The Chrysler Farce

If, a year or two ago, a fiction writer had given us the story of the Chrysler bankruptcy in a farce written to lampoon the corruption and ineptness of the government, people probably would have dismissed it as too goofy and farfetched to be effective satire. Yet here we are.

First the government gives Chrysler billions of dollars to avert bankruptcy. When that does not work, it looks for a buyer for the company. It selects the worst major car company in the world, and arranges for it to buy a large interest in Chrysler for zero dollars and zero cents. Perhaps having missed the fact that that the only valuable components of the old Chrysler were Jeep, Dodge trucks, and the van business, the government decrees that the new Chrysler will henceforth be making small, “green “ cars, on the Fiat model. This seems to be an odd business plan given that Fiat left the American market years ago because its small cars could not compete with those of the Japanese and Korean companies and never came back. The government then uses the bankruptcy as an excuse to dump hundreds of Chrysler dealers around the country, on the interesting premise that it is better to have fewer than more people selling one’s products. Finally the administration ignores settled bankruptcy law and stiffs the holders of Chrysler’s debt to give a majority interest in the company to the United Auto Workers union, the same bunch that shares joint responsibility with Chrysler’s management for the company’s failure.

It is a farce, but, as we laugh at it, we should remember that the people who held Chrysler’s bonds did so in good faith, that the dumped dealers and their employees were treated with capricious unfairness, that that many good Chrysler employees will become unemployed, that customers who like Jeeps and Dodge trucks may be blocked by fiat and Fiat from getting what they want, and that this country is just a little worse place in which to live or do business because of what all of this says about the present state of the rule of law. The nation will be poorer in more than just an economic sense for this mess.