One of the most important lessons we learned in the past few years is that no economic model is flawless, and we need to strike a delicate balance between privatization and governmental roles in the market, and this is becoming increasingly obvious in many parts of the world.

Oh, E.J., you tool! Yes, the bailout worked to enrich the very people and institutions that brought on the previous ruin. The problem is that the “average” American can no longer actually define the term as it has been so masterfully debased!

In response to the nonsense Dionne poses, here are the facts which he either does not understand, or which he is incapable of understanding, by someone who actually knows what they are talking about, former Goldman Sachs analyst Nomi Prins:

“Public debt has nearly doubled since before the big bailout, while intra-governmental debt has increased just 15%. Some (like Geithner, Bernanke, etc.) may argue that this balloon in public debt was required to save our economy, though there’s little evidence of it doing anything but cheaply floating our financial system, not least because nearly half of the additional $4.4 trillion of public debt that was created is stashed at the Fed as either excess reserves, QE1, or QE2….

No one on the Hill [or lackeys like EJ Dionne] will question the true why behind the debt – because it would lead back to that mammoth fuchsia elephant - we, the elected and appointed, screwed the country to support the power banks, and we’d do it again, in fact, we already are.”

And here is some REAL analysis:

“The reason the country is facing widening deficits and mountainous debts, is because we’ve been handing out trillions of dollars to thieving banksters who should be in in jail. Period.”
(Mike Whitney, “Countdown to Default”)

Eugene Robinson, and E.J. Dionne should take a flying leap into the toilette of
forgettability.

What makes Chris Hedges want to be part of Truthdig’s stable of status quo
pedigreed asses is beyond me…

http://mosquitocloud.net/

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/grasping-the-full-costs-of-the-auto-bailout/

E.J. Dionne seems perfectly comfortable with the fact
that he doesn’t understand economics

http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/2011/05/ej-dionne-praised-gm-bailout-success-now-read-facts-about-gm-bail

E.J. Dionne praised the GM bailout as a success. Now read the facts about the GM Bailout

If anything the bailout bought us time. If you say “it worked” you would have to say the SEC deserves credit for ‘assisting’ in the chain of events that lead up to the TooBigToFail TARP Bailout(s) (<—plural).

Rich men raid our treasury and hand it over to other rich men.  Those rich men
turn a profit of $3.2B.  Now that is a success, EJ.

Dionne says:  “The era of anti-government extremism is ending.”

Very little evidence, to none, justifies this statement.  What, then, prevents the “end of anti-government extremism”?

The idea of “rugged individualism” at the heart of “the American Dream”—if it has a heart!  It is this ego-centered idea which has prevented and/or retarded the development of community, of cooperation, and of wide-spread mutual understanding of the fact that democracy requires intelligent citize-participation and institutionalized sharing, or it can’t survive.

In fact, there probably is no such thing as real
“anti-government extremism”. Evidence points in the opposite direction:  The more so-called “anti-government” protestation, the stronger government becomes.  When poor people and jobless people defend wars, oppose universal health care and unions, and resent people with college educations, and don’t even realize they are working against their own interests, it’s time to admit that something is rotten in “anti-government extremism” that is playing into the hands of “big government” and “big moneyed interests” keeping that government in business.

“...having the government involved in every aspect of
the private sector is dangerous…” except when the
government is subsidizing the giant oil corporations to
the tune of $4 billion/year.  Burton etal always leave
that part out.

The other arm of the Auto industry bailout is Homeland Security spending and other Government procurement.

1.7 million people? .. involved in the security state apparatus.. I.C.E, I.B.P., local, county and state LE entities.. riding around in lots of new vehicles. Marked and unmarked vehicles of every size and design and color. And these aren’t stripped down utilitarian models.. Hundreds can be seen on the roads daily in our area alone.

And all these vehicles need maintenance and tires and even wash and wax.. it’s a river of money. And it’s propping up the auto industry at all levels at least as much as the ‘bailout’. And some does come back into the local economy as well..

The upshot; in these times of sagging pay and unemployment,
underemployment.. Government IS the economy.

Adios!

Sorry E.J.

If you don’t see anything wrong with government
picking winners and losers in the market place then
the auto bail out was a great success. I have a few
major problems with the bail out.

1st the auto manufacturers don’t sell cars to the
public. news flash, they sell cars to independent
dealers who sell cars to the public. So lets look at
a basic business problem. If the dealers are actually
the manufacturers customers and the manufacturers are
not selling enough cars why would it make sense to
cut off 1700 of a finite number of customers. in
essence that is what the auto czar did when he closed
1700 dealers. Remember, the dealers were not in
bankruptcy the manufacturers were headed there if the
government had not intervened.

So lets look at those 1700 dealers cut off and tossed
aside.  The dealers buy land, build a building, hire
employees, pay the factory to train those employees,
inventory both cars and parts from the factory on the
dealers dime. (The cars and parts are paid for BEFORE
they are shipped to the dealers) The dealer
advertises the brand,buys a sign from the factory and
administers the factory’s warranty. So using a
secrete formula the car czar closed 1700 dealers
making their once profitable investments worthless
save for the land and now empty buildings they were
left with. Not to mention throwing all of the dealers
employees onto the unemployment line with a much
smaller segment of the market to market their skills
to. 
http://theamericanfreedomcrisis.blogspot.com/2011/02/gangster-government-update.html

All part of the great success you trumpet.

” In the case of the car industry, allowing the
market to operate without any intervention by
government would have wiped out a large part of the
business that is based in Midwestern states. This
(BEG ITAL)irreversible(END ITAL) decision would have
damaged the economy, many communities and tens of
thousands of families.”

Is all speculation on your part. You don’t have any
idea what would have happened in bankruptcy court ( a
court set up to handle exactly what was going on
here.)

“Bankruptcy lawyer Tom Lauria said on a WJR talk show
that morning. “One of my clients,” Lauria told host
Frank Beckmann, “was directly threatened by the White
House and in essence compelled to withdraw its
opposition to the deal under threat that the full
force of the White House press corps would destroy
its reputation if it continued to fight.”

Lauria represented one of the bondholder firms,
Perella Weinberg, which initially rejected the Obama
deal that would give the bondholders about 33 cents
on the dollar for their secured debts while giving
the United Auto Workers retirees about 50 cents on
the dollar for their unsecured debts.

This of course is a violation of one of the basic
principles of bankruptcy law, which is that secured
creditors — those who lended money only on the
contractual promise that if the debt was unpaid
they’d get specific property back — get paid off in
full before unsecured creditors get anything. Perella
Weinberg withdrew its objection to the settlement,
but other bondholders did not, which triggered the
bankruptcy filing.

After that came a denunciation of the objecting
bondholders as “speculators” by Barack Obama in his
news conference last Thursday. And then death threats
to bondholders from parties unknown.

The White House denied that it strong-armed Perella
Weinberg. The firm issued a statement saying it
decided to accept the settlement, but it pointedly
did not deny that it had been threatened by the White
House. The threat worked.”

http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/2009/05/white-house-puts-uaw-ahead-property-rights

Ford Motor Co, now set to enter contract talks with the
United Auto Workers, said its U.S. labor costs are
now $8 an hour higher than the mostly nonunion U.S.
factories of foreign automakers such as Hyundai Motor
Co.