Sustainability

Sustainability
Here’s President-Elect Barack Obama on NBC’s  Meet The Press this morning:

“Well, I think that the Big Three U.S. automakers have made repeated strategic mistakes.  They have not managed that industry the way they should have, and I’ve been a strong critic of the auto industry’s failure to adapt to changing times — building small cars and energy efficient cars that are going to adapt to a new market. But what I’ve also said is, is that the auto industry is the backbone of American manufacturing. It is a huge employer across many states. Millions of people, directly or indirectly, are reliant on that industry, and so I don’t think it’s an option to simply allow it to collapse. What we have to do is to provide them with assistance, but that assistance is conditioned on them making significant adjustments. They’re going to have to restructure, and all their stakeholders are going to have to restructure. Labor, management, shareholders, creditors — everybody’s going to recognize that they they do not have a sustainable business model right now. And if they expect taxpayers to help in that adjustment process, then they can’t keep on putting off the kinds of changes that they, frankly, should have made 20 or 30 years ago. If they want to survive, then they better start building a fuel-efficient car. And if they want to survive, they, they’ve got to recognize that the auto market is not going to be as large as some of their rosy scenarios that they’ve put forward over the last several years.”

So, remove the references to the auto industry and substitute that with, say another industry of your choice — oh, I don’t know, you decide. Aside from the reference to government bailout, does any of this sound vaguely familiar?

If only…

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