My Sunday Feeling

Okay. Going to DC on corporate jets to ask Congress for billions of dollars to bail out the American automotive industry was a really bad idea. Granted, the fact that each of the amusingly named "Big Three" maintain a fleet of corporate jets for the use of its executives is not exactly the biggest problem facing the industry and certainly is not the cause of its present difficulties. Still, it looked like hell and makes you wonder what planet these guys as well as the execs over at AIG are living on.

Given the monumental hubris on display last week by guys who came to Congress with their hats in their hands, it is tempting to say " to hell with them" and urge Washington to turn a deaf ear to Detroit. Indeed, some commentators have opined that the best thing that could happen would be to go ahead and let them fail if for no other reason than it's all they deserve.

Oh, if only it were that simple.

I ran into a woman in the grocery store today that I went to college with. Her mind was much on the economy. She works for a local technology company that does billing and such for many large corporations such as-guess who?- Ford.

" If Ford fails, I lose my job. Period. I have 2 kids in college and my mother is starting to need more attention. Don't people understand that if Ford goes broke it will affect more people than just factory workers?"

And there's the rub. It is easy to think that if the Detroit automakers go down it will primarily affect the arrogant executives and the greedhead union bosses. But this is not true. It will affect suppliers, the gas companies, tire manufacturers, banks and people like my friend thousands of miles from Michigan.

As Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times has said repeatedly, the world is flat. Everything is connected up. If the current banking-foreclosure crisis hasn't proven that in spades then, well, you just haven't been paying attention. The ripple effect of a couple hundred thousand people hitting the unemployment line at the same time in an economy that has already been poleaxed would be nothing short of catastrophic without regard to the ripple effect on all of the jobs throughout the country that depend on the American automotive industry to some extent or another.

Either the spendthrifts that ran Detroit into the ground will get religion and come up with a plan of reorganization that the Congress can live with or it will have one imposed upon it by its creditors in Bankruptcy Court. And the guess here is that neither the execs or the unions particularly relish the prospect of a Bankruptcy Judge calling the shots.

But the industry cannot be allowed to fail. Because everything is connected. Ask my friend from college.