Eli,
I know you are on vacation, and I hope your private island is treating you well, but try to look at today's editorial from the NY Times, "A Million Jobs." In it, the Times states the Bush/Obama bail-out of GM and Chrysler resulted in "1.45 million people who are working as a direct result of the $80 billion bailout."
Someone should have pointed out to the Times that according to the Statistical Abstract of the United States, at the end of 2010 there were 674,000 jobs in manufacturing motor vehicles, motor vehicles bodies and trailers and motor vehicle parts. At the economy's cyclical peak in 2007 the total was 997,000. Look at it another way. Total North American, that includes Canada and Mexico, employment of General Motors and Ford, at the end of 2007 was 233,000 and that includes management, white-collared salaries and factory floor workers. That's one heck of a stimulus that created 7x more jobs than existed at the bailed-out companies at the peak of the cycle and created more than 2x the number of jobs the entire industry had. And keep in mind GM and Chrysler produce between 25% and 30% of the total US car sales. So not only did the bail-out save all of GM's and Chrysler's jobs, but it created more jobs than existed at Ford, Honda, Toyota and other domestic auto manufacturers.
You can be for the GM, Chrysler bail-outs (like you) or against them (like me), or you can engage in sheer sophistry about the impacts and reasoning behind them like the NY Times and Obama. Of course, Santorum with his sanctimonious, mercantilist claptrap and Romney with his determined desire to avoid taking a consistent stand are equally ridiculous.
Bill.
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