IF General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.
ABC News, February 2012.
"Since the depths of the recession, we've seen manufacturing stabilize and start to come back," said Robert Dye, chief economist for Comerica Bank. "What we've seen in the auto industry lately has been good news for the state."
In fact, it's been very good news: Tax revenues have jumped so dramatically that Michigan now enjoys a $457 million budget surplus.
The auto industry is driving the nascent recovery in Michigan, where manufacturing accounts for more than 20 percent of the state's economy. Indeed, U.S. car sales are revving up at the fastest rate in nearly four years, rising 11 percent in January over a year ago. The state's unemployment rate, while still higher than the national average,has dropped from 12.6 percent, in March 2009, to 9.3 percent in December.
The recovery actually started back in the fall of 2009, but I digress. Moving on...
GM, February 16, 2012:
General Motors made a record $7.6 billion in 2011, driven by a $7.2 billion profit in North America that ensures its highest profit sharing payments of $7,000 each to its UAW workers.
Overall, GM’s 2011 profit rose from last year’s $4.7 billion and broke the previous record annual profit of $6.7 billion in 1997.
In Bizarro Republican World, naturally that leads to this: The governor of Michigan, February 16th, 2012.
"Snyder: Mitt Romney is the best choice"
Mitt Romney is not a career politician. He stands alone among the candidates, Democrat and Republican alike, with his extensive experience in business, having spent two decades helping to start companies and turn around failing ones. Most important, he has a credible plan for jumpstarting the economy and putting it on the path of sustained growth.
What Mitt Romney did in his "extensive experience in business" was to borrow money, drive companies into bankruptcy, lay off the workers, and sell off the parts at enormous profit for investors.
That's what he would have done with GM, and that's what he will do for America.
Now, the governor of the state that has enjoyed the most success from President Obama and the Democrats' rescue of the auto industry has just embraced the guy who would have seen to Michigan's "creative destruction".
You get what you vote for. Best to remember that this fall.