The White House Goes All In On Green Jobs

Joe Biden presided over a summit in Philadelphia of his Middle Class Task Force today, and the subject was green jobs. Vice President Biden had an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer today making the case.

So what exactly are "green jobs"? They provide products and services that use renewable energy resources, reduce pollution, and conserve energy and natural resources.

Investing in green jobs also means keeping up with the modern economy. At a time when good jobs at good wages are harder and harder to come by, we must find new, innovative opportunities.

According to the Council of Economic Advisers, green jobs pay 10 to 20 percent more than other jobs. They also are more likely to be union jobs. Building a new power grid, manufacturing solar panels, weatherizing homes and office buildings, and renovating schools are just a few of the ways to create high-quality green jobs that strengthen the foundation of this country.

It's the ultimate win-win. Green jobs can revitalize impoverished communities by bringing back industry, increase unionization and the rise of the middle class, add to re-industrialization, reduce energy costs for the whole country, make us energy independent and save the planet. Most important at this point, they can help increase GDP, as Gar Lipow explains:

The main extra benefits economists overlook are the helpful side effects other than mitigating the climate crisis -- "positive externalities," in economic jargon.

For example, about half of all economic activity takes place in climate-conditioned buildings. Greening these buildings could increase[PDF] productivity [PDF] by around 10 percent. Similarly, switching most long-haul freight trucking miles to long-haul freight rail would increase productivity in transportation. Many energy-saving practices in industry, such as reducing scrapping and reducing spills and other types of emitting stoppages, would increase productivity as well. A switch to wind and solar would reduce labor productivity in the electricity sector; the conventional wisdom is that a switch to organic agriculture would do the same in that sector, though I think this is much less certain that people think. At any rate, sectors where productivity would rise greatly outnumber the tiny sectors where it might fall -- resulting in a huge net increase, probably greater than 5 percent for the economy as a whole.

Another example would be huge benefits to health. Eliminating or greatly reducing the use of fossil fuels would reduce air pollution, water pollution, and exposure to toxics. A switch to organic and low input agriculture would decrease direct ingestion of toxics, and increase available vitamins and minerals in food. Whether such a switch alone would encourage a switch to healthy increase in the consumption of non-starchy vegetables and fresh fruits I don't know, but it certainly could be part of policy that accomplished this. Overall, I think it is almost impossible that switching from fossil fuels to renewables and efficiency, that switching from toxic soil-consuming agriculture to non-toxic soil building agriculture, from unsustainable to sustainable forestry, would not increase GDP.

Because so much of the Administration's success depends on major increases in GDP after the recession ends to close the debt and reduce unemployment, they know that green jobs which can spur industrial growth are crucial. We're seeing much more activity in this area than even talked about during the campaign.

Here's a liveblog of the summit, with remarks from Biden and green jobs advocate Van Jones, among others. And here's a staff report from the White House going into more detail on the preferred policies on green jobs from the Administration, in the stimulus and beyond. Finally, the Departments of Energy and Housing & Urban Development have announced a partnership to spend $16 billion dollars in stimulus funds to retrofit and weatherize existing homes, lowering energy consumption in those homes by 20-40% and creating thousands of jobs.

These aren't bumper stickers or slogans, these are real policies that will have a lasting effect.

Cautious But Correct

Cautious Obama returned today in a trip to Canada:

President Barack Obama stepped cautiously in his first foreign trip Thursday, refraining from asking Canada to rethink its plans to withdraw troops from Afghanistan and saying changes to the North American Free Trade Agreement can wait. The new U.S. president was cheered by crowds in the snowy Canadian capital and responded by declaring "I love this country" at a news conference. On his way out of town, he stopped at a downtown market, where he delighted onlookers by shopping for gifts for his family.

In the news conference with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Obama acknowledged that he has said NAFTA does too little to protect U.S. workers and the environment. Canada, the United State's largest trading partner, is leery of changes to the deal, and Obama said robust trade helps both nations.

Noting that NAFTA has side agreements on labor and the environment, he added, "If those side agreements mean anything, then they might as well be incorporated into the main body of the agreements so that they can be effectively enforced." He said he hopes there eventually will be a way to do so "that is not disruptive to the extraordinarily important trade relationships" between the U.S. and Canada.

This is cautious, but generally in the right. Side agreements respecting labor and the environment should be embedded and enforceable, not on the side and easily evaded.

