Ford did it right no bail out or Chapter 11

On point two, though, I strongly disagree with you. Using that 9% domestically is about 500,000 barrels a day. That would have a huge impact on prices.

BTW, it wouldn’t be disgraceful if you *were* profiting from the oil business, though I grant you I probably would judge your arguments differently if you were.

Increasing minimum wage over and over and over (way past the cost of inflation or cost of living) can be a slippery slope. At what point do we stop? $20 an hour? $50?

The least the US could have done was actually increase by the rate of inflation. Instead of well below that over the last 30 years.
Your minimum wage is too low and needs a slow increase until it is at least at 1980 levels, if not even higher than 1968 levels (when it was highest). The Fair Minimum Wage Act goes some way towards this, but not enough.

Once we get to that point of critical mass regarding alternate energy vehicles, gas will drop to $1 or less, because China will be right there with us, and TBH they are the ones driving the oil markets these days. It’s only because China is in their own financial meltdown that oil is as low as it is.

You simply cannot go through your industrial revolution in 15 years, when it took everyone else 150.

I hate that there is no oversight. This was supposed to be there on Day One. Congress — you fail!

Oversight…weer doin it rong.

GM used to own an interest in Suzuki, and through them imported GM vehicles into Japan, selling under the Suzuki badge. GM sold that operation off though.

Daimler-Chrysler is still active in the Japanese auto industry, but doing most of their production locally, IIRC.

Personally, I’m all for it staying below $2.00….

You know, of course, that once alternate-power autos hit critical mass, that gas is going to drop back down below $1.00…because once we have that technology here, they’ll have it in China, so that oil demand will dry up too.

They were supposed to have this oversight commission set up the day that the bill passed. To this day, AFAIK it *still* does not exist.

Paulson is right to change course on the actual troubled assets, at least until someone can come up with an actual solid value for them. However, Congress needs to keep the checkbook closed until we see some easing of credit first — as you said, sitting on the cash, buying other banks and fattening bonuses isn’t quite what TARP was all about.

Oversight, weer doin it rong.

I know that Paulson lives on the other side of the aisle from you, Seth, but he’s not a moron. Neither are the hundreds of representatives that voted to pursue this course of action. Nor are the scores of advisors and economists who support the move.

In fact, this is how we “bailed out” the S&L’s. Like I said, history is on the side of this move.

Hopefully they will fail and the country goes into a deep deep recession or even a depression~

At any rate, without capitalism, from where comes the money to start those businesses that employ all of those people? You’ve got one guess, and it’s failed every time it’s been tried in history.

Since We The People now have a significant equity ownership stake in these banks, I’m not sure why we need to have Congressional hearings about why the credit isn’t flowing again — since we own them now, it *should* just be a matter of “hey, CEO lackey — DO IT BECAUSE I SAID SO”. This business of them playing coy and providing responses like “we’re not required to disclose what we do with that money” is a bit rich coming from corporate officers sucking the public tit.

It’s really not that difficult to figure out.

Obama simply will not be able to get that tax shoved through, so I wouldn’t worry about that too much. Yeah, those people who lost their jobs, let’s go ahead and make it even less possible to drive to those few-and-far-between interviews. Not gonna happen.

Don’t you think someone who can’t afford to own a car should walk or take the bus to work?

If my financial situation was as bad as thiers is, I wouldn’t be driving my own car to work.