Awaiting The Death Knell

From Dana Perino’s press charade today here concerning the automaker loan (and I also posted over here)…

Q Let me just ask two things quickly. Do you think the week will end without a decision? And, two -- this may have been asked before, so forgive me if it's a repeat -- but when you say "disorderly collapse," can you explain what that means? Does that mean that there's some kind of collapse that's okay, but a certain other kind of one is not?

MS. PERINO: By that I mean a disorderly collapse would be something very chaotic that is a shock to the system. There's an orderly way to do bankruptcies that provides for more of a soft landing -- I think that's what we would be talking about. That would be one of the options. I'm not saying that that is necessarily what would be announced.

And you asked if it would be before the end of the week. I just -- I can't tell you right now, but I can tell you we're nearing a conclusion and we're very close.

Q A structured bankruptcy, as opposed to a disorderly collapse, would involve the cooperation of the unions, the companies, various other stakeholders, presumably including some of the equity holders, and might take longer to arrange. Is that why this is taking so long?

MS. PERINO: That is one of the considerations that we're taking into account. If you remember, the legislation that we supported going back the past several weeks was one in that we said that all the stakeholders, all the ones that you listed, were going to have to come to the table and be willing to make some really tough decisions and concessions on their part in order to become viable companies in the future and to qualify for any taxpayer assistance, if there was going to be any.

Does anybody out there know the difference between an “orderly” bankruptcy and a “disorderly” bankruptcy (and if you think this is an inconsequential matter, I should tell you that I just Googled “automaker,” “orderly,” and “bankruptcy” and received about 88,000 hits, mostly from today).

This is all part of this ridiculous fan dance being performed by our outgoing cabal of crooks in order to protect “some of the equity holders” as noted in the extremely leading (and revealing, I thought) question posed above (for which Perino only needed to pretty much repeat it with only slightly different sounding words; also, I don’t know any “stakeholder” here that is being asked to give up a damn thing except the UAW).

With the notion of “orderly bankruptcy” put out there in our media (wondering where the term originated since I haven’t tracked it down yet; I may start with the RNC, Frank Luntz or Drudge and see what happens), Bushco now has the cover they need in the all-but-inevitable collapse of at least one and maybe two of the automakers (I think Ford will be OK for the most part, but GM is going to go through the wringer, and I think Chrysler is toast). They can claim that any last-minute supposed actions were necessitated by the failure of Congress to do anything about the matter (because primarily of Repug obstruction, though they were able to take enough chicken Dems along with them for the ride, as usual), though the administration sadly fell short (sigh – of course, maybe a million or more people in automaker-dependent jobs would end up out of work, but Bushco is almost done and those people mostly aren’t going to vote Republican anyway).

Do you want to know what a real leader would do here, as opposed to Dubya? This person would issue an executive order ensuring that the automakers had a portion of the TARP funds to continue operation, that’s what (something a questioner actually asked Perino today).

For some background, I thought this was a good article by a man named David Radtke, whose dad is a UAW member so vilified by the Senate Repugs in particular (I’m not aware of any leftist elitism against UAW members, I must point out...maybe I just haven't seen it). And though this post by David Sirota ties back to TARP, he notes that the whole campaign by Bushco to obtain the $700 billion for the financial services numbskulls is an example of the “shock doctrine” diagnosed by Naomi Klein in her latest book (great recent profile of her in The New Yorker, by the way) – I think the antics by the whole media-political-industrial complex concerning the automaker loan is the shock doctrine in reverse, you might say, in its obsession with blaming the UAW above all others, alleging that THEY are the problem instead of the years-long manufacture of gas-guzzling, poor-performing vehicles exacerbated by the credit crisis (and I thought this related post was good also).

And if our economy is maimed any further by throwing people out of their jobs who would otherwise contribute to it by supporting the automotive industry working as parts vendors or running auto repair facilities, all in the name of cushioning the “pay no price, bear no burden” crowd who will have time to transfer their holdings or outright liquidate as many related assets as possible while our media dithers like this…well, I see nothing “orderly” about that in any way, shape or form.

Update 12/19/08: "Still light on details" indeed, but progress for now (here - and I'm sorry, but to me, there's more than a bit of a symantic difference when incorrectly referring to this as a "bailout" when we're talking about money that had already been negotiated for other purposes)...