That moral argument is a good one, one whose sentiments I share, and one that's hard to refute.

However, I hope our leaders are practical and not ideological when it comes to this process.

If your neighbor is an idiot who smokes in the house and leaves the stove on all the time and never got his faulty wiring fixed after several warnings, when his house catches on fire, you need to lend him your water hose even though it is his own damn fault and he doesn't deserve a bailout.....because if his house goes up yours is next.

Unfortunately that's the same situation our economy is in, the fire will spread quickly if it's not contained, and people who didn't do anything wrong are going to get burned if we don't loan water hoses to the people who started the fire.

That's not to say we're not going to bitchslap them all once the fire is out and make them pay us back several times over.....but we still have to put out the fire. :2 cents:

I do NOT think they should be bailed out. Companies must fail. I agree that it is sending the wrong message to large companies. Now they won't stress if things are bad and just expect the government to bail them out.

I just found out yesterday from an inside person I have known and dealt with for years, and is going be out of a job because the company he works for is going under and filing bankruptcy..... meanwhile he tells me that this is the reason they can not pay the amount due because of this. I am thankful he was honest enough to leak the info so we could jump on it quick :thumbsup

We manufactured and installed exterior and interior signs for this place, to include 2 large monument signs. After many attempts to collect the bill and endless lies we found out they will not be able to pay us because times are difficult, they don't have the funds and may have to file for bankruptsy, well isn't that just sweet! The fuckers owe us 38K.

Had a meeting today with our attorney and he did not find anything that has been filed as of yet, so we have a head start. I requested we proceed forward with attaching any and all assets or anything we can legally do to tie a knot in their daily activities....

I guess they may need a bailout too!
Hell, this has totally fucked us and I have to stand back up and dig in harder to make a living during this slow season AND without a bailout AND I never caused this predicament.

I am far from done with these fucking crooks :321GFY

These companies failed on their own and they need to pay the price, it sucks, but it's part of doing business....FAIL or SUCCEED.

do you know why health insurance is so expensive? and no the answer isnt because medication is expensive

In the Chrysler bailout in the 70's the unions had to agree to $463 million in cuts. You think those unions will come to the table and agree to cuts like that in today's dollars? I don't and I don't think they'll even be asked to which means this isn't about saving GM, it's about saving an important voting bloc.

GM needs to get their hourly wage plus benefits from nearly $80/hr to Toyotas $35 per hour. These former agreements in Chapter 11 have to be tore up and re-negotiated because last years new hire concessions weren't enough, and we don't have a decade or more to wait for the fruits of last years concessions. Only in a chapter 11 bankruptcy will the unions become the unsecured creditors.

There are about 100 reasons, there is no one reason.

People with health insurance subsidize those who don't have insurance because hospitals have to shift the cost of unpaid emergency room bills to us. Emergency medicine is the most expensive form of care. The average person's medical insurance premiums are $900/yr higher because of this.

Malpractice insurance and lawsuits are another reason, that's a system that needs to be reformed also.

Everybody is going to have to give up something in order for us to get the system fixed. (Doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, trial attorneys, and even us, the consumers of health care)

yes you are right there are many reasons but the one you talk about malpractice is a very serious issue, a doctor can scratch you and it can cost his insurance company 50 million, plus insurance fraud.

We need to hang or put the people who commit insurance fraud away forever, their fraud makes it hard for others to get insurance in turn killing them, we need to kill these fraudsters in public, chop them off limb by limb

Ok now you're exaggerating wildly and it devalues your point. (A doctor scratches you and it costs 50 million? c'mon)

Medical malpractice insurance has been less than 1% of the cost of health care for the past 18 years.
http://www.centerjd.org/air/pr/AIRhealthcosts.pdf

Even if you factor in the practice of "defensive medicine" that some docs practice to avoid potential lawsuits you're looking at maybe 3% or 4% of the nation's total health care bill.

So even if we outlawed malpractice suits altogether, it's not the panacea to health care costs that you think.

There will be some common ground here though.....the left can give up punitive damages and limit lawsuits to lost wages/health care costs/quality of life/attorney fees, if in exchange, the AMA and Insurance companies are willing to give the boot to the doctors that are the worst offenders.
5% of doctors are responsible for half of the malpractice in the U.S.
http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/release.cfm?ID=1222

To date, the AMA and insurance companies have been unwilling to kick these docs out of the profession (the AMA looking out for their members, and insurance companies spread the risk around to all policy holders, and operate on a margin, so higher premiums = higher profits)

why is car insurance so expensive? again stupid law suits and fraud

in countries where there are limits and others things people have quality health care at prices either the govt can afford or the people themselves

stick to facts not fiction please

You haven't posted a single thing to back up your claims. You're the one who said that if a doctor scratches you it costs $50 million and you're telling me to stick with facts not fiction?
:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

