More on the auto industry bailout

Barney Frank just laid down the law about the auto industry bailout plan on Morning Edition, and said almost everything I was thinking.

Y'know, that we can give AIG $40 billion but we can't spare $25 bil for the largest manufacturing sector of our economy, that we shouldn't be using bankruptcy to undo union gains, that we shouldn't punish union workers for wanting fair wages and pension plans, that health care reform will reduce costs on the auto industry, and that with a bailout come rules on executive compensation and other fun things.

Man, I know way more about economics now than I ever wanted to and it's still not even close to enough.

Listen to Barney.

Overheard...

From Congressman Barney Frank this morning on The Diane Rehm Show, regarding the Republicans' resistance to limiting corporate executive severance pay (a.k.a. the "Golden Parachute") for companies that will be bailed out by the U.S. taxpayers:

"The Bush administration continues to insist that they can't accept any restriction on executive compensation for those companies that are benefiting. Frankly, I talked to the people in the administration about this and they acted [as] if I told the chief rabbi in Jerusalem to eat bacon on Yom Kippur. I mean, it kind of just resonates in a way that threatens their whole worldview".

In other news, it seems a few million people have been restored to sanity. Several new polls have come out in the last 36 hours, all showing Obama once again ahead (some show fairly wide 8 - 9 point leads).

Another bright spot of the financial collapse has to be the sobering of media coverage that has resulted in a happy media absence of everyone's favorite lipstick-wearing, Russia-seeing, executive experience-having, pageant-winning, young Earth creationist hockey mom. So, you know, that's good.