BusinessWeek: You Won’t Fix the U.S. Auto Industry on the Back of the UAW

2. Some southern Republicans think this is all the UAW’s fault. Not so. Wages are pretty competitive. The JOBS bank (that paid layoff clause that everyone hates) is on its way out. The union does need to give on its rigid work rules and its gold-plated healthcare deal. But you don’t save Detroit solely on the UAW’s back.

That quote is number two on a six-item list of things for our two new Car Czars, Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers, to consider as they set up a task force to help the U.S. auto industry help itself.  The article is online at BusinessWeek.

Does anyone else feel that Messrs. Geithner’s and Summers’ plates are already too full?  The Big Three Automakers are the industrial driver in most aspects of the once mighty, now pathetic U.S. manufacturing market.  In terms of GDP, what do you think has supplanted industry – which creates real, three dimensional value?  My armchair economist’s view is that is has been financial services, health care and government.

Now ask yourself, what is the root cause of or at the very least, one of the two or three root causes of our current economic predicament? Financial Services …  Who in the Administration are the two most in the tank and a part of that financial services, unregulated slop bucket for the investment class?  Messrs. Geithner and Summers.

The auto industry – and American workers all the way down the supply chain – are either going to be royally screwed by these two, or, perhaps we’ll finally see some of the economic and public policy brilliance we’ve heard so much about but hasn’t been on display yet for President Barack Obama.