We spend billions a year giving financial aid to foreign companies and no one seems to complain. At least the 3 billion ends up in Joe the plumbers hand which means velocity of money. Unlike the 800 billion in tarp which just engorged the banks but it is all locked away in safes to be handed in bonuses and other backchannel deals.
Larry Levin's Nightly Newsletter & Trading Signals Cash for Foreigners As usual, the main stream media is not telling you the whole story about the "cash for clunkers" gimmick. I guess that's my job. The whole story is that the vast majority of taxpayer dollars, like TARP funnel-through AIG dollars and the $1/2-TRILLION Federal Reserve swap arraignments with foreign central banks, are stimulating foreigners...again. It may as well be called "cash for foreigners!" According to Transportation Department data, FOUR of the top five models sold so far under the gimmick known as "cash for clunkers" program, are made by foreign automakers. It makes one wonder how truly inept Congress really is. Were the microcephalic idiots aiming to boost the US auto industry - or foreign automakers? Are they even capable of thinking? The cars, according to government data, are; the Ford Focus, followed by Toyota's Corolla, then Honda's Civic, and Toyota's Prius and Camry. Doesn't that just make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside? In fact, our thought-challenged friends in Congress are so enamored with giving YOUR TAXDOLLARS away to FOREIGNERS that they just passed a new bill to steal another $2 billion from you for this very purpose. Moreover, transferring money from taxpayers to car buyers is exactly that: a transfer. The money taken from taxpayers can't be used for something else. But the absurdity doesn't end there. The government is not creating GDP; it is only pulling future demand forward to today. The "cash for foreigners" plan also demands that useful assets (working vehicles) be destroyed. Why would we demand that we destroy assets? This is madness. And finally, these consumers are cashing in their PAID UP vehicles...to go deeper into debt with these new cars. Again, more madness brought to you by the clown-posse in Washington DC. James Hamilton, professor of economics at University of California, San Diego, says cash for clunkers adopts the worst of the New Deal policies and adapts it to today's circumstances. The Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 "paid farmers to slaughter livestock and plow up good crops, as if destroying useful goods could somehow make the nation wealthier," Hamilton writes on his blog. "And yet, here we are again, with the cash for clunkers program insisting that working vehicles must be junked to qualify for the subsidy." You can just hear it in Professor Hamilton's voice - the whole idea is short-sighted at best and flat-out stupid at worst.
Why is that Toyota came out with the 1st hybrid cars and not the US auto makers? Maybe if we made more fuel efficient cars instead of gas guzzling SUV's, then they would get more customers.
He makes it sound like the US is shipping 2 billion oversees which is far from the case. All those automakers while foreign born have large operations/plants situated in the US. It's more than likely that the vast majority of the cars sold were actually manufactured in the US, which provides jobs expansion, reinvestment etc.