Category Archives: Auto Industry
Scrap Stimulus
Demand is up for used cars because people are poorer. Supply is down because last year’s Cash for Clunkers program turned used cars into scrap. The scrapped used car market was, according to George Will, “an important mechanism for redistributing wealth to low income persons”. In the Boston Globe, Jeff Jacoby sums up the program as, “a deplorable exercise in budgetary wastefulness, asset destruction, environmental irrelevance, and economic idiocy”.
Voltwagon
Fredrich Hayek’s 1944 classic Road to Serfdom has become a best seller again. He said that governments tend to plan production for political, rather than market, purposes. Government owned GM’s new Volt costs $41,000, runs on a battery, and gets 40 miles per charge.
GM Pays You Back
GM paid off its TARP loan with money from its TARP escrow account, then used more of your money to buy ads to brag about it. Nick Gillespie explains on Reason TV.
Twelve Steps to More Fame, Money, and Power
Thomas Sowell had another good column last week in which he asked the age old question, “why is Tiger apologizing to me?”.
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