The Bailout Bait and Switch and the Auto Industry Bailout

I don’t have the time to go into it fully, so I’ll keep this short.
Sarcasm mode on. How surprising, the big $700 Billion bailout that the banks were getting while paying their executives $70 Billion in bonuses is no longer buy troubled mortgage assets, but rather will just be given to banks in exchange for partial ownership. Gee, who could have predicted that the largest private bank in the US would switch from supposedly helping the people of the US to just helping themselves and the banks. Sarcasm mode off. I am not convinced for one moment that the Fed ever intended to help the American public, and from the beginning their plan was simply to inject cash into the banks. The owners of the Fed is kept a secret, it could very well be that the same banks and financial institutions that will get this money are the Fed’s owners. Congress should demand the Fed sticks to the original plan or take the money back.
Meanwhile, the Big Three auto makers are asking for $25 Billion of that $700 Billion to get them through until the new labor deals go in effect in 2010 which will reduce their costs a great deal. Of course Bankruptcy would force that deal to go in effect now and force other changes that the industry needs to make. We bailed Chrysler out in 1979 and here it is not even 30 years later and they are asking for another bailout. Why should we think that any of the big 3 learned a lesson? GM’s CEO said nobody could have predicted these problems, yet several economists have been warning about the credit crash for years, warning about all the problems we are facing today. Somehow, even though GM doesn’t think it could have been managed better, Toyota and Honda seem to have been managed well enough to avoid the problems the big 3 are facing. I am sure I’ll have more to say on the auto bailout later.