Excuse me for butting in. New car sales are way off. At one point they were down to 9M a year from 16M. The way I count
it, that means at least 12M less used cars since the economy tanked.
Right. It had very little to do with Cash for Clunkers.
No matter what did or didn’t happen to USED car sales, Cash for Clunkers was a dismal failure at “stimulating” NEW car sales, which was its intended purpose. It failed just like the tax incentive for buying a house failed to stimulate the housing market. Everything the Obama/Pelosi/Reid Cartel has tried has failed miserably to stimulate anything other than GOP voters.
Right. I tried to get good figures for this discussion but so many used car sales are off the books that everything is guesstemites. With fewer new cars bought, that means fewer used cars for sale because people are holding onto their used cars and driving them. Then destroy hundreds of thousands of the used cars of people that did buy, change credit policies to make used car purchases in lots harder to do for most people, and you have a mess.