We have a crucially important trade relationship with Canada, and I don't think anybody, on the left or the right, is looking to change that. But the facts are that both Americans and Canadians see problems with NAFTA that they would like reformed, and crying "protectionism!" at the very raising of criticism of a corporate-written trade deal is completely ridiculous, as are the comparisons of "Buy America" laws in the stimulus (which has been the standard in federal purchases since the 1930s), and, bizarrely, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act (which didn't even affect the Depression anyway, given that trade at the time was maybe 4% of total economic output). And at a time of economic downturn, I don't think anyone should apologize ever for wanting to bolster American industry and innovation.

Transforming The Domestic Economy

The rage over the "Buy American" provisions in the economic recovery package are symptomatic of the entire reason why we're surging toward economic disaster. Let's go over this again: provisions like this are CURRENT LAW for federal procurement. When the federal government purchases, they purchase American goods. Just like every other country does. China is building a huge railroad with their initial stimulus package made entirely out of Chinese products. Every country does this. It's not controversial in the least.

Yet, it's only controversial when America, who has been selling out their industrial and manufacturing base for so long that multinationals expect nothing less, tries to implement the exact same policy they and the rest of the world have been doing for decades. This is ridiculous.

Last week the House of Representatives version of the bill stirred alarm in the EU and Canada by demanding that all iron and steel bought to rebuild the country’s crumbling infrastructure has to be American made.

Anxious lobbying by the EU has fallen on deaf ears as explicitly protectionist language was added to the Senate bill leaving it open to legal challenge under the rules of the World Trade Organisation (bullshit, federal procurement has never been and will never be subject to these trade agreements -ed) [...]

Big multinational corporations, including Caterpillar and General Electric which depend on foreign manufacturing plants, have launched a rearguard attempt to remove the Buy American provisions from the bill. The Emergency Committee for American Trade, another lobby group, is sending out shrill alarms that the stimulus bill could trigger a trade war that would ultimately damage American interests.

“Protectionism is the crackcocaine of economics. It may provide a high. It’s addictive and it leads to economic death,” said Richard Fisher, president of the Dallas Federal.

The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act was put into place by corporate execs who wanted their companies to profit from the Depression. This measure is being opposed by the ancestors of those corporate execs who want to profit again. Any parallel between the two is completely absurd. It's the inverse.

Which is why even the free-traders in the Obama Administration are zipping their lips about these provisions.

Free-traders on President Obama’s economic team are suppressing concerns over Buy American provisions in the stimulus, derided as protectionist by corporate lobbyists.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Obama’s top economic adviser, Lawrence Summers, have raised no objections to tough provisions in the House stimulus bill intended to ensure that U.S. iron and steel are used in any infrastructure projects, such as the construction of highways and bridges, even if they add to the project’s cost.

Nor have they complained about a provision in the Senate bill that would go much further by calling for the use of U.S. iron, steel and other manufactured goods in infrastructure spending in the stimulus.

Some interests have also called for language to ensure that any spending on health technology in the stimulus goes to U.S. firms, and not those in India.

Support in both chambers means the iron and steel provisions, at a minimum, seem likely to be included in the bill sent to President Obama’s desk, despite an outcry from business groups and foreign governments that argue they could set off a new trade war.

Seriously, tough crap. The bottom line is that creating American manufacturing jobs multiplies the stimulus, and goes a long way to transforming what's so sick about this economy. We can leap from bubble to bubble forever, creating enormous pain and suffering in the down times, or we can build an economy that works, based on making things, and selling things that you make because people want to buy them, and because they can afford them because they have a job with a living wage. More from John Judis, who is absolutely correct that this would finally spur our huge global trade deficit that has been killing the economy for years.

American Made

I thought the most hollow rhetoric of the Presidential campaign was President Obama's vow to "stop tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas." It was a direct appropriation of a John Kerry line from 2004, and it had no oomph to it, no flourish, nothing beyond the boilerplate. In fact, this was symptomatic of all of Obama's rhetoric on trade. I always thought he believed at least nominally in the Washington consensus, that neoliberal trade was part of the globalized world and there was no way out of it. The fight over the "buy American" provisions in the stimulus plan are starting to confirm this belief.

The stimulus bill passed by the House last night contains a controversial provision that would mostly bar foreign steel and iron from the infrastructure projects laid out by the $819 billion economic package.

