19/11/2008 10:32:59 am
Mitt Romney: Let Detroit Go Bankrupt. Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts and candidate this year for the Republican nomination, has an interesting op-ed in New York Times. His point is:

"If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won′t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed. Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course - the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check."

Quite straight talk. Of course he is right. If there is a bail-out of the car industry, consumers, producers and tax-payers will suffer. It would start an endless line of bail-out seekers. And it would be a horrible start of the economic part of Obama′s Presidency.