I don't think that it is possible for the government to save every company and industry that has fallen on hard times. But the question that I have a hard time grappling with is, who really needs to be helped, versus who shouldn't be helped? What do you think?
If the company failing would significantly impact the current state of things, some action is warranted.
If not, they then go under, just like a lot of people are. That's the cost of 30 years of absolutely bat shit insane economic and trade policy.
I would personally break up anything that was too big to fail, and do it as part of the assistance meant to keep jobs and dollars flowing. Actual profit and loss for the clowns that drove it under would be the last consideration I would grant.
Really big companies are a growing problem. We should fix that. We don't need really big companies. What we do need is a lot of small to mid-sized ones competing and innovating.
"We don't need really big companies."
I wonder about that sometimes. Would a smaller company than Boeing gamble and build the 787 without government involvement?
Maybe not.
Actually probably not.
I'll stick to what I said though.
Let's just call it social pressure sufficient to insure that IF we must endure a really big company, it had better damn well be adding value.
A whole lot of them just don't add that much value and for some it's arguably a net loss. The few that do actually add good value, I can live with and don't have to like.
Honestly, I don't know that we need the 787 right now, so there! It's nice to see tech innovation. Love that. It would be a whole lot nicer to see the 787 project, right along side those alternative energy and transportation projects too.
Add to that list, actual improvements in education, cheap money for small to mid sized business coupled with much better access to publicly funded research and development and let some of those efforts grow big and challenge the large companies that exist now. That is where a lot of great paying jobs are going to come from.
If I had to choose between the new airplane and alternative energy priorities, I would absolutely put the plane on hold and get the build outs done to solve the energy problem. Hell, the damn plane runs on Oil. Wouldn't it be nice to know we've got a good, solid supply of that when we need it instead of always chasing a smaller and smaller pool that's harder to extract, and that is owned by somebody else?
That's the big nut to crack and very large energy companies don't or won't work to crack it until we have completely run ourselves into the ground. When that happens, they will pocket their profits then pull out the public R&D, legislate themselves into the alternative energy push and be begging for assistance because the problem is so huge.
That does not have to be.
Given an environment where a very large company is limited in it's ability to legislate away it's future competition, I'm much more inclined to appreciate them. Real competition changes a lot of things.
A lot of them are multi-national, and a nice chunk of those are now foreign owned too.
That means those great quarters go to pay for some other nations citizens health care, not ours, for example.
If it's going to be very large, I would prefer that it be American owned and facing strong competitors.
What I do like is lean organizations that add a lot of value and realize their profit from nice and simple innovation applied to labor over time. Those I can live with, small, medium or large.
What I don't like is fat ass companies leveraging their economic clout to get law bent in their favor and in particular I don't like it when they apply that against other competetors.
In those scenarios we generally lose.
I want the wealth created, profits made, growth realized. Don't get me wrong there. I just want it with the people actually doing labor getting a fair shake, and where the job growth is not offset by huge ass tax breaks. That kind of environment, with competition will result in business that serves us nicely, not over exploits us for the pleasure and profit of a few.
Having said all of that, I am a realist. Big companies are not just gonna go away. I'll just vote with my feet and avoid them huge where I can and support legislation that promotes the development and growth of small to mid sized, regional and community competitors.
Small to mid sized business, that operates at best regionally, is where most of our employment is at. Boost that, and you boost the middle class huge.
Grow a big ass corporation and they will just funnel the dollars into an offshore production site, where that government doesn't regulate how over exploited the people are. Those products come back here to be sold, while at the same time more and more of us are faced with being baristas, or washing cars, or some other damn menial, poor paying job.
That is a very ugly cycle we've got to stop. Supporting large corporations at the expense of smaller ones isn't good, and that's the primary reason for my position on these kinds of things.
I am certainly skeptical of big businesses in the first place, but if we don't have a few Boeings, we might lose our place in the world as frontrunner with all things big and fast! 
Would pushing for a network of high speed trains on new infrastucture (tracks) be better use of oil than building fuel efficient jets?
I was a bit amazed today to learn that its faster to take the train from Paris to London than to fly. Also, Europeans travel, often making multiple stops in different countries, doing business or pleasure IN THE SAME DAY by train, something that can't be done when flying.
I would love to see the trains myself.
Flying is a complete PITA. With rail it does not have to be that way. And yes, I've friends on the other side of the pond and they say the rail is great for the reasons you describe.
