Mark Steyn: We're in the fast lane to Bailoutistan

Orange County Register ^ | 12/19/08 | Mark Steyn

[tips up]

General Motors now has a market valuation about a third of Bed, Bath & Beyond, and no one says your Swash 700 Elongated Biscuit Toilet Seat Bidet is too big to fail. GM has a market capitalization of about $2.4 billion. For purposes of comparison, Toyota's market cap is $100 billion and change (the change being bigger than the whole of GM). General Motors, like the other two geezers of the Old Three, is a vast retirement home with a small money-losing auto subsidiary. The UAW is AARP in an Edsel: It has three times as many retirees and widows as "workers" (I use the term loosely). GM has 96,000 employees but provides health benefits to a million people.

[grey_whiskers]

It's the fault of those damn Japanese carmakers for making better cars at a better price.

No sarcasm.

Cheers!

...oh, and Merry Christmas.

[grey_whiskers]

I don’t understand why Bush didn’t draft new executive orders allowing for assassinations, and then send someone after Soros? /tinfoil_DU_mode>

[grey_whiskers]

I begin to suspect that Obamessiah and his wife(*) have drunk the Ayers-inspired Kommie Koolaid^TM that "The Rich" (corporations, etc.) are buildings with secret elevators from the CEO suite to the sub-sub-sub-basements full of gazillions of dollars in cash, gold and jewels, and that the executives take time off at least twice a day to go down to the money vaults and roll around in the stuff.

Only now that it is too late, is it dawning upon him that most corporations are founded upon DEBT and the control borrowed money, rather than the possession of actual hard cash.

Good luck with your looting, Mr. Prescient.

...oh, and Merry Christmas!




(*) PJ O'Rourke once nicknamed Hillary "The Iron Dingbat". Can we come up with an appropriate sobriquet for Michelle?

[Paladin2]

"What a genius writer."

Hopey Changemas indeed!

[mylife]

Excellent insight.

I see it all happening now were I work. and I pray that I make it out intact.

[irv]

General Motors now has a market valuation about a third of Bed, Bath & Beyond, and no one says your Swash 700 Elongated Biscuit Toilet Seat Bidet is too big to fail.

Steyn misses the point. This is proof of how much good unionization does for a company. It makes you more important than mere size. It forces the government to take care of you and isn't that what America is all about?

(Yes, that's intense sarcasm)

[tips up]

Agree. Steyn is a great guest host.

[Paladin2]

"I was thinking of that also, but then I wondered, "Why should I bury empty jars?"

Look up the derivation of the term "shot glass".

[Paladin2]

"If I had to put my finger on the one thing that is doing this country in (across the board), I would say its SHORT TERM THINKING"

On the other hand it's good to make a profit every quarter. Also note that in the long run, we're all dead.

[zeugma]

Brilliant! Thanks for posting.

[rbg81]

Also note that in the long run, we’re all dead.

---

Do you know who Cuffy Meigs was? Look it up.

[cpanter]

Nobody says it better than the great Mark Steyn.

But Mark Steyn even outdid himself in this one!

You are right. He is especially on with this column. Keeper!

Embarrassing sidenote: I thought he screwed up when he quoted Henry Ford... somehow it went right over my head the first time.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Laughed out loud. Hurts to laugh so hard at something that’s so ludicrously, ridiculously, shamefully true.

[MIT-Elephant]

Bump.

[VRWC For Truth]

For every GM worker making a car, ten are not making a car but are getting health care benefits.

10 X more efficient than Social Security or any other grubment program.

[ScreamingFist]

From the comments on the site.

How I wish someone would go to Washington, DC and speak to the self-appointed elites what Oliver Cromwell said to Parliament in 1653. Tell me if most of the following is not approprate now.

"It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money; is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? is there one vice you do not possess?

Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter’d your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth? Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defil’d this sacred place, and turn’d the Lord’s temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices?

Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress’d, are yourselves become the greatest grievance. Your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse this Augean stable, by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings in this House; and which by God’s help, and the strength he has given me, I am now come to do;

I command ye therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place; go, get you out! Make haste! Ye venal slaves be gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there (Parliamentary Staff), and lock up the doors. In the name of God, go!"

[Albion Wilde]

"General Motors, like the other two geezers of the Old Three, is a vast retirement home with a small money-losing auto subsidiary."

The pricelessness of this man's writing exceeds all previous records set by himself, who is already in a class by himself.

[hattend]

thanks for the ping

[Liberty Valance]

Dear Mr. Steyn,

You can frame this one and nail it to the wall.
It's perfect.

Liberty

*And a Hopey Changemas to you as well*

[Arthur McGowan]

I’m too lazy to look it up. What is it?