The recent crisis of the automobile industry in the U.S. created an interesting new word: "Car Czar". As much as the idea might be helpfull - the wording is somewhat disturbing. The "czar" was the russian type of monarch, somewhat the "king" before the communists killed him after their revolution and settled for 7 decades of communism as the "soviet union".
So we could interpret the use of the word czar being in the good old tradition of anti-communism propaganda in the 40s and 50s. But the idea behind all of it is everything else then capitalistic. In a nutshell capitalism just means "be successfull or be bankrupt". So in a pure capitalistic point of view the automobile industry chose their future - not being profitable anymore they must go. Capitalism doesn't waste too many thoughts about all the people losing their job when a company goes bankrupt.
The smaller enterprises among the US face this future every day, it's the natural way of one man going out of business and another one just starting.
So the question should not be "Why give GM/Chrysler/Ford loans" but "why give ONLY GM/Chrysler/Ford loans". I am just surprised that small and medium sized enterprises get ignored so constantly in the US. Maybe it's because their bosses can't allow to let millions of dollars flow into their pockets as "Bonus payments". Maybe that enables these people to be in the same golf club as a person "listening" to them.
After all there should not remain any jealous feelings once the deal is made, just wishful thinking that they really use these billions to regain their status as a real competition to Japanese and german automobile industries. In Germany the US cars have never been successful as gasoline costs around 3 times the US price. That makes the gasoline hungry SUVs and limousines appear unattractive - especially with the quite high price tags.
Well they either find a solution or follow the soviet union. The soviet union went "bankrupt" with the computer age in the late 80s, beaten by capitalism. They were able to produce millions of cars, trucks and nuclear missiles - but no competitive computer.
