT — The Treasury Department is preparing a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing for Chrysler that could come as soon as next week, people with direct knowledge of the action said Thursday.
So why did the taxpayers need to be put on the hook for billions of dollars in bailouts when the end result was just going to be bankruptcy anyway? Because normal bankruptcy would have allowed companies like Chrysler to renegotiate the union labor contracts that are the cancer eating at the heart of the American auto industry. Extra special government guided bankruptcy keeps those contracts intact.
The Treasury has an agreement in principle with the United Automobile Workers union, whose members’ pensions and retiree health care benefits would be protected as a condition of the bankruptcy filing, said these people, who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case.
In summary, the American taxpayers were just dragged through a complicated and expensive bailout process not to save companies that were “too big to fail” but rather to keep big-money, liberal-supporting unions from having to re-negotiate their contracts.
Would that the Obama administration treated the people in America who actually create jobs and prosperity (like, say, business owners) with the same sort of preference he gives people who destroy jobs and prosperity (unions).