Using oil to actually build things is perfectly ok with me. That's a great use of the stuff, particularly when we do better at recycling.
Burning it just to push people around when we don't have to is just silly.
Apparently several of the financial entities were too large to fail. The crime here was in letting them get into that position. The old saying, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" is pretty applicable.
Beyond that, I think businesses should be allowed to fail. General Motors should have been allowed to go bankrupt. That's what happened anyway, so why did we pour billions in?
The best way for the executive and boards to learn their lessons is to observe the failure that happens when they do a bad job. The boards of these companies are nothing but rubber stamps for the bad management they have hired.
Until we get out of the line of thinking perpetuated by the Harvard Business School that the only people fit to run anything are the lawyers and accountants, we will continue this downward spiral.
The country I grew up in was comprised of ingenuity, creativity, hard work and common sense. It distresses me that our country has turned into one of acquisitions, mergers, layoffs, and blame the other guy, and here's your golden parachute money.
Should we allow dumb ass executives to "learn a lesson" destroying so many lives, so they can "do better the next time?"
Fuck that.
Know what will clean that all up?
Put them in a cage for 20 years. That will solve our problems right quick.
Protecting the jobs, or at least providing for a transition was the right thing to do. The people that built the wealth and power those clowns squandered trying to get on the cover of CEO magazine deserve that as a minimum. All they really did was try to meet set expectations and deal hard for a fair shake of the spoils.
The execs need to see a cage. They are the ones that believe that it's good to take excessive risk and expect excessive rewards just for the taking of it, not for actually enduring the risk to see success.
We made a mistake in this nation when we allowed the corporation to stand as a legal entity that could protect and compartmentalize it's owners from the rest of society. If those owners actually had some personal skin in the game, things would be one hell of a lot different.
What chaps my ass is these types will just hammer on personal responsibility, while at the same time working their ass off double time to make damn sure they never see that level of accounting applied to their own self-entitled interests.
A whole lot of corporate America is filled with crooks. We need to just start treating them as such. Lock them up for long enough to matter and make them perform simple labor while they are there and the rest will either scatter to less enlightened parts of the world, or will clean up for fear alone.
Missing, being stupid isn't against the law. If it were half the members of this forum would be in jail.
And DUHbya would be behind bars forever! Along with you as well....
"being stupid isn't against the law."
Depends on what actions are undertaken by the stupid ones. Frankly, politicians often do stupid things that ARE against the law. Kind of perplexing, since most of them should know what's legal and what's not, being lawyers in most cases. As far as "half the members of this forum" being in that category, that speaks to YOUR inability to cope with ideology you do not appreciate nor understand. It doesn't make them "stupid" because they disagree with your perception. This is just another example of how bigoted and close minded you are, Deane. Clearly, the word "diverse" is not in your vocabulary. It's tantamount to a Bostonian saying all Yankee fans are stupid or vice versa. And if you want to get technical, research shows people to the right tend to be more stupid than people to the left.
Andy, you have a tough time recognizing subtle humor.
Deane didn't say which half. 
*Plonk*
"ideology you do not appreciate nor understand"
Part right, part wrong. No I don't appreciate it. But, I may understand it better than you. That may be the problem.
..........Would a smaller company than Boeing gamble and build the 787 without government involvement....
If they were competing against, a new Lockheed plane, and Douglas was offering up a competitor, and each was out pre selling the concept.......
wait those days are gone as well.....
Back to the too big to fail.....
When all the competition is gone and you are the last one standing, then you better be in it long term and get it right!
I'm sure that on a personal level, the senior managers of large companies, such as banks and auto manufacturers, see their jobs in very abstract terms. They have "golden parachutes" to take care of them. Thus, even if they screw up in the worst way, and the company lets them go, they generally don't have to worry about having their homes foreclosed upon, their cars repossessed, etc.
The aspect that I struggle with, and that I am sure that governments struggle with when asked for loans and bailout money is whether there is really a market or a need for what that company does. If the company is failing because there just isn't enough demand to sustain them, then giving them money is just an attempt at postponing the inevitable. However, if the company is doing badly because it had the misfortune of having incompetent or dishonest managers, who have since been fired, perhaps there is a chance that a loan could help them turn things around.
The recent bankruptcies leave me with the questions, do we really need this many auto companies? Do we really need this many sporting goods stores? Do we really need this many big-box consumer electronics retailers?
GM has the number one sales position in the world. I believe Toyota may have unseated them from that position recently, however.