A Senate version, yet to be acted upon, goes further, requiring, with few exceptions, that all stimulus-funded projects use only American-made equipment and goods.

Proponents of expanding the "Buy American" provisions enacted during the Great Depression, including steel and iron manufacturers and labor unions, argue that it is the only way to ensure that the stimulus creates jobs at home and not overseas.

Opponents, including some of the biggest blue-chip names in American industry, say it amounts to a declaration of war against free trade. That, they say, could spark retaliation from abroad against U.S. companies and exacerbate the global financial crisis.

And today the Telegraph of London reports that Obama will work to gut the proposal.

The White House has promised to review the protectionist proposals, passed last week by Democratic allies in the House of Representatives, which would ban the use of non-American steel in the $800 billion of construction projects.

Privately, diplomats are withering about the "excitable" US rhetoric in support of the Buy America proposals...Europe is being helped by lobbyists on behalf of American companies like Caterpillar and General Electric...

They are hoping that free trade sympathisers in the Senate commerce committee will strike out clauses that would violate America's obligations to EU nations under World Trade Organisation rules. America has similar obligations to Canada and Mexico as part of Nafta, the North American Free Trade Area.

This is nothing more than American industry and foreign suppliers conspiring to maintain the status quo that has destroyed American manufacturing for 50 years. It's a legitimate concern that stimulus money, designed to spur American economic activity, would "leak out" of the US economy without benefiting US workers and taxpayers. The Buy America Act of 1982 already stipulates that recipients of federal money would use domestic suppliers in a variety of contracts, so this provision would simply extend existing law to the stimulus, and would not be subject to trade agreements. As David Sirota explains, Obama campaigned on this, and now he's looking to the Senate Commerce Committee to bail him out of his lukewarm commitments.

Further the Economic Policy Institute shows the crucial nature of this provision.

Multinational companies such as General Electric and Caterpillar, and their allies in the Chamber of Commerce, are attacking “Buy American” provisions included in the economic recovery bill passed by the House on January 28th. They claim that these provisions will provoke a “trade war” with foreign governments, but foreign governments have long histories of supporting their own domestic companies. These companies are self-interested, simply wanting unlimited access to imports, many of which are illegally subsidized and unfairly traded. U.S. and foreign multinational companies (MNCs) were responsible for nearly two-thirds of all U.S. imports in 2006, as shown in the chart below. U.S. firms led the way with $678 billion in imports, 36.4% of all U.S. goods imports.

Companies like Caterpillar, which will benefit from billions of dollars of infrastructure spending in the stimulus package, want unfettered access to cheap steel from countries like China, which poured more than $15 billion into energy subsidies into that sector in 2007 alone. Chinese steel imports more than doubled between January and November, while U.S. steel production fell nearly 40%. The Chamber of Commerce, which also opposes further “Buy American” provisions, represents the interests of U.S. companies like Caterpillar and IBM as well as foreign multinationals like Toyota and Siemens, all represented on its board of directors. Congress has finally realized that what’s good for big business is not always good for America, and that new rules are needed to rein in runaway corporations. That’s real progress.

Simply put, domestic suppliers exist on an unlevel playing field. Toyota wouldn't exist without generous subsidies from the Japanese government. Our multinationals that are allegedly based in the United States make up for that by racing to the very bottom for their materials and undercutting American workers. It ought to stop.

Either The Economy Is Fixed In 100 Days Or We Revolt!

Paul Krugman appears to be in contact with the Obama transition team, which is very positive news. It may be why the recovery package is expanding in the face of more bad economic news:

Faced with worsening forecasts for the economy, President-elect Barack Obama is expanding his economic recovery plan and will seek to create or save 3 million jobs in the next two years, up from a goal of 2.5 million jobs set just last month, several advisers to Mr. Obama said Saturday.

Even Mr. Obama’s more ambitious goal would not fully offset as many as 4 million jobs that some economists are projecting might be lost in the coming year, according to the information he received from advisers in the past week. That job loss would be double the total this year and could push the nation’s unemployment rate past 9 percent if nothing is done.

