The U.S. chooses to rescue Detroit
News: As of Friday morning, December 19, the U.S. Treasury had not burned through quite the entire $ 350 billion fund Congress had appropriated for it to bail out Wall Street. At least $ 17.4 billion evidently remained. The outgoing George W. Bush administration has decided to exercise the discretion the bailout statute affords it to redirect this last remainder to rescue Detroit.
According to John D. McKinnon and John D. Stoll of the John D. Journal—well, not actually, but rather of the Wall Street Journal—President Bush said Friday,
Under ordinary economic circumstances, I would say [bankruptcy] is the price that failed companies must pay, and I would not favor intervening to prevent the auto makers from going out of business. But these are not ordinary circumstances. In the midst of a financial crisis and a recession, allowing the U.S. auto industry to collapse is not a responsible course of action.
(A classic example of Bushian rhetoric, this is, right down to the misplacement of the conjunction that and its consequent misuse in the pronoun’s office. The writer observes it today with uncharacteristic fondness and the foresight of nostalgia.)
The WSJ estimates or reports that the $ 17.4 billion in federal cash to GM and Chrysler—Ford, standing in slightly better shape, will not yet accept the obligations associated with the cash—will keep Detroit afloat through the end of March.
It has been too long since the Economic Nationalist has found itself able to applaud the Bush administration for doing an important thing in the right way and for the right reason. Such bloggish applause naturally carries little weight in itself, but the industrial future of the United States rather than any vain approbation is what lies at stake. This outgoing act by Mr. Bush’s administration is a political advance for the Republican party, an industrial advance for the United States, and a sore relief to those of us conservatives that sufficiently understand the turn of our nation’s wheels of industry to appreciate how close a brush with industrial doom our unwitting country has run this perilous season.
So, well done, Mr. Bush. The nation ought to thank you for this.
Now, Mr. Bush, if you would just finish building that Mexican border fence before you go….
Seriously, though: after an eight-year run of seemingly unremitting national disaster from February 12, 1999, the date of then-President Bill Clinton’s acquittal on impeachment charges, it is not easy for a despairing American patriot to appreciate the degree to which events have conspired toward America’s eventual national recovery since June 28, 2007, the date of the immigration amnesty bill’s defeat. Yet here is another sign, within the bounds of this writer’s limited understanding, that God yet hears American prayers.
Let nationalists rest, prepare and await the turn of events. The day of action cometh sooner than some suspect.
HJH