Man Bites Blog

SenJohnMcCain tweets:

Chrysler finally filing for bankruptcy! Wish they would have done it months ago as I called for - could have saved taxpayers $26.7 billion!

I’m not so sure.

1. There is probably value in that the bankruptcy is coming now, when the economy is more stable, than last fall. 
2. It’s not as if this money was flushed down the toilet.  It went, in part, to pay the salaries of Chrysler employees for the last few months and companies that do business with them.  In that time, some of them may have been able to start to adjust to the possibility of life without Chrysler.  Some of them may have been on welfare or unemployment otherwise.

I’m not certain(morally or otherwise) that these benefits were worth $26.7 billion.  But I don’t think that Chrysler ultimately filing for bankruptcy proves that the government money keeping it alive the past few months was wasted.

As the debate ensues over the bailout, the hip thing to do seems to be to write about how the Big Three have been producing unreliable cars that nobody wants to buy.

Well, after my first daughter was born in 2004, we bought a 2005 Dodge Grand Caravan SXT, and I have to say we’re quite happy with it.  It’s been great for the two 1000+ mile road trips we take anually, and has had no major problems.  My only complaint is that we’ve had to replace the brakes twice already under 60,000 miles, but overall I’d say we’ve gotten a good value.

Of course, the warranty expires in about 3500 more miles, so I may be less happy a year from now, but I don’t think it’s the case that the Big Three are incapable of producing desirable products.

I don’t think that’s a terribly relevant data point on bailing them out, but I thought I’d throw it out there to counter the general tone that nothing good has been coming out of Detroit.