Re: Junkyard dog hits Motown
On May 15, 2007, at 7:54 PM, Jim Straub wrote:
I think it is true that a fight directed at the larger financial
instiutions involved might help (I recall reading that in the 76 NYC crisis the
powers that be were most disturbed and agitated at some early raucous
demos that happened on wall street and outside the banks themselves— a
tactic that was dropped by the union leadership)
A march on Wall Street made more political sense in that situation
because the banks had been rolling over NYC debt as if nothing was
wrong - even though they knew the city was borrowing to pay routing
operating expenses and getting deeper in the hole - until they
finally decided to pull the plug. An organized default would have
been the righteous thing to do. In the case of the US auto industry,
though, the problem isn’t really Wall Street - it’s that management
has run the industry into the ground.
Motor vehicle mfg has the second-highest multiplier of any of the 130
or so industries the BEA publishes estimates for (behind “animal
production”): 2.89, meaning that every $1 spent in the car biz
results in another $1.89 in spending in other industries. Cf.
postindustrial pursuits like lawyering (1.45), real estate (1.51),
computer systems design (1.57), advertising (1.63), and hospitals
(1.81).
Doug