The new job target was set after a meeting last Tuesday in which Christina D. Romer, who is Mr. Obama’s choice to lead his Council of Economic Advisers, presented information about previous recessions to establish that the current downturn was likely to be “more severe than anything we’ve experienced in the past half-century,” according to an Obama official familiar with the meeting. Officials said they were working on a plan big enough to stimulate the economy but not so big to provoke major opposition in Congress.

Mr. Obama’s advisers have projected that the multifaceted economic plan would cost $675 billion to $775 billion. It would be the largest stimulus package in memory and would most likely grow as it made its way through Congress, although Mr. Obama has secured Democratic leaders’ agreement to ban spending on pork-barrel projects.

We can't afford to have a spending package less than this at this point. The economy has truly cratered nationwide, even in areas that didn't experience a housing boom, as the slump ripples through the greater economy. They're stopping jury trials because the states can't afford them, for crying out loud (how exactly does that not violate due process?). This, by the way, is why direct aid for state and local governments is as crucial as these public works investments.

But what about the state of things AFTER two years of deficit spending? We will be facing a world much different from the one that fueled economic growth in the 1990s and the early part of this decade. The bubbles will have been stamped out and unlikely to resurface, at least for a while. Consumer spending as an engine covering 2/3 of economic growth, so that our collective future depends on whether or not kids like the newest Elmo doll, is unsustainable, and since wages are stagnant, unlikely to continue. What is going to take the place of these drivers of growth? Krugman looks at this today as well.

A few months ago a headline in the satirical newspaper The Onion, on point as always, offered one possible answer: “Recession-Plagued Nation Demands New Bubble to Invest In.” Something new could come along to fuel private demand, perhaps by generating a boom in business investment.

But this boom would have to be enormous, raising business investment to a historically unprecedented percentage of G.D.P., to fill the hole left by the consumer and housing pullback. While that could happen, it doesn’t seem like something to count on.

A more plausible route to sustained recovery would be a drastic reduction in the U.S. trade deficit, which soared at the same time the housing bubble was inflating. By selling more to other countries and spending more of our own income on U.S.-produced goods, we could get to full employment without a boom in either consumption or investment spending.

That is the answer, in my view - a reindustrialization of America. The hope is that the investments in areas like alternative energy will spur innovation and create new industries that America can export. But that's not going to happen overnight. It's going to take at least a decade to get manufacturing where it probably needs to be to bring the trade deficit back into balance. The other question, which Krugman addresses separately, is who gets stuck with decreasing trade surpluses in this zero-sum game. Clearly, if the exports are related to energy efficiency and aternative fuels, the answer is the Middle East. But if it relates to the source of most of our trade deficit, namely China, I don't think they will allow it, and they've been buying up our debt for years and years to make sure they have at least a partial veto on the resurgence of American manufacturing.

Which means that restoring our economy will be a long, slow, drawn-out process, lasting not a year or two but much longer. And this entire time, Republican know-nothings will promote impatience and start blaming the solutions as the problem. You saw an early example of this when the right, aided by a compliant media, cherry-picked a large infrastructure request from US mayors, finding one or two pieces that are supposed to invalidate the entire idea of federal spending. There will be plenty more of that, solemn speeches on the floor of the Congress along the lines of John McCain's "OMG $3 million for bear DNA!" nonsense. Plenty of hack groups like "Citizens Against Government Waste" will pop up with every spending request to call it wasteful, Republicans in the Oversight Committee of the House will demand hearings, the Pete Peterson Foundation will put out lamentation after lamentation about the soaring deficit, a newly energized set of conservative radio talkers will hammer these themes day after day, and conservative revisionist historians will influence media groupthink by questioning whether all this public works spending can even help the economy. By this time Republican candidates for national office will be getting lots of attention by slamming all the "pointless budget-busting porkbarrel spending" that is hurting the economy. And this will only get worse as the years go on:

But once the economy has perked up a bit, there will be a lot of pressure on the new administration to pull back, to throw away the economy’s crutches. And if the administration gives in to that pressure too soon, the result could be a repeat of the mistake F.D.R. made in 1937 — the year he slashed spending, raised taxes and helped plunge the United States into a serious recession.

The point is that it may take a lot longer than many people think before the U.S. economy is ready to live without bubbles. And until then, the economy is going to need a lot of government help.

This is not completely fated to happen, a technological breakthrough could spur new economic activity, and reducing wasteful health care or military spending would at least cool the deficit and make that money far more productive. But in general terms, failed conservative policies have put us into a ditch, and it's going to take a long time to dig our way out. Human nature in general is not exactly oriented toward unlimited patience or long-term planning. Conservatives are practically counting on that.

