Originally Posted by SteveZ

I'm not thrilled with the entire auto bailout, and the main reason is that nothing was done up front to make cars more sellable. The good coming out of this is that the cost for the clunkers is still less than paying unemployment and welfare to even more folk.

Additional good point is in any state (like Florida) which does not have periodic vehicle inspections, it will get a large number of vehicles off the road which shouldn't be out there anyway.

Also, Let's say the person is buying a 25,000 car and getting a $4,500 C4C credit to use towards the purchase. If the person kicks in $500 cash, that's 80% of the vehicle price, so the person just needs to qualify for a car loan of $20,000, and the vehicle value makes the deal for the finance company/bank a better deal. Money is moving!

And, let's not forget that because of the first bailout, "we, the people" now have a big investment stake in the auto industry, and participating in a "sales incentive" to prime the sales pump makes the potential of recovering the bailout moneys downstream more feasible.

Cars get sold, banks give credit, jobs are maintained, money actually gets circulated in communities which results in more jobs, more people keep their health care coverage (giving another reason why HR 3200 is "wrong time now"), maybe even more jobs come back in the auto industry and that would spawn ancillary support and service jobs, and the economy perks.

Yeah, I'm for anything that actually causes money to circulate, rather than just be paid in big bonuses or squirreled into offshore accounts. The $300-600 incentive checks did nothing. This has enough bite to really make a difference since it allows credit to be given, high-end products sold, and the circular effect spawns more jobs.

This would have been a better idea 6-12 months ago than the original auto bailout plan, because it would have been an economic boost rather than debt relief at the top corporate levels.

This is one time I think the Administration and Congress (Finally!) got it right.