Tag Archives: auto industry

I admit – I have auto bailout fatigue. But given the amount of virtual ink that has been spilled on this topic here, I think I owe you a place where you can express your thoughts on the current plan.

The Times says we are close to a vote, although Senate Republicans may block it. Here is the draft bill. The news article says it would take the form of $15 billion in short-term emergency loans. Reading the bill itself, though, I can’t find the number “$15 billion” anywhere. This is what I read:

1. The President can appoint a person (or persons) to implement the bill, apparently colloquially known as the car czar.
2. Once the bill passes, the car czar can make bridge loans or lines of credit right now. Those loans can be for as much as is needed under the plans submitted to Congress last week.
3. The money is coming from “section 129 of division A of the Consolidated Security, Disaster Assistance, and Continuing Appropriations Act, 2009, relating to funding for the manufacture of advanced technology vehicles,” which I’m guessing is the pre-existing bill providing $25 billion in loans for R&D for fuel-efficient vehicles. That money will be then be replenished. It’s not clear whether this creates a $25 billion cap or not (how many times can the car czar draw on that money after it’s been replenished?).
4. The loans are at 5%, increasing to 9% after 5 years. The government also gets a warrant to buy up to 20% of the loan amount in stock, at a price equal to the average price during the 15 days prior to December 2.
5. The short-term loans are conditional on the government, the automakers, and all interested parties (including unions and creditors) being able to agree on a comprehensive, long-term restructuring plan by March 31, 2009. The car czar can extend this deadline by 30 days, but that’s it.
6. The car czar has a lot of power to monitor the auto companies and make sure they are meeting the targets of their restructuring plans; if they aren’t, he can call in the loans.
7. There are some other fun but peripheral provisions, like getting rid of corporate aircraft, dropping lawsuits against state greenhouse gas regulation, and executive compensation limitations.

The big point is #5 (in my list). In short, this isn’t a comprehensive bailout: it’s a bridge loan to buy time to come up with a comprehensive bailout. This is roughly what Simon predicted (although I can’t remember where). It enables the Bush administration to avoid having a car company fail on its watch, and enables the Democratic majority to say that they are doing something for the automakers, while deferring the hard questions. I assume that all of the controversial questions, like how big a concession the unions have to make, and whether or not it’s possible to force creditors to take equity in place of debt, will re-emerge over the next few months.

Of course, we may still have the live TV drama of not quite knowing if the Republicans will provide the needed votes, like we had with the first TARP vote. I would also be shocked to see President Bush sign a bill that requires car companies to drop their lawsuits against greenhouse gas regulation.

Let me know if I read the bill wrong.

Update: More from Felix Salmon on why it may be hard to get bondholders to agree to restructuring short of bankruptcy.

My two earlier posts on the auto industry and GM have been among the most-commented-on posts in our brief history. For those who want a crash course on GM’s problems and whether or not bankruptcy is a possible solution, I strongly recommend two podcasts from Planet Money.

• Kimberly Rodriguez, an economist, talks about the importance of the industry, but also the problems with simply giving GM an operational loan.
• Steve Jakubowski, a bankruptcy lawyer, explains the risks of GM entering Chapter 11 (if you’re curious about the market for debtor-in-possession financing, listen to this), but also explains how a “prepackaged” bankruptcy, possibly funded by the government, could work.

Simon also tells me he talked through the arguments on both sides of the GM issue in his latest installment for the MIT Sloan podcast. (I haven’t had time to listen to it yet.)

If there’s a consensus between them, I’d say it’s that some kind of brokered solution is better than either simply leaving GM alone or simply handing them a loan without strings attached. (It is possible, however, that a loan might be necessary just to buy enough time to broker the solution.)

The New York Times is reporting that it could all be academic, since Senate Republicans and President Bush are opposed to doing anything for GM, and GM could be unable to pay its bills by the time Obama takes office.

GM is mounting a massive PR campaign to convince Washington that a GM bankruptcy would be catastrophic to the national economy, resulting in the loss of millions of jobs, costing taxpayers over $100 billion, and plunging the economy into a depression (whatever that is). In addition to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reed, Barack Obama has now called for an auto bailout.

I don’t want the US auto industry to go away. Yes, if GM and every one of its suppliers and dealers stopped operating tomorrow, that would cost hundreds of thousands or millions of jobs. But it’s not clear to me why bankruptcy would have the same effect. Ordinarily, when a company goes bankrupt – especially a big one – it goes right along doing whatever it was doing before, except now it doesn’t have to pay off all its creditors, and its operations are monitored by a court. The bankruptcy process is intended to find a reasonable outcome for all of the stakeholders that reflects the order of priority of their claims, but also (in the case of a company as big as GM) reflects the public interest. Airlines, for example, have been going in and out of bankruptcy for years in order to force their unions to negotiate long-term cost reductions, and even use the threat of bankruptcy as a negotiating tool.

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