Welcome To The ZIRP

The Federal Reserve cut their key interest rate as low as they can go - virtually to zero, although the bank rate is more like .5%. The investors loved it! Well, today they did, anyway. But this is the final tool in the shed for the Fed, and a zero interest rate policy (or ZIRP!) hasn't shown much success elsewhere in the world:

There's a bit of room left to go, since the rate isn't actually zero, but essentially, the Fed has run out of ability to use standard monetary policy. It's broken and it doesn't work anymore. Deflationary expectations have set in, and folks figure that a dollar a year from now will be worth more than dollar now, so even borrowing at zero or .5% doesn't seem like that good a deal.

As Bloomberg pointed out, the Bank of Japan kept rates at zero for five years, and it did squat. So the Fed has announced that it will use non-standard measures like buying up government backed housing bonds, and is considering buying long term treasuries, whose rates simply aren't dropping, even as people accept negative returns to buy short term securities. (They are doing so because the Fed was paying 1% interest on reserves, and treasuries can be used as reserves, which is why the Fed dropped the amount they pay on reserves to .25%.) [...]

Deflation can always be fixed, in the worst case scenario, the government could just send everyone a gift card for $50,000 which expires in 3 months and tell them to use it or lose it. But it can't be fixed by giving money to banks who won't lend it to the real economy, and even pushing down long bond rates really isn't going to matter as long as there are deflationary expectations.

So, expect the Fed to spend a LOT of money and get very little in return until someone uses some of the money to buy a clue. In the meantime, remember, you're probably going to have to pay this money back, no matter how little it does, unless the government manages to make itself go bankrupt. In theory the US need never go bankrupt, but a lot more of this, and it may turn out to be the lesser evil.

Paul Krugman calls it the liquidity trap - the Federal Reserve can't create a short-term shock to get the economy going at all, and the banks can't be prodded to lend, and the quantity of money is meaningless because bonds are worth essentially just as much. The Fed is also planning quantitative easing, basically increasing the money supply. But when money is the same as bonds, what's the difference? As Ian says, we're exploding the deficit and getting little in return.

The other worry is deflation; consumer prices fell at a record rate last month, which means that retailers can't sell enough to make a profit, which means they cut jobs, which means less people have money, and prices have to drop to sell anything, etc. Nasty business. While Kevin Drum notes that the drop in prices is entirely due to cheaper oil, taking that out of the equation there was virtually no change in inflation, which is unsustainable.

The textbook tells us to engage massive fiscal spending, as nobody is equipped to spend at all right now except for government. But Robert Reich is absolutely correct, IMO, that spending won't be enough.

Keynesianism is based on two highly-questionable assumptions in today's world. The first is that American consumers will eventually regain the purchasing power needed to keep the economy going full tilt. That seems doubtful. Median incomes dropped during the last recovery, adjusted for inflation, and even at the start weren't much higher than they were in the 1970s. Consumers kept spending by borrowing against their homes. But that's over. The second assumption seems even more doubtful: that, even if middle-class Americans had the money to continue the old pattern of spending, they could do so forever. Yet the social and environmental costs would soon overwhelm us. Even if climate change were not an imminent threat to the planet, the rest of the world will not allow American consumers to continue to use up a quarter of the planet's natural resources and generate an even larger share of its toxic wastes and pollutants.

The current deep recession is a nightmare for people who have lost their jobs, homes, and savings; and it's part of a continuing nightmare for the very poor. That's why we have to do all we can to get the economy back on track. But many other Americans are discovering they can exist surprisingly well buying fewer of the things they never really needed to begin with. What we most lack, or are in danger of losing, are the things we use in common -- clean air, clean water, public parks, good schools, and public transportation, as well as social safety nets to catch those of us who fall.

That's why it's not enough to spend, spend, spend, until the housing market comes back or everyone gets excited about the latest iGadget again. Indeed we need to create a new economy that is not based so heavily on unsustainable consumer spending. President-elect Obama has the right idea in talking about a green economy - not only would the money spent go into something of value, like the commons, but the emphasis on green technologies could spur innovation and perhaps generate something we can export for a change. Right now America is the number one exporter of raw materials in the world - we make precious little, give away our material wealth and do nothing but consume. When you strip away the CDOs and the CDSes and the subprime lenders, THAT's the problem. We're a bubble-based economy out of necessity. Without re-industrializing America, without making products the rest of the world wants, that will never change.

