Big Three Want More Free Money (YOUR Money)

Well, not just the Big Three, of course.  It's now "automakers"--which include a whole lot of players.

Democrats are leading the charge with the usual Doom/Gloom DEATH IS COMING crap.

Fortunately, at least one Member of Congress has his head screwed on straight.

...Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, told Just the News that he’s opposed to an auto bailout.

“Any publicly traded company has an avenue for getting more [federal] money; that is they have to sell their stock to raise capital. That's why they went public in the first place,” he said. “So when you hear the airlines and the automobile companies coming to the federal government and asking for a bailout, what’s happening there is the shareholders in that company know that their recourse to raising money is to dilute their own shares, and they don't want to dilute their own shares.”

Massie warned that automakers who receive a bailout would “buy shares back” and “try to increase their ownership in the company.”

Instead, Massie said, they're going to have to “bite the bullet and go back into the public market and sell more shares in their company and share some of the future profits” with new shareholders.

“That’s the way capitalism works but right now, we're saying if you buy shares in a company that you can enjoy the upside but if the stock goes down too much that we’ll put that burden on the taxpayer. That's just not right,” he said. “When when you have capitalism on the upside and socialism on the downside, that's cronyism.”...

GWBush bought into that crony-capitalism BS and gave the banks a few zillion bucks back in '08, and then Bush/Obama handed a few zillion more to the automakers, too.

If GM or Ford needs cash, issue stock.  Same with 90% of the suppliers such as Goodyear, TRW, et. al.  If the Ford family doesn't like dilution, then Ford may go away.  Oh, well.