In an essay entitled, “What’s Good For General Motors Is Now Good For China”, Irving Wesley Hall reminds us that:

“GM was the world’s largest car manufacturer. The United States was the world’s unchallenged industrial powerhouse. For Americans, Honda, Toyota and Suburu might as well have been Oriental dishes. Today General Motors is undergoing the second-largest industrial bankruptcy in history. It’s closing fourteen more assembly plants and slashing 21,000 family-supporting jobs. GM will have fewer than 40,000 workers building cars in the United States, one-tenth of its workforce of 400,000 in the 1970s.

“Fears that this bankruptcy will lead to cascading business failures are spreading throughout GM’s vast chain of suppliers and dealers …

“GM will reduce 6,000 dealerships to 3,600. Dealership closings will cut an additional 100,000 jobs. These layoffs come after a nationwide loss of 741,000 jobs in January alone …

“GM will no longer make Saturn, Pontiac and Saab, and will shift production of the remaining lines to new facilities in foreign countries …

“Despite GM’s bankruptcy, the Obama administration government-orchestrated shrinkage has already cost taxpayers $ 50 billion. The Wall Street Journal estimates ‘the rescue of the car industry could cost taxpayers close to $ 100 billion’…

“GM’s bankruptcy and Obama’s shortsighted response exemplify the self-destruction of our country’s economy …

“The United Sates has degenerated from a world power based on industrial production to an overextended military empire based on debt and consumption. Our citizens have gone from well-paid industrial workers with comfortable savings accounts to cash-starved consumers with staggering credit card payments.

“According to the Federal Reserve Bank, we Americans owe $ 971 billion in credit card debt. That’s $ 3,184 per person or $ 8,299 per household. Consumer loans for automobile, furniture and consumer electronics total $ 1.617 trillion – $ 5,928 per person or $ 13,821 per household …

“As bottom-line obsessed CEOs moved good jobs overseas, factory workers became Wal-Mart clerks selling Chinese products. For decades real wages have stagnated as prices continued to rise. Fifty years ago a man was able to support a family on a union member’s wages while his wife stayed at home to care for the children. Now almost half of private sector workers subsist on the minimum wage.

“Both mothers and fathers have to work to feed their families – sometimes two jobs or more! According to one estimate only three out of ten children today have stay-at-home moms! Who has time to read, to think, to become an informed citizen, or to understand what’s happening to us?

“Is there any wonder that so many of us are deeply in debt? How can we afford new cars? How do we find time to take political action for our common good?

“Corporations that outsource jobs and use off-shore tax havens have prospered, while working folks have watched the American dream turn into a nightmare. Our savings evaporated with the 401(k) speculators’ scam and now our last nest egg – the value of our homes – is disappearing because of the mortgage fraudsters. In the last year U.S. households’ net worth has declined abruptly by $ 13 trillion!

“In just fifty years – under both Democratic and Republican administrations – the United States has gone from the world’s major creditor to the greatest debtor. Tax payers spend $ 2 billion a day just to service the national debt. Over a trillion dollars of that amount is held by Japanese and Chinese bankers.

“Obama’s administration has pushed the nation’s debt to an unprecedented $ 6.36 trillion.

“Who profits from this earth-shaking debt? Financiers and transnational corporations driven by short-sighted greed.

“Financial capital has squeezed out industrial capital and largely controls both the executive and legislative branches in Washington. I recall the outcry when George W. Bush raised $ 25 million for his 2000 presidential campaign from financiers, war makers and big oil. In 2008 Barack Obama raised $ 150 million from the same contributors. Who pays the piper calls the tune.

“How else can we explain Obama’s choice of Wall Street executives to deal with the economic crisis that they created? Why was AIG Insurance too big to fail, but General Motors allowed to collapse? Obama’s Wall Street approach to the GM bailout typifies his bankers’ priorities. GM’s restructuring is being directed by financiers who’ve never seen an assembly line and are looking for a fast return rather than a long range solution to America’s desperate energy and transportation crisis.

“If Obama really believed in the change he promised, he’d immediately initiate a national dialog on re-industrializing America. He’d ship the bankers to China and tax their ill-gotten gains to fund committees of workers, engineers and visionaries in each factory that GM plans to close …

“Why wait for Obama? Before it is too late GM and Chrysler’s eager and skilled workforce must gear up for this nation-saving mission. Not enough time? In Flint in 1942, GM halted all car production and immediately converted the assembly lines to build planes, tanks and machine guns for the war effort. Re-industrialization is change we can believe in – but we will have to make it ourselves!”

[Right, Mr. Hall! All of the nation’s workforces “must gear up for this nation-saving mission”!]