James Boyce has more, and believe me, I gave you the GOOD news.

They Work Hard For The Money

So after driving to Capitol Hill this time, the heads of the Big 3 auto companies are due for their ritual stoning in front of Congress today, as they continue to prostate themselves and beg for funding to keep them alive. This time, they came prepared with plans for viability, and the promises are wide and deep. The three top executives will lower their salary to $1. They'll cut product lines and consolidate operations. They'll work on comprehensive health care reform, fair trade and even producing more fuel efficient cars, though many like Robert Reich are skeptical about that last offer, especially considering that gas has fallen back to under $2 a gallon and demand for bigger vehicles and SUVs may be creeping back up. I've read that getting the real junkers off the road and replacing them with even moderately efficient cars saves a lot more gas than getting everyone in an economical car into a Prius, so incentives for trading in those cars on the low end would actually be the best policy, and Ford has suggested that as well.

Even the UAW is offering concessions in return for the loans, which flies in the face of conservative propaganda about fat-cat unions destroying the industry (which makes sense, because, you know, without the industry, there is no union):

The United Auto Workers said Wednesday it is willing to change its contracts with U.S. automakers and accept delayed payments of billions of dollars to a union-run health care trust to do its part to help the struggling companies secure $34 billion in government loans.

United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger said the union will suspend the jobs bank, in which laid-off workers are paid up to 95 percent of their salaries while not working, but he did not give specifics or a timetable of when the program will end.

"We're going to sit down and work out the mechanics," Gettelfinger said at a news conference after meeting with local union officials. "We're a little unclear on some of the issues."

In truth, the union contracts are not a problem, it's the fact that a country without high wages and benefits and free healthcare is competing with a bunch of countries that have all that, and hopefully we'll see people finally understand that fact. And by the way, this is on top of UAW restructuring from 2007 that lowered the wage structure under even nonunion auto plants in the South and transfered responsibility for the pension plan to the union as well. So this is not the first time the UAW has lent a hand.

GM and Chrysler are even considering a pre-arranged bankruptcy in exchange for bailout money, to reorganize the entire sector.

My point is that the auto companies are bending over backwards for an accommodation with Congress, all for a mere fraction of what Emperor Paulson has spent on the TARP program, without hardly any oversight at all. And yet the votes still aren't there, at the moment.

One day after the auto companies sent survival plans to Capitol Hill in an urgent plea for bailout billions from the fund, Sen. Harry Reid told The Associated Press in an interview, "I just don't think we have the votes to do that now."

I don't think the automakers are saints or anything. They're still spending a fortune on lobbying and campaign contributions. And Ford wants Congress to block California's plan to regulate tailpipe emissions, saying that there ought to be one national standard (and it should be California's - 16 states have signaled they would adopt it, and it is completely in government's interest and mandate to reduce greenhouse gas emissions). But this really shows how completely in bed Congress is with the financial industry. The CEO of Citigroup didn't have to agree to take $1 in salary. The head of Goldman Sachs didn't have to drive to Washington. Nobody on Wall Street had to agree to major reregulation as a precondition for a bailout.

An auto industry bailout is unpopular but so was the financial bailout. But that didn't stop lawmakers from taking seriously the threats of depression if the banks didn't get practically no-strings-attached money. Automakers are also playing up fears of serious economic collapse but lawmakers seem less concerned.

I think one difference here is that Congress actually understands how auto companies make money, while they can't fathom the financial industry's complex arrangements, and tend to just trust the "very serious people" that the banks need hundreds of billions to survive. Also, if Detroit contributes to campaigns, Wall Street bankrolls them. And there's the skillful PR campaign from the right that the carmakers' struggles are all the fault of the unions, when that doesn't come into play with the financial industry.

It's still pretty shameful that an industry that pushes paper back and forth and pretends to create wealth can ask for and receive hundreds of billions of dollars by snapping their fingers, while companies representing working people that make things for a living have to grovel and beg. A deindustrialized America is an America that will not function as a first-rate power in the future.

CAP has a good report on the way forward for the auto industry - they call it a "bridge loan to the 21st century."