An Alternative to the Auto Bailout | CommonDreams.org - 0 views
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Energy Net on 23 Nov 08As the Big Three US automakers ramp up their pressure on Congress to cough up $25 billion in bailout money, the absence of a long term vision for economic recovery has never been more clear. The outgoing Bush administration and Congress are careening from bailout proposal to bailout proposal, putting hundreds of billions into the hands of the same people that created this toxic economic brew. Naomi Klein has recently detailed the horrifying parallels between the "free-fraud" zone created by the Bush administration in Iraq and the Treasury Department's handling of the bank bailout (http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2008/10/bailout-profiteers). As tempting as it is to offer bailout money to the US automakers in return for fleet-wide mileage reductions, changes in the mix of their fleets to include more hybrids and electric vehicles, and to support labor, it would be the wrong thing to do under current conditions. Imports from foreign automakers have backed up in American ports over the last few months and now represent roughly double the normal inventory, so the difficulties faced by automakers are not limited to US firms. US automakers, however, have additional problems because their fleets are dominated by too-large, fuel-inefficient models. That fleet makeup cannot be quickly changed.