Essay: After the Fall - 4.27.09

Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry is trying to stay upbeat even after GM announced more job losses today.

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General Motors made a major announcement about downsizing itself today. But by the end of this week, we will know a lot more about the future of Chrysler as well. The company is facing an end-of- the-month deadline to either declare bankruptcy, merge with the Italian automaker Fiat, or perhaps do both.

Whatever happens, jobs are going to be lost, either at once or gradually. Within a month, we’ll know whether General Motors’s self-downsizing, some of which was announced this morning, will be enough to persuade the government it should be allowed to avoid bankruptcy. Avoid it for now, that is, or whether GM will have to face a court-supervised reorganization sure to shrink the company even more. What does this mean for Michigan?

What does it mean, that is, for all of us?

Nothing very good, in the short run. There is going to be more anxiety, more upheaval, and more unemployment.

But in the long run, this doesn’t have to mean the end of the world. In fact, what’s happening now may even be a good thing, in the sense that it forces us to face reality. The fact is that these companies have been very sick for a long time.

We’ve been so accustomed to GM, Chrysler and Ford closing plants, laying off thousands and posting losses in the billions that any more bad news has lost much of its power to shock.

Now, it is human nature for them, and for us in the automobile state, to want to blame someone else for their misery. Republicans like to blame government fuel emissions standards for much of the auto industry’s woes. Democrats like to blame free trade.

But the fact is that, by and large, the carmakers did it to themselves. There is a huge body of evidence that these companies have been badly mismanaged for years. We and our elected leaders were willing if subconscious co-conspirators in their march to doom.

Their bad decisions were easier to cover up or ignore in the good times. Now, they, and we, can’t do it any more. Yesterday, a columnist in the Detroit News painted a picture of cataclysmic doom.

Losing either company, Nolan Finley said, could “leave Michigan a wasteland.” That’s a bit too pessimistic, I think, Filing for bankruptcy, if that happens, does not mean the end. What it does mean is reorganization, and a chance to get their acts together and survive, if as smaller and leaner firms.

President Obama should do the best he can to give Chrysler and General Motors a reasonable chance for survival. Our statewide elected officials should do what they can to help.

But we have to look beyond the auto industry too. There is no reason to think this state can’t come back, can’t attract new jobs and industries. We‘ve got some hard slogging ahead of us.

But facing openly how bad things are may be the key to reviving our state, and quite possibly the auto industry as well. Americans have a history of screwing up when times are good, and then getting it together a few minutes before midnight. There’s no reason ten million Wolverines can’t do that, one more time.

Comments

[Anonymous]

I think that what Jack Lessenberry has written makes good sense and the tone is decidedly non-partisan.

My only comment is that this blog entry could have been written five months ago, by Tennessee Senator John Corker, who tried, unsuccessfully, to bring all of GM's stakeholders, including the UAW, together for a bipartisan bailout bill. He failed, of course, when the UAW backed away from a deal.

And though the Lessenberry column above could have been written by Senator Corker several months ago, Corker was, at the time, ridiculed and hounded by much of the left-leaning press. For not supporting the auto industry, and daring to think about a bankruptcy. Now Corker simply appears to have been wise, and prescient. But he'll get no credit, naturally.

Nor will any blame be cast upon Governor Jennifer Granholm, or Senator Debbie Stabenow, who looked all of us in the eye, and said essentially, 'No automaker can survive bankruptcy. Bankruptcy for GM, or for Chrysler, is out of the question.'

And so it goes in the world of the liberal mainstream media.

[One interesting news note from the world of print newspapers today. Almost every major newspaper in the country was reported with down circulation numbers for the six months ending last month. Some were small, single-digit declines, some were large double-digit dropoffs. One newspaper reported a small INCREASE in circulatoon; the Wall Street Journal. The Journal's editorial page might have written this coulmn for Jack Lessenberry, not five months ago, but rather five years ago.]

[Thrasher]

Clearly Jack has been lost at sea on this issue and others but his commentary today or months agon would not have changed much about the auto industry..

Fact is conservatives nor liberals neither have the power to alter truth or the natural destiny of economic forces coupled with the maturation of a manufacturing sector..

Truth is no automotive company American, German, Asian will ever make a difference in the new world order..Our planet and the realities of the planet's natural resources can handle 15 million units annually..

We must make a absolute change from cars to mass transit..We must change for economic forcasts to appease Wall St to global transactions which enhance the process of life and living as a human being..

I am not going to take a chaep shot at Jack today..I know the truth is bigger than all of us..