Now, if you are the number one or number two volume manufacturer in the world, and you're bankrupt, doesn't that say something is terribly wrong with that company.
Management of GM has obviously brought new meaning to the word "incompetent". But, the UAW hasn't exactly helped. I say they should have gone into Chapter 11 and let a judge sort it out. We shouldn't have put a dime in. It is not the taxpayers responsibility to feed those workers who helped create the problem. Let the union feed them.
Alfredo, I think the answer to your last paragraph is "no". We have a company like GM whose expenses are so high that they have to keep shoving out product at a choking rate just to pay their bills. During an economic downturn there's nobody to shove them to.
If GM were to go under, people would simply buy cars made by someone else, most likely in this country. Many GM cars are made off shore, anyway.
There will be a certain number of cars sold in this country each year and if they aren't GM, they'll be Ford or Toyota, or something. They'll just be made by a different set of workers.
No, we don't need so many brands of autos, just like we don't need so many airlines.
From what I’ve read about GM recently, it’s got structures in place that would make the former Soviet Union proud. From design to personnel management, it’s a thoroughly byzantine system. When most large corporations were trying to demystify and simplify the process of making important decisions, GM was still holding on to systems created decades ago. I’m not sure how you can rid a company of such a culture without making wholesale changes in management and a corporate staff willing to look past the days of old.
While we agree on the auto manuf. failure due to incompetent management, there are examples of companies failing that have high market share, competent management, and no burdensome union contracts. I'll go out on a limb and cite the airlines. Many have been in bankruptcy, gotten huge concessions from unions, emerged from bankruptcy and failed a second time. They have changed management, but the problems that make profitability hard to achieve are led by outside factors. Less customers, higher fuel costs, poorer service under new employee distribution/assignment. Now I'm not saying the airlines don't have some bad managers, but over all I don't think they would be or should be considered "stupid." Times changed, the airlines tried to change along with them, but in the end they are failing. How does Southwest do it? They aren't trying to be number one or number two. They are happy to be profitable at a lower market share. BMW isn't bankrupt. They aren't anywhere near the top two in automakers. I think GM was at the top too long and until the first Japanese challenge in the 70's (when they should have smartened up) did nothing to change their inefficient ways. Chrysler went bankrupt but smartened up temporarily under Iacocca with K cars and mini-vans. Unfortunately they fell into their old ways as sales boomed.
It's pretty complex. You can try to simplify it, but it won't be easy.
Deane, I largely agree with you, but in the case of big business, the "I was just stupid" excuse should not wash anymore. This is not the 19th century.
Look at it this way, if there was a guy who drove around town in a Ferrari and burned 3,000 homes to the ground he would go to prison. But, that same guy can drive his Ferrari around town all he wants when he puts 3,000 families out in the street by being stupid.
I am also sick to death of this whole "Americans won't pay for quality workmanship..." and "The U.S. consumer is less likely to spend more for something that lasts..." meme. Keeping jobs and investments in the United States should have been top priority. This marketplace belongs to us, but folks have yet to insist on having American produced goods because the big companies have so little imagination.
We do not need to be protectionist, just logical. We know what our market demands because we are Americans. We should lead in design, not scramble around trying to catch up. Whatever happened to investments in innovation? Did it not fit into the budget behind catered buffets, private jets and spa weekends?
Nobody bothered fostering local economies for over 30 years and the country rotted from the inside out. Exports took over, quality declined and soon we were leveraged to the hilt. The last of our value was looted by thieves and manipulators. The short sighted engineers of globalism put tentacles in our highest offices, shipped our jobs overseas, and promoted the false growth of speculation, consolidation and merger.
Untouchable people should not be in charge of our economy, but accountability went the way of the steam engine. The livelihoods of entire regions should not depend on one tiny percent of isolated and insulated people. They do not know how much milk or cat litter costs, so how the hell can they decide which family car has appeal?
I've heard that GM has frozen all of the product type people out of top management and the entire upper tier is financial and lawyer types. Since that is the way so many companies have gone, including broadcast companies like Clear Channel, this would not surprise me.
Deane, I gotta admit, I'm pretty much with you on most of this.
Many corporations are way too big. Many got into too many lines of business, thus losing focus and core competency. Lawyers and accountants became the bosses. I saw it where I worked, and in my industry (telecom).
Still, it does seem we still need to figure out who should be saved and who should be allowed to fail, and I'm not sure we have yet here on the board. Not completely anyway.
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