Panic in Detroit

"Why banks get bailouts and automakers get stern lectures." Please explain, Mr. Mark Gimeln.

Who's really at fault, however, doesn't matter all that much, because for both laissez-faire Republicans and liberal Democrats, the financial crisis presents a rare opportunity to rebuild the most iconic exemplars of American industry in the way they hoped for all along. For the free marketeers of the right, it's a chance to extol the benefits of the strong medicine of bankruptcy. For the newly empowered liberals of the Democratic Party, it's a chance to put environmental consciousness in the center of industrial policy.

Again, I think it's an issue of opacity. The average person--and the average congressperson--doesn't know exactly what the banks do. Citigroup's in trouble? Toss them a couple billion and they'll shut up. AIG needs a bailout? Here, take them this check, and they can go back to doing...that thing they do.

Pity the poor automobile companies. Everyone knows exactly what they do. They build cars. Everyone knows what a car is. And everybody has their own ideas on how to build one. Politicians who kept their mouths shut during the Wall Street bailout, worried their ignorance would show, have suddenly become experts in the field of car manufacturing.

So Detroit takes a beating, while Wall Street execs take their billions, tip their hats, and head home to do...whatever they do. Detroit is going to have to twist in the wind a bit more while the politicians argue about how to make the perfect hybrid.