Tom Friedman on Meet the Press
Articles — By forcechange on November 16, 2008 10:29 amFor whatever reason, MSNBC poorly edited the clip of this segment, thereby missing Friedman’s opening remarks. They were very eloquent and powerful so we’re copying them here:
TOM BROKAW: Tom, let’s begin with you. Can Barack Obama, the newly elected Democrat, as president of the United States look Detroit in the eye and say, “Drop dead.”
MR. TOM FRIEDMAN: I think he can. He may have to, Tom. You know, Carl Levin, what did he say? He said, “You know, just give us this $25 billion and, and we’ll be OK.” Tom, if I thought with $25 billion we could save this industry, I’d be for it, OK? But I see no plan right now, no reason to suggest that these people who have driven this industry into a complete ditch have a plan to get it out in the long term and not come back to a six, three months from now, for another $25 billion. Show me that plan.
Remember, what was Detroit’s plan two years ago when they, when they confronted this problem? It was to subsidize gasoline at a $1.99 a gallon if you bought a Hummer or Suburban or a big truck–that was their idea of innovation. So, you know, it was like a crack dealer offering subsidized crack rather than, you know, going to a clinic to get–to get off the drug. And, and who is the enabler of that? The enabler of that were the Carl Levins, all the Michigan delegation who didn’t go to these people. The outrage of these people, “Now they–we have to save these jobs!” Where was their outrage two years ago, OK, about getting them to be more innovative, to getting them on top of the energy efficiency question? They have been enabling the destruction of this industry. So show me a plan. Show me a plan that says if we give you this $25 billion you’re actually going to change. Absent that–remember, Tom, we’re going to charge this $25 billion on our kids’ Visa cards. This goes on our kids’ Visa cards, and we have a moral obligation to make sure this is spent wisely.
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Agreed. This whole bailout thing is making me sick. As a younger American, it infuriates me that mismanagement by multimillion dollar a year CEO's is without a doubt going to screw me for the next 50 years of my life paying taxes out the A$$ for mistakes I HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH.
It is hard to feel any sympathy for the management of the Detroit auto makers or the UAW, considering the success of Honda and Toyota who also provide jobs to American workers. Perhaps the best bailout would be to buy Ford and GM and sell them to one of the other Japanese auto makers.
Let them fail. If there is anything worth saving then let it be reincarnated from the ashes.
Tom (Friedman)'s main point is that it isn't clear that GM *CAN* be bailed out. $25B will at best prolong the agony. Look at it this way: GM currently has 266,000 employees. If we instead allocated the $25B to the employees, say for retraining, that's over $93K per person – you could give every one of them an ivy league education!
"The automakers have been grossly mismanaged and are no longer competitive. They should not be artificially kept alive."
So this doesn't apply to banks? We bailed them out, it's only fair we bail out everyone else now. Why should Mr. Business suit get an easy way out while Mr. Bluecollar gets to lose everything he worked for?
Joe, I totally agree with you in principle. IMO though, the difference is that without a bailout of the financial companies, we ran the risk of a complete and total systemic collapse. I don't know enough about economics to know how real that risk was, but for argument's sake, let's say that it was real.
Assuming if that's the case, then the financial system HAD to be bailed out. Is it unfair? absolutely. Should the managers of the financial companies face unemployment and possible criminal charges? Absolutely. But should the whole finance system of the United States have been allowed to fail? I don't think so.
The downside of a failure of the Big Three would be widespread job losses and economic pain, not a collapse of the entire system.
On a different note, I do believe you've drawn a false dichotomy between "Mr. Business suit" and "Mr. Bluecollar." There are plenty of bluecollar workers who would have lost their jobs had Wall St failed, and there will be plenty of whitecollar workers who lose their jobs if Detroit fails. -Jaime