Transfusions don't stop auto industry's bleeding

The federal government now wants to shore up ailing auto suppliers with a $5 billion bailout, despite a rising chorus of criticism against more government bailouts. The public is beginning to see bailouts as "transfusions," rather than a closing of the wound, and is losing patience with them. The "wound" is falling housing values and toxic mortgage-backed securities which have paralyzed financial markets - not the auto industry.

The hastily approved $787 billion "stimulus package," including aggressive spending programs unrelated to declining home values or the constricted capital markets, is tantamount to administering repeated, expensive blood transfusions rather than stopping the bleeding. Of course, if the blood flow at the wound eventually coagulates (one day the economy will rebound) then the transfusions can be claimed to have worked. But the delayed cure would have come at a crippling cost to the next generations of taxpayers.

Concerning help for "Detroit," there may be no manufacturing industry more fundamental to the US economy than the auto industry, accounting as it does for more than 10 percent of American jobs. Detroit is not without fault, but it has been dealt a lethal blow by the consumer credit crunch which it did not create. At a nine million-plus vehicle annual selling rate (three million below the scrappage rate), no auto company, American or foreign, can survive. But bailouts, a few billion dollars at a time, first to the auto manufacturers and now to suppliers, are both a political and business nightmare.