David Axelrod Quotes
I think those autoworkers whose industry would have collapsed if the president hadn't intervened are certainly better off.
Axelrod, David. Interview with Chris Wallace. Fox News Sunday, Fox News, 2 Sept. 2012.
In the Meltdown of 2008, the American Auto Companies were in dire straights and faced bankruptcy with no certainty that the industry could stay alive., They were running out of money and President Obama decided to make loans, take stock and control and force modernizing on the industry. As a result, and with some Toyota mismanagement, the companies returned to profitability and paid back their government loans early and as a result the bailout had not cost the taxpayers any money. Creditors however were outraged that the lost their preferred advantage had their been a bankruptcy.
He had already decided to save General Motors which was much larger and more critical to the national economy. The normal capitalistic broken down and there were no private firms that were willing to invest, control and continue the companies at any price. There were 1 million immediate jobs at stake with GM plus the collapse of the American Auto Industry including dealers and suppliers. With Chrysler, there were only 300,000 immediate jobs at stake. Ironically, one of the major reasons for trying to save both companies was the fact that Summers team had discovered that the companies were very badly managed. If the bailout could be leveraged to force radical management change and reform, the chances of success would have been much greater than if the companies had been well managed but were still losing money rapidly. The policy decision was brilliantly successful. The reformed auto companies quickly became profitable, and the taxpayer loans were paid back early with interest to and profits to the taxpayers. All those jobs and an iconic American industry not only were preserved but became very profitable and strong and in the final analysis, it did not cost the taxpayers even one dollar. Ford was in less trouble, but if the other two companies failed, the Ford suppliers would mostly fail, and Ford also would have gone down.
In the midst of the depression:
There are some conservative economists and businessmen who believe that it is desirable to have some unemployment as a bulwark against inflation. If there are people without jobs, they will hold the general wage rates down.
David M. Axelrod is an American political consultant and analyst and former White House official. He is best known for being the chief strategist for Barack Obama's presidential campaigns. After Obama's election, Axelrod was appointed as Senior Advisor to the President. He left the position in early 2011 and became the Senior Strategist for Obama's successful re-election campaign in 2012. Axelrod wrote for the Chicago Tribune, and joined CNN as Senior Political Commentator in 2015. As of December 2019, Axelrod serves as the director of the non-partisan University of Chicago Institute of Politics. His memoir is titled Believer: My Forty Years in Politics.
