Two major car companies, General Motors (GM) and Chrysler, went bankrupt during the Great Recession. The Government had to make a choice; to get involved with helping them, which would help the economy, or let them fight for themselves. Both choices would leave some American citizens mad at the government. The Government decided to help them by establishing the Auto Bailout along with other programs like TARP. Although some think the Auto Bailout didn’t help small supplier companies, it was the right move for the government to take because it helped stop our economy from going further into a depression.
The Auto Bailout started in 2008 after the Great Recession occurred in 2007. Its purpose was to loan money to GM and Chrysler to keep them from shutting down. If the car companies went bankrupt, the supplier companies would also go bankrupt and many citizens would lose their jobs. Giving loans to them would increase economic activity and help bring the US out of the Great Recession. At first, the Government was only going to loan $17.4 billion for the bailout. GM wanted $13.4 billion and Chrysler wanted $4 billion. The total cost was around $80 billion. This extra amount of money came from the Government when they bought all the stocks from GM and forced them to get a new CEO for equity. Chrysler was forced to let the foreign car company, Fiat, run Chrysler for the time being. The Government did this to try and help both car companies from making decisions that would impact the economy negatively. All the stocks bought from GM were sold which helped to make up money owed to the Government. With this “final sale of GM stock, [this] important chapter of our nation’s history is now closed” (Treasury Secretary, Jacob J. Lew). The Auto...
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Amity Shlaes tells the story of the Great Depression and the New Deal through the eyes of some of the more influential figures of the period—Roosevelt’s men like Rexford Tugwell, David Lilienthal, Felix Frankfurter, Harold Ickes, and Henry Morgenthau; businessmen and bankers like Wendell Willkie, Samuel Insull, Andrew Mellon, and the Schechter family. What arises from these stories is a New Deal that was hostile to business, very experimental in its policies, and failed in reviving the economy making the depression last longer than it should. The reason for some of the New Deal policies was due to the President’s need to punish businessmen for their alleged role in bringing the stock market crash of October 1929 and therefore, the Great Depression.
In 2009, the Obama Administration bailed out the General Motors and Chrysler automobile companies. Having begun their decent into bankruptcy in 2008, losing thousands of jobs, sales plummeting forty percent, with a high threat of liquidation, General Motors and Chrysler finally reached government-assisted chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2009. Obama allocated eighty five billion dollars in TARP funds to the auto industry, close to fifty billion dollars of it going to General Motors. The allocated funds were successful in keeping two of the Big Three auto companies afloat, keeping taxes from sky rocketing and saving millions of jobs.
Mercedes-Benz was looking to build their first auto manufacturing plant in the United States in 1993. The company was intent on locating in North Carolina because of their experience with their large truck division plant that was located in that state. The company’s officials did not intend on visiting Alabama and was not considering the state when Governor Jim Folsom, Jr. and other officials signaled their intent to bid on the new plant. This “give-away” was viewed negatively in a state that has a poor education system and under-funded pension system and caused Folsom to lose re-election in the next election to Fob James. The “corporate welfare” was a major issue and the expectations from the project have never been realized. In fact, William Gunther, an economist at the University of Alabama stated that the job calculations are wishful thinking and “we are suffering from winner’s curse” (Myerson, 1996).
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Miron, J. (2010). The case against the fiscal stimulus. Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, 33(2), 519-529. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.proxy1.ncu.edu/docview/347581655?accountid=28180
Not only were millions of Americans been put out of work due to these manager’s actions, the American financial markets themselves were pushed to the brink of collapse. Despite the fact that the global financial markets, in reality, are not perfectly efficient, there is a corrective mechanism built into the day-to-day trading in the market. When prices are driven down by large sells, either by large investors or a movement in a stock, there are usually new buyers for these stocks at the cheaper price. Managers of...
Klier, Thomas H. "From Tail Fins to Hybrids: How Detroit Lost its Dominance of the U.S. Auto
What at first seemed to be an economic slump turned into a brutal crisis, and all eyes looked to the Government and Federal Reserve to help the economy. With the large amount of debt the economy faced the Federal Reserve stepped in and bailed out the banks in an attempt to smooth over the financial struggles of the economy. The banks that survived took precautionary measures, making it difficult for businesses and consumers to borrow (Love, 2011). Thus leading to businesses failing and less jobs being created. The large amount of debt had also taken its toll on the job market. Between 2007 and 2009 employment dropped by 8 million workers, causing the unemployment rate to go from 4.7 percent to 10 percent (McConnell, 2012).
...conomic recession we can conclude that we learn very less from history. The same uncontrolled and market that resulted in the destitution of the 1930’s still caused the economy at large to claps for families to loose there savings, houses, and jobs. President Roosevelt took one of the great dissensions of the depression era when he announce the Emergency Banking Act and the Glass-Steagall Act which banded the involvement of banks in the stoke market (foner, 800). By taking such action Government was able to stabilize the financial system. But today politicians choose to ignore this great historic lesson that could have saved us from the national disaster that is still affecting many households. If they still are refusing to put a tougher control measure in place to control the banking system, we could end up in a worst situation than even what we have seen in 2008.
Florida, R. (2009). Passing the Buck-Economy in Crisis?. In g. Goshgarian & K. Krueger (2011),
The goal of the economic stimulus package is to improve the economic health of the United States. According to Keynesian economic theory, an increase in government spending should increase the Nation’s GDP . That is the main purpose of the stimulus package. The question is how much is this package expected to improve the economy? According to Macroeconomic Advisers (a forecasting firm), the GDP was expected to increase by 3.2%, while unemployment should fall by 1.1%, an...
...cording to Mishkin’s Paper “The Financial Crisis and the Federal Reserve”, the bail-out amount is 700 billion.)
I think General Motors is responsible for the economic problems of Flint, Michigan. The Chairman and CEO of General Motors announced that ten plants would be closing, including one in Flint, Michigan. The reason behind this is to ship business and jobs to cheaper countries such as Mexico, where workers do not have to be paid much for the same amount of work. This saves the company millions of dollars. The General Motor plants closing was the catalyst that caused more problems for the working class economy of Flint. Plant workers did not have extra money to spend, causing local shops to close or move to different cities. People lost their main source of income, their house and their trust in General Motors. While this might have been a great
...avoiding even deeper collapse of the global GDP and of employment. The government also created the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), for the establishment and administration of the treasury fund, in an effort to control the ongoing crisis.
The American auto industry is in a crisis, their vehicles are not in demand and they need government bailouts to keep their businesses afloat. American vehicles are not on demand because people want fuel-efficient, the car companies that are not at the point of bankruptcy, longer lasting vehicles, and hybrid cars. The American car companies are at a point of bankruptcy and people don’t want to buy cars from a company that may not be there in a couple of months. The foreign car companies are doing well and they much more dependable now that we are in an economic crisis. American cars are not fuel-efficient, not as long lasting, and don’t make many hybrids, so this affects their business negatively. I got some ideas that will make American car companies be on top of the industry again.