Thursday, October 2, 2008 Daniel Howes: Commentary Who's credible in economic crisis?
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081002/OPINION03/810020381/1001 Rep. Mike Rogers, the Brighton Republican, is walking a political tight rope. He's got two of General Motors Corp.'s newest plants in his district. He's campaigned against alleged currency manipulation by Asian governments and carried Detroit's water in the federal fuel economy wars. He helped deliver a $25 billion loan package, signed this week by the president, to speed industry retooling and introduction of alternative technology vehicles. And the industry he professes to love is going from bad times to awful times as the economy slips into reverse, with corporate and consumer credit growing more scarce. If the automakers need anything -- and they need a lot these days, judging by their atrocious September sales -- it's normalcy in the credit markets and some love from their hometown congressman. But Rogers, who joined 133 House Republicans and 95 Democrats in defeating the $700 billion bank bailout bill Monday, doesn't much like the "financial rescue package" approved Wednesday by the Senate, no matter how badly Detroit's auto sales are pinched or how fiercely business lobbies for his support. Even now, as congressional haggling delivered improvements he said he wanted -- increased FDIC insurance for bank deposits and revisions of "mark-to-market" accounting rules -- Rogers isn't showing many signs of bending to pressure to back a controversial bill his automotive patrons desperately need. At least not yet. Who says all politics are local? "I want some leadership right now," Rogers told me from Capitol Hill. "I don't want fear tactics. We're likely to make a bad decision if we're afraid. Everybody's in a panic to get this done." Detroit's automakers, I responded, say their sales are tanking -- Ford Motor Co.'s plunged 34 percent in September -- in part because would-be customers are finding it increasingly difficult to get loans for new cars and trucks. CEO Alan Mulally, in an interview from Paris, said "it's absolutely critical that we move to stabilize our financial system as quickly as possible." Rogers' response: "I talked to bankers in my district yesterday and they said they still have credit available for auto loans. In fact, they said it's one of their biggest books of business." That'd likely be news to Mulally, who says tightening credit is making it trickier to run Ford, harder for Ford Credit to raise money and more difficult for the finance company to lend to customers. Some 80 percent of Ford buyers need credit to buy Blue Oval metal. To talk to Rogers and Mulally in back-to-back interviews, as I did Wednesday, is to experience a parallel universe. The politician sees a process turbo-charged by fear, an election and partisan politics that needs to be slowed down, carefully considered and probed for special payola. The CEO, whose business depends on confidence and credit to operate and sell its products, sees a crisis poised to go global. And he's not alone. "We have terrible, terrible problems," Warren Buffett, the legendary investor, told CNBC after it was announced that his company, Berkshire Hathaway, would take a $3 billion stake in General Electric Co. "I said two weeks ago that it was an economic Pearl Harbor. Two weeks later, we're in worse shape because you don't want to delay when there is a national emergency. I think we'll get action. If we don't, I will have done some dumb things." Buffett? Mulally? Rogers, unwilling to say whether he might change his vote, sounds unmoved by the urging of heavyweights. He says the Treasury has held conference calls to ask business leaders to pressure lawmakers. He says the bailout plan still is too much government-for-Wall Street and not enough private sector-and-Main Street. Maybe so. But here's the rub: Neither Rogers, nor the conservative ideologues, nor the liberal Democrats who smacked down the bill on Monday are responsible for meeting payrolls or securing enough credit to keep businesses from assuming an economic fetal position. Which means this: Who has the most credibility here -- the politicians or the folks working everyday inside the system and running their businesses? One of the enduring lessons of the Depression is that it became "Great" after government, faced with a stock market crash, tightening credit and struggling businesses, dithered and failed to act. It was a historic mistake. Daniel Howes' column runs Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. He can be reached at (313) 222-2106, [EMAIL PROTECTED] or detnews.com/howes. This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
