Central Planning Saved the Auto Industry?

My friend posted this Anti-Republican Crusaders pic on his Facebook page.

Now I really could not care less about the idea that George Clooney wants to stand by the guy he voted for. That's probably a good thing. I simply wish to interact with the statement that Obama saved the auto-industry.

This is where the Left and the Right supposedly part ways but such is not the case. George Bush voted for the original 400 billion dollar slush-fund...I mean Bail out. And Obama voted for the 700 billion dollar TARP. However, did he really save the GM?

This is the problem with Central Planners. It is impossible to plan an economy because you can not possibly know what will do well and what will bomb. Central Planning simply attempts to force feed an economy, thereby creating the economic boom/bust cycle.

With General Motors, not only did Obama not save the company, he made it worse in every way. Now that the government basically owns 1/3 of GM, the government has the power over the company's production in ways it never had before. Think of the recent mega-flop, the Chevy Volt. As Patrick Michaels of the New York Post notes in the very first paragraph,

CEO Dan Akerson admitted that General Motors may have to cut back production of the Chevrolet Volt because the 4,600-plus Volts on the market now are about three times the monthly sales.

The fact is, our Central Planners in Washington want to feed us Green crap we don't want. And of course their reaction is to treat the American public like children, who won't take the medicine. Give them more of it. If this were a free market, then GM would have to die or change their entire business model to stay alive. With the government as your guarantor, you can't fail. That is bad.

It is bad when a business can not fail for several reasons, but the obvious one is corruption. How often have you heard of the evils of Walmart. You have heard the accusation of it being a monopoly of sorts. Yet the only true monopolies that exist in society are government run/backed businesses. And when they fail, guess who pays for it? That's right, your grandchildren.


Think of another great example of corruption, Solyndra. As Bloomberg notes right in the title of their article,

Two months before Obama’s visit, accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP warned that Solyndra, the recipient of $535 million in federal loan guarantees, had financial troubles deep enough to “raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.”

Now guess who gets to pay for a business that is not really a business? You guessed right again, your grand-kids.

Central Planning doesn't work because it is impossible to know where free markets will go. Of course, that's the point. Central Planners hate free-markets. Instead they love the corruption of lining their back pockets as this article clearly notes.

• Spent $1.3 million on lobbying activities, including paying 5 different firms over $800,000 to lobby on its behalf.
• Relied heavily on The Revolving Door – 17 lobbyists who have worked on its behalf are connected to over 30 different offices or Members of Congress.
• Lobbied on 18 bills, ranging from the Department of Defense Appropriations Act of 2012 to the Energy and Tax Extenders Act of 2008.
• Lobbied on issues focused on Budget/Appropriations, Defense, Energy/Nuclear, Taxation/Internal Revenue Code, and in particular:

“Issues related to Department of Energy loan program.”
“Lobbied on obtaining language expressing interest in how DoD funds were being spent on solar PV related to country of origin of solar cells and modules.”

So basically, we have a government that either prints money through Federal loans in order to have lobbyists pay politicians back in order to grow a company that has no business. This is first rate corruption right in front of our faces, and George Clooney and the Anti-Republicans want us to accept.

Now again, I don't care that the Anti-Republicans are against Republicans because of the supposed Corporate Welfareism. But the truth is, the Anti-Republicans are self-contradictory in their beliefs. They want their cake and to be able to eat it too. They want Central Planning. Yet without a Free Market that can stop failing companies from being propped up artificially, they will continue to create the boom/bust business cycle that President Obama promised he would rid from our economy.

It is quite the irony that Central Planners and Keynesian Economists, who are responsible for the boom/bust business cycles, wish to convince us of a stable economy.