The point remains that the job of the executive branch is to enforce the laws as enacted by Congress.
This is not a time of war, Chrysler is not a national security or strategic issue, nor is the US automobile industry.
In fact, Chrysler was already largely a foreign entity, and even GM is now probably larger overseas than in the US, and the national origin of its shareholders are of no consequence.
This has turned into a simple, unwarranted, unnecessary, and counterproductive show of force between the President and a few lesser Wall St. players.
In the absence of supporting law, the administration, driven by anger, instead used all its bully powers to avoid a Chrysler bankruptcy (for reasons not yet fully disclosed) and, in this instance, lost that (minor?) battle.
The separation of power between executive, legislative, and judicial branches and the rule of law bent but did not yet break.
This is what happens with a President who doesn’t understand the monetary system, and doesn’t understand the US has unlimited ‘financial resources’ to sustain full employment and social equity with or without Chrysler or any other private employer.
Instead, the President sees an inevitable rise in unemployment and the risk of systemic failure should the automobile industry ‘rescue’ fail.
Just as:
- The errant belief that we need China and others to be able to deficit spend is driving foreign policy ‘concessions.’
- The errant belief that we can’t ‘go it alone’ with fiscal policy is squandering a golden opportunity to enhance our standard of living.
- The errant belief that we are economically better off with a balanced federal budget is risking the sustainability of our domestic economy.
- The errant belief that bank lending is a prerequisite to economic well being is shifting wealth upward away from lower income working people.
- The errant belief that ‘monetary policy’ can support GDP delays and limits fiscal response.
- The errant belief that exports are more desirable than domestic consumption depresses our standard of living.
- The failure to understand the difference between the purchase of financial assets and the purchase of real goods and services continues to prolong our massive output gap and the unrecoverable real losses of high unemployment.
- All of this can be traced to a world wide failure to recognize the fundamental difference between the gold based monetary systems of the past and today’s non convertible currency regimes.
The Lenders Obama Decided to Blame
by Zachary Kouwe
May 1 (NYT)
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