How about some data instead of rhetoric? How about a practical solution instead of chopping people limb from limb for insurance fraud like you said earlier?

why forestall the inevitable and make things worse down the road? if we've fucked things up so bad that a global depression is what needs to happen then that's what should happen - essentially starting over and learning from the mistakes that drove this bus off the cliff.

this is like somebody who's having chest pains going to a doctor and the doctor keeps treating the chest pains so the patient feels better - the doctor knows that there are blocked arteries but doesn't do anything about those, just keeps handing out pills, the guy is happy because he doesn't have to undergo a bypass operation and he's got pills for the pain - in a month the guy is dead.

this isn't the 1930's, government was much smaller then, must less infrastructure - people won't starve or be homeless.

the scary thing about a depression is that the way it ended in the 30's was with a World War.

anyway the GM bail out is going to happen - it would be bailed out by Bush and it will surely get a bail out by a Democratic administration and congress.

The problem with your analogy is that there is no bypass operation for the economy.

What we learned from the Great Depression is that government doing nothing makes the panic even worse, and the recession much worse than it has to be.
The current crisis was triggered when the government let Lehman Bros fail. Letting GM fail would trigger another, far worse crisis.

The biggest problem is confidence. If there's no confidence in the markets or in the future of our economy then investment will stop and spending will slow to a crawl and make a depression happen.
Thankfully we elected someone whom I think will do alot to restore confidence and prove to the world that there is a competent person steering the ship.

That was well said :thumbsup I agree 100%:2 cents:

Guys insurance so expensive because of fucking greed nothing more.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/lif...icle602852.ece
also they arent bailing out the auto industry they giving them low interest loans.

No matter what the pundits say you cant have 3 million new people out of work. Also these people buy memberships. This economy goes into a depression news, we will be going down the toilet with everyone else. You dont need a internet connection to live.

Brad and all others who agree with this post, stop for a moment. Look at the label on your shirt, shoes, pants, computer, screen, keyboard and kids toys. And anything else you can grab. Then see how many say "MADE IN THE USA." not a lot I bet.

Were all these companies and industries guilty of bad management and a lack of innovation? Or was it that a company in China could pay it's workers 50 cents an hour and get them to work 60 hours a week? Or something like it.

As for American and Western workers, that's you and me. So what ever you accuse them of you accuse yourself of. You would act no differently if you worked for GM. In fact look around you at this industry, run for our benefit or the benefit of the customers.

This whole recession and it could be a depression is because the West thought it was in some way superior to the East and that giving them all the lowly manufacturing jobs we did not want. While we can sell them technology, services, banking etc.

Well look at what happened. The Chinese are talking about putting a man on the moon, they already put one into space and putting up satellites, a friend of mine invented a new solar panel that's 20% more efficient than the present one so he patented it, the Chinese just stole the process. As for services, banking and insurance well they went down the tubes. We have the Internet and you can see how well we run that, it's a haven for pirates, scammers and free loaders. It could be making billions, it loses billions.

We need to wake up to the fact that as Westerners we have no right to rule the world. We earn the privilege or we lose it.

Yes we need to bail out GM and Ford and yes they need to be controlled. But you need leaders who have the balls to control them and not leaders with their noses in the trough. If the West had not given over it's industry so easily over the last 50 years we would not be in this situation. We might have a few less shirts and coffee makers but we would have a lot more jobs.

And that was what no one understood as they were shipping factories, jobs and industry to a back water where they could pay the worked 20% what US workers earned. What they did not realise was if you keep shipping factories, jobs and industry you also export wealth. In the end you end up with a country that thinks it's the top dog but has to lend money in trillions to keep it afloat.

Part of the problem is the US thinks it's bigger than it is. If it was as big as some thought it would not be in the debt it's in.

there will be way too many black people in Detroit out of work, Obama will never let that many of them go without a job.

Will the bailout keep auto workers employed for 5+ years? I ask because that's what it's going to take before any of these sinking car companies are going to be able to turn things around. In the short term, nobody is going to be buying much of anything, especially not large items like cars, so the bailout money is going to have to last awhile or they will need additional bailouts over the next few years.

At the end of the day, the only way for these car companies to survive is to have people buy their cars. People will only buy their cars if they're cheaper (fuel efficient and repairs/parts) and more reliable (if you save on gas but your car is broken down or has ongoing minor problems costing you hundreds you're still losing) than the competition. People have become so accustomed to buying foreign because domestic cars don't work as well. It will take time just for the psychology to be reversed.

These car companies really screwed over American consumers and created this entire mess. I remember some people used to pony up the extra funds for an American car just to support American companies. It was the 'patriotic' thing to do. The car companies rewarded these people with an inferior product decade after decade. Even the most ardent 'patriot' eventually woke up and stopped buying.