President Obama's plan for the auto industry went mostly uncommented upon on this site yesterday, probably because everyone saw it coming a mile away. However, I must admit to still being baffled by the strange calculus that has led the administration to force the auto industry to own their failure in a way that the financial industry has simply not been asked to do.It seems as though they think that a long, drawn out failure is worse than a sudden explosion of failure. Maybe this is true; the auto industry saw it coming decades out-as opposed to a few years for the financial companies-and did nothing to stop it. But they didn't almost take the whole world with them. I guess it's the Neil Young school of business responsibility: It's better to burn out than to fade away. I don't want to defend Rick Waggoner-he should be fired and GM should be taken into bankruptcy, but so should AIG. That the end of AIG would affect a lot of rich people and that the end of Detroit will affect a lot of middle-class people is sort of hard to overlook when thinking about the differing approaches.Country singer John Rich (profiled here), also found the whole thing a little absurd, and wrote a song called "Shutting Down Detroit" about the hypocrisy. He wrote it in January, so he must be hopping mad this week. You can see a video of him performing the song below:[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gyz-DbYuRp4&feature=related
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