Originally Posted by Guest

"The net cost to tax-payers was tallied to be $9.7 billion. But even that number is pretty meaningless. Harder to calculate, but no less real, is the economic impact of 1.55 million workers paying taxes on good jobs, fueling the economic growth of their communities, etc. There is a total of 7.25 million jobs impacted by the auto industry. Had the President not intervened, it’s not as if all those jobs would have vanished. But in the midst of a broad economic meltdown that extended overseas, $9.7 billion at the time seems cheap to insure peace of mind about keeping the auto industry in tact on a predictable course as the backbone of what is left of the U.S.’s manufacturing base."


[B]"Even with the comeback of the three companies based in the Detroit area, there are those, then as now, who feel the president over-reached. Former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, a Michigan native-son whose father was president of American Motors Corp. in the 1950s before being elected governor of Michigan, famously wrote in The New York Times in 2008: “If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for…, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye.”

Romney advocated letting the companies go bankrupt, as Obama did, but not with help from the U.S. Treasury so they could have a “controlled bankruptcy.” But the President had little choice unless he wanted to smash the U.S. auto industry with no clear picture of what would be left in the aftermath. For any company to go through bankruptcy, they need a bank or consortium of banks to provide financing. No bank or banks stepped up in 2009 to handle a GM and Chrysler bankruptcy, so the U.S. Treasury tapped Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds to help the auto industry."[/B]


https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidki.../#2a2c02f93e83

Originally Posted by Guest

"Ford did receive $5.9 billion in government loans in 2009 to retool its manufacturing plants to produce more fuel-efficient cars, and the company lobbied for and benefited from the cash-for-clunkers program"



Ford also testified in favor of helping the other companies because of the collapse of one or both of their domestic competitors would threaten Ford because they had 80 percent overlap in supplier networks and nearly 25 percent of Ford’s top dealers also own GM and Chrysler franchises.