Transcripts

"Two Ways to Play"-U.S. Auto Bailout

JEFF YASTINE: It's said that there are two sides to every story, two ways to play every trade and it's a good idea to look at both sides of an issue. So tonight, we're doing just that with a look at the U.S. auto bailout. In tonight's "Two Ways to Play," here's Minyanville's Kevin Depew and Kevin Depew of Minyanville.

KEVIN DEPEW, MINYANVILLE: General Motors and Chrysler are poised to receive as much as $14 billion in emergency loans from taxpayers, with a larger economic package to include Ford likely to follow. While the debate rages among economists over whether the auto makers deserve the loans, the reality is that America has no choice. At stake are millions of jobs all across the country in an industry that affects practically the entire U.S. economy. The devastation created by losing these jobs, losing this industry would be unprecedented in American history. It must be nice to live high up in the ivory towers of the economic theologians who bash every loan as a bailout and to whom jobs are mere numbers on a spreadsheet. But in the real world, on Main Street those jobs are real and by protecting this industry, law makers are doing the right thing. Now let's hear what kind of grim, apocalyptic take my counterpart has. I may have a grim outlook, but it's not based on the latest bailout of whatever industry is about to collapse this week. The bailouts of 2008 are actually rooted in more than two decades of bad behavior. See, whenever any economic pain has approached in this country, our collective answer has always been to simply borrow more money and push the day of reckoning forward without giving a thought to who, ultimately has to pay the tab. At no point have we been willing to take responsibility for spending too much, saving too little and taking on too much debt. At no point have we been willing to sacrifice our own cozy standards of living for the sake of ensuring that our children and grandchildren will have a better standard of living and I think that's a shame. This latest bailout? It's just another link in the chain.