EVERY EFFING TIME!
Which is ironic within itself, being my banker told me virtually the same thing when I asked him about the cash-4-clunkers program soon after it started.
(Bad english for a bad idea.)
This was posted elsewhere. Not sure about the numbers.
Subject: CLUNKER MATH
Think of it this way:
A clunker that travels 12,000 miles a year at 15 mpg uses 800 gallons of gas a year.
A vehicle that travels 12,000 miles a year at 25 mpg uses 480 gallons a year.
So, the average Cash for Clunkers transaction will reduce US gasoline consumption by 320 gallons per year.
They claim 700,000 vehicles so that’s 224 million gallons saved per year.
That equates to a bit over 5 million barrels of oil.
5 million barrels is about 5 hours worth of US consumption.
More importantly, 5 million barrels of oil at $70 per barrel costs about $350 million dollars
So, the government paid $3 billion of our tax dollars to save $350 million.
We spent $8.57 for every dollar saved.
EVERY EFFING TIME!
Pulled in consumers who weren’t ready yet.
Yep. In towns around my parts, it’s mostly the perpetually single welfare moms (pros, drugs, pit bulls, etc.) who swapped their boyfriends’ older trucks for new, smaller vehicles since the Cash for Clunkers program got under way. ...ice on the roads about 6 or 7 months of each year.
Another truly grotesque product of this program is its impact on used car prices. Prices on used cars rose dramatically following Clunkers, putting many buyers who could not afford more out of the market.
Anyone with an IQ above 80 could have predicted this. People with little means of paying for a car went into dealerships and purcahsed new cars beyond their means with the help of a subsidy.
The loan companies were more than willing to loan the balance for if the car was repossessed, they had equity in the car unless the buyer totally trashes it.
Look for the used car market to be flooded with small cars and make it a buyers market for a while as these repos make their way through the system and we’ll soon hear of “predatory” lending practices by the loan companies.
bttt
Paging Captain Obvious
Surprise, surprise, surprise.