Rebecca Christie reports for Bloomberg that the government's bailout of the automakers themselves is just the beginning.The Treasury Department has already conceded that there's other "commercial interests" connected with the auto industry that will be getting money too: axle manufacturers, insurers, loan companies.
And what about those pretty showroom models? Whose gonna' pay for those sequined dresses?
Here's the first paragraphs of Christie's story:
The U.S. Treasury threw the door open to taxpayer financing for a widening array of companies and industries by drafting broad guidelines on aid to the auto industry.
The Treasury’s guidelines, published yesterday, would let officials provide funds to any company they deem important to making or financing cars. That leaves room for the government to provide money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program beyond loans already committed to General Motors Corp., GMAC LLC and Chrysler LLC.
“There are going to be other industries that are going to have just as good a case,” as the auto companies, former St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank President William Poole said in an interview on Bloomberg Television. “We don’t know what those other industries are going to be. Where does this process stop?”...
