Auto Bailout A Preview

Of the spending that Obama has committed this country to, of course:

Remember the auto bailout? It’s not in the front pages anymore, but last week the Congressional Oversight Panel — a body created by statute to oversee TARP spending — issued a comprehensive and critical report on Washington’s foray into Detroit.

The headline news, reported in most major media: the money won’t be paid back, not in full anyway. Even if the firms return to viability, taxpayers — said the panel — will likely never be able to recoup anywhere near all of the $77 billion or so they have put in them. That conclusion, however, was hardly surprising — most observers long ago wrote off hopes of taxpayers breaking even on the bailout deals.

Of more interest was the criticisms leveled by the bi-partisan panel — chaired by Elizabeth Warren of Harvard Law School — of the way the program was (and is) run. Among these: a failure to define the goals or critieria for the bailout, lack of transparency, and a lack of an exit strategy — leaving the question of when (if ever) the government will be selling its ownership stakes in GM and Chrysler. The report also questioned the government’s ability — as part-owner of these firms in a competitively-neutral hands-off manner, recommending that ownership be transferred to an independent trust.

Yeah, I can't think why we should be concerned about the government being in control of even more segments of the American economy.

Can you?

There's my two cents.