You don't admire
everything we do??
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
Posted on 10/29/2009 11:44:38 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
White House fights back on Cash for Clunkers
Obama administration goes to battle with Edmunds.com on Cash for Clunkers analysis, saying the program contributed heavily to last quarter's economic expansion.
By David Goldman, CNNMoney.com staff writer
Last Updated: October 29, 2009: 5:51 PM ET
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The Obama administration on Thursday lashed out at a prominent critic of its Cash for Clunkers program, arguing that the popular trade-in initiative helped give the auto industry and the economy a much needed boost in the past few months.
In a blog post on whitehouse.gov, the administration argued that a report on Clunkers by automotive Web site Edmunds.com "doesn't withstand even basic scrutiny" and is based on "implausible assumptions."
On Wednesday, Edmunds.com released a study that argued Cash for Clunkers did not have a great impact on the auto industry. The report said that 690,000 new vehicles were sold under the program last summer, but that only 125,000 of them would not have been sold without the Clunkers rebates.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
Ping!
I read somewhere that this cost taxpayers $20,000 per car or something
The "Cash for Clunkers" program has been a "great success", at least according to the government, and the auto industry. Within days of its kickoff, all $1 billion allocated to the program has been used up by Americans who have eagerly lined up to trade their clunkers for new vehicles. Some refreshingly honest reporting has come from Edmunds.com, a car buying site that is telling the truth, in spite of benefiting from an increase in business and site traffic, due to the program. According to Edmunds, about 200,000 old low mileage cars would normally be traded in, every 3 months, in exchange for more efficient higher mileage cars, without this program. The highest rebate is $4,500, and the lowest is $3,500. If everyone qualified for $4,500 per vehicle, about 222,000 vehicles would have just taken advantage of the government's money. At $3,500, 286,000 vehicles will have been sold. I assume that, given all the raving, the government will eventually get around to assigning more money. It will take at least 2 or 3 months for the legislation to work its way through Congress. Meanwhile, if all buyers have qualified for the higher $4,500 rebate, the "cash for clunkers" program will mean a marginal increase in car sales of 22,000 this quarter. $1 billion divided by 22,000 means a net cost to the government of $45,354 per car. If all buyers only qualify for the $3,500 rebate, it means a marginal increase in sales of about 86,000, or a net cost to the taxpayers of $11,628 per vehicle. In all likelihood, however, there will probably be a mix of vehicles qualifying for various rebates between $3,500 and $4,500. Based upon that assumption, Edmunds.com estimates that the average cost to the taxpayer will be about $20,000 per vehicle. Even most of the marginally extra sales really represent people who were going to buy a new car eventually anyway. They are just buying a bit sooner than they expected. Old clunkers don't last forever, and they are almost all eventually replaced. The government is shifting tomorrow's demand to today, stealing from tomorrow to pay for today, but at great cost to the taxpayer. The "cash for clunkers" program is yet another boondoogle - an expensive waste of precious taxpayer dollars. Government spending should be reined in, in light of the multi-trillion dollar unsustainable deficits that this nation now faces. However, if we must increase government spending, the money would be better spent on infrastructure and education improvements that might help bring jobs back to America, and encourage long term growth, rather than cosmetic improvements to the short term earnings of makers of high mileage automobiles, many of which are foreign companies. This government is, unfortunately, a reflection of the current state of economic immaturity that prevails in America. The vast majority of people, including most people in Congress, do not understand the forces that drive the real economy, and see only the short term view. That is how they get manipulated into allowing the Federal Reserve to behave like a slush fund for big banks, passing programs like TARP into law, and enacting programs like "cash for clunkers" which all abuse the taxpayers. http://seekingalpha.com/article/152909-cash-for-clunkers-may-cost-up-to-45-354-per-vehicle
I hate HTML...
The Edmunds report also said that taxpayers shelled out an average of $24,000 per car sold as a result of the program.
Yeah, but I think the adminstration is right on this. Edmunds didn't say $20,000 per rebate. It said 4/5's of the cars would have sold anyway, so that it took 5 rebates or $24,000 in rebates to sell one new car beyond what would have sold anyway.
There is no way to verify how many cars would have sold without the program. It's just impossible to know.
I would like to know the true cost with administration overhead of a rebate. I think that would be more informative number. And Likely we would find that a $4000 rebate cost us $6000 to deliver.
br all over the place <>
shouldn’t Obama just ride above it all and just take it? The stuff the media tell republicans to do, all the time.
Another failed policy of the 0ba-Mao administration!
I noticed.
“There is no way to verify how many cars would have sold without the program. It’s just impossible to know.”
Sure there is. They keep statistics on this going back quite a ways. 200k per month in the US are eventually replaced, regardless of the subsidy or not. With the subsidy you have about 280k per month. An increase, but again, the marginal cost on the increase over and above normal sales, is very cost-inefficient.
Let’s get rid of these SOBs in 2010, send them to jail and get rid of Obama in 2012 and send HIM to jail too. There is so much of his plan that is unconstitutional.
Really. People with an lifelong interest in the business can't know that...but Hussein, whose economic intelligence in the real world is ZERO, can tell us how many JOBS were saved by his PORKULUS SPENDING?
I've seen a lot of Presidents, but the cabal of brain dead short-bus kids runnin' this White House is the absolute worst.
“Edmunds.com isn’t a real online magazine.”
If O says it ain’t so there’s nothing else to be said. We must all believe. Seriously, it won’t be long before no one will be allowed to speak out if we don’t start screaming now!
Your math is screwy. If most of the cars would have been sold anyway then the cash paid for them would not have been necessary and so was wasted.
Perhaps an exact sales number without this program is not possible but it is relatively easy, given the past history of sales to come to a reasonable number. And the point about perfectly good used cars coming off the market (destroyed) and raising prices on those remaining is well made. It is another example of a very poorly thought out program and one in which the short term political benefit far out weighed anything else.
Cash for Clunkers gave the economy a false, a fake boost.
The Economy did NOT go up 3% last quarter -— it is , obviously, and clearly, still on the ropes.
A lie, a fake, like “Net Neutrality” and “Card Check” -— and all their other falsely named programs,
all of which are designed to do the opposite of their happy sweet and fake names.
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