美国汽车公司的拯救方案

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It's 15 billion of our dollars, as you know, it is taxpayer dollars we are talking about using here. And it looks like there right be a meeting as early as 3:00 pm this afternoon in the Senate it’ll really start getting this going, talking about it in detail, both Obama and Congress leaning closer to putting together some sort of bailout loan if you will to the auto industry. And originally we've been talking about 34 billion now it’s downsized to 15 billion.

However, Congress wants to put some strains on this money. For example, they may have a car czar, someone inside the Department of Commerce who would be responsible for making sure that all of their ideas are being put in place and acted on, rather than allowing the auto industry to just take the money and run.

Also possibly new corporate leadership, both the President-elect and now Senator Christ Dodd saying today and over the weekend that possibly there needs to be change in the CEO's office at some of these companies. UAW concessions, maybe more union concessions, plus some restructuring of these companies would have to happen.

So the money would have some strings attached to it, and of course, the reason we are talking about this to begin with is because Friday's jobless numbers which really put fire under Congress to start talking about this. Big shock, 534,000 jobs lost in November. Now the jobless rate is 6.7%, very tough for folks out there who are in the jobs market. Let's talk a little bit, Reggie, for just a second about what this would mean to the economy. If the auto industry was not bailed out, if all three of the big automakers were allowed to go out of business, it could cost as many as three million jobs. Now, let me explain a little bit, this isn't just jobs in Detroit; this is jobs all over the country from California to the east coast, of course including Michigan, really affecting almost every state. And we've already had 1.9 million layoffs in this country that's what the recession has done to employment in this country, this would nearly more than that, that is, double it.

And just to mention here, we found a couple of extra layoffs announced this morning Dow Chemical's announcing they're gonna lay off 5000, or 11% of their global workforce. 3M is gonna lay off some 1800 folks. So the numbers keep getting worse on the score. I wanted to tell you though Reggie you might be interested, Paul Krugman who is the Nobel economics laureate, somebody who knows a thing or two about economics says that, in the end these companies, these auto companies will probably disappear, (Really?) even with the money they are getting. So he doesn't have a lot of confidence that these companies have what it takes to survive in this very competitive global environment. As I've said, this is very controversial giving money even with strains attached to the auto industry, because  the perception out there that the businesses just haven't been run as well as they could have been. So we have to wait and see what Congress does this afternoon if they go ahead and flip the switch or money to the auto industry. Reggie.

Yeah, Gerri, and I mean these are companies that haven't been making money, and there's no promise they are going to be making money even if they get the infusion of cash.

That's absolutely right, you know, we keep waiting for some kind of, you know, magic formula for this, for this industry to resurrect itself, of course it got hit hard by this recession we are experiencing in this country, that was just, you know, yet one more knock on their business, and the fact that, You know, it seems like a distant memory, now gas prices went through the roof. That really helped hurt the industry as well. So this is an industry that really got kicked in the teeth by the current recession trying to find its way back, fight its way back. Of course you watched last week as, you know, the executives went in front of Congress hat in hand and asking for money. And it looks like it's gonna happen despite what you're hearing now from some of these smartest economists in the country about the long term viability of the industry.

czar  n. variant spelling of tsar. (俄国)沙皇,〈美〉大权独揽的人,独裁者,专制君主

hat in hand  adv.十分恭敬地