The drive by media has a lot of heart—giving President Trump a hard time about GM (Government Motors) cutting jobs—running headlines that he’s “Angry” and is “Threatening” the company.
Talk about inheriting a government disaster. It was the Obama administration’s misguided bailout of the autos in 2008 that lead to this mess to begin with. And it was put on Trump’s plate.
An industry reckoning was simply delayed as Obama doled out $11.3 billion to resuscitate—essentially an underfunded pension plan that happens to make cars and trucks—a dying business.
And it was under Obama’s watch that the Bernanke/Yellen Fed created money out of thin air while at the same time nailing interest rates to the floor boards so Wall Street could borrow for nothing, play the markets for free, and basically everyone in America with a driver’s license could get an auto loan for a shiny new truck.
Now, as interest rates rightly increase—and certainly by not nearly as much as they need to—under today’s Fed “Top Gun” Jerome Powell, it turns out the car business is a mess. A sputtering broken down piece of junk (let’s not forget the bond holders that were never bailed out and lost everything).
The business was a loss leader to begin with, and it was the Obama administration that failed to look under the hood and instead put this wreck of company back on the road for Trump to fix. Yet another example of government malfeasance.
