Big Three Prescription: Pain
The Heritage Foundation gets it exactly right in The Foundry. Rather than let Congress run the Big Three in a bailout scenario, let the Big Three file bankruptcy. Bankruptcy court is a far better option for the Big Three than Barney Frank, even if it makes some lawyers rich.
Heck, if Congress really wants to be help, require $25 billion of the $700 billion finance sector bailout be bid out to a bank (JPMorganChase springs to mind) to provide mandatory DIP financing to any of the Big Three who file bankruptcy. The winning bank will then provide DIP financing on market terms, without Congressional interference. This way, the Big Three can prepackage their Chapter 11s, knowing that they have financing, and knowing the market terms their creditor will enforce (like shedding jobs, cramming down debt, renegotiating contracts and spinning off excess capacity). Congress can say they’ve done something by providing needed funding, without too much interference in the free market (i.e., dictating non-market terms like CAFE standards). A bank makes money if the Big Three succeed in restructuring. And hopefully more people keep their jobs than otherwise would have.
There. ‘Puter’s solved it all for GM. Now file already and get it over with.
Always right, unless he isn’t, the infallible Ghettoputer F. X. Gormogons claims to be an in-law of the Volgi, although no one really believes this.
’Puter carefully follows economic and financial trends, legal affairs, and serves as the Gormogons’ financial and legal advisor. He successfully defended us against a lawsuit from a liquor distributor worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid deliveries of bootleg shandies.
The Geep has an IQ so high it is untestable and attempts to measure it have resulted in dangerously unstable results as well as injuries to researchers. Coincidentally, he publishes intelligence tests as a side gig.
His sarcasm is so highly developed it borders on the psychic, and he is often able to insult a person even before meeting them. ’Puter enjoys hunting small game with 000 slugs and punt guns, correcting homilies in real time at Mass, and undermining unions. ’Puter likes to wear a hockey mask and carry an axe into public campgrounds, where he bursts into people’s tents and screams. As you might expect, he has been shot several times but remains completely undeterred.
He assures us that his obsessive fawning over news stories involving women teachers sleeping with young students is not Freudian in any way, although he admits something similar once happened to him. Uniquely, ’Puter is unable to speak, read, or write Russian, but he is able to sing it fluently.
Geep joined the order in the mid-1980s. He arrived at the Castle door with dozens of steamer trunks and an inarticulate hissing creature of astonishingly low intelligence he calls “Sleestak.” Ghettoputer appears to make his wishes known to Sleestak, although no one is sure whether this is the result of complex sign language, expert body posture reading, or simply beating Sleestak with a rubber mallet.
‘Puter suggests the Czar suck it.