The American Auto Industry

Should they get a government bailout or not? It's a question tons of people are wondering. Thousands of Americans have jobs in that industry. Stocks have fallen, low. So what's a president elect to do? I think Michael Moore said it best in an interview with Larry King:

Moore: We can't let all these people lose their jobs because of the bad decisions, the stupid decisions made by the management of these auto companies. I think what has to happen here is that Congress needs to pass some legislation, and our president-elect needs to do what Roosevelt did.

When Roosevelt came in and when World War II faced the country, Roosevelt said to General Motors and Ford, you're not going to build cars anymore. You're going to build airplanes and tanks and guns and the things that we need for this war because we have a national crisis. General Motors had to do what Roosevelt told them they had to do.

King: What do you want them to do now?

Moore: President-Elect Obama has to say to them, yes, we're going to use this money to save these jobs, but we're not going to build these gas-guzzling, unsafe vehicles any longer.
We're going to put the companies into some sort of receivership and we, the government, are going to hold the reigns on these companies. They're to build mass transit. They're to build hybrid cars. They're to build cars that use little or no gasoline.

We're facing a national crisis, not just an economic crisis, but a crisis of the polar ice caps are melting. There's only so much oil left under the Earth. We're going to run out of that, if not in our children's time, our grandchildren's time.
There's got to be a plan set out to find other ways to transport ourselves in other ways than using fossil fuels.
(To read the entire interview, visit CNN.)

MINT: All hope is not lost. Not for jobs, not for the auto-industry, not for the stock market. Well thought out plans are being made, we can all rest easy.

PS: I know what those of you who know me well may be thinking- "ohhhh, Kristel drive a Japanese made car- a Subaru!" But AHHA! Subaru's are made in West Lafayette, an Indiana town about 1.5 hours South of me... so although the company is Japanese, I bought locally (hopefully saveing on the emissions it would have taken to ship my car from Japan) and supported local jobs. LOVE SUBARU <3>