Wouldn’t you really rather have a Buick?

Rick Wagoner spent the last 10 years trying to catch a falling knife, and yesterday it bounced off the table and stabbed him in the heart. He’s a decent man who tried to do the right thing, but it was never enough fast enough. When you’re borrowing tens of billions from the taxpayers, a human sacrifice may be called for. Wagoner is it.

My question is, “when do we start sacrificing bankers?” At least Wagoner can point to Buick coming in number one in the latest J.D. Power study for vehicle dependability (tied with Jaguar). Can anyone name a single thing any of America’s top banks have ranked number one in lately other than quantity of bad investments, boldness of consumer exploitation, or size of taxpayer bailout?

And has the government forced out a single bank CEO? No. Their specialized knowledge is too valuable, their experience too extensive, and their judgment too sound. We just can’t lose them.

If Lincoln had managed the Civil War the way President Obama is managing the financial crisis, McClellan would have still been holed-up in Washington in 1864 while Lee controlled the rest of the continent.

I understand the need to get tough with Detroit. Let’s just dish out the same medicine to Wall Street.

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We got you to sell your 20 MPG Suburban to buy a 16 MPG Sequoia. We convinced you that your 33 MPG Malibu actually gets worse mileage than our 30 MPG Accord. We convinced if you quit buying GM, Ford and Chrysler that we will build more plants, but we just announced we are closing our NEW Prius plant in Mississippi. Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Ford, Lincoln, Mercury and Pontiac scored above average for JD Power Quality, while Acura, Nissan, BMW, Mazda, VW, Subaru, Scion, Mitsubishi, Suzuki, Land Rover and Mini all scored below the industry average – and you still believe American brands can’t compete. We got billions of dollars in incentives paid for by the tax payers to build the few plants that we do have in America and you don’t care. And the best of all, we didn’t even have to make you believe that the auto loans were really a free money bailout…you came up with that one yourselves

New Car Czar?

I love Congress. They berated the car execs for asking for half as much money as Congress thinks they will really need, and then they gave them half of what they asked for. But at least half of the Midwest won’t be unemployed for Christmas.

Now it’s time to find the new Car Czar to oversee the renaissance of Detroit. This post is seeking your nominations, and I’ll get the ball rolling with a few suggestions. Here are three in no particular order:

1. Billie Gibbons of ZZ Top, in part because we need someone in government who looks like this, but this is also a man who knows cars. One look at his custom Cadzilla is all you need to know the truth of it.

2. Michael Vick, former Atlanta Falcons’ quarterback (currently residing in Leavenworth, Kansas). Mike is another car lover. In fact, he bought a $99,500 Mercedes S550 on the day he left for Leavenworth. Used a debit card to pay for it. Mike has bought dozens of cars of all types in his young life. You can read about how he spent over $18 million in two years in a recent Atlanta Journal article. That kind of power-spending could be very useful when you consider how much new money Detroit will have to spend.

3. Jay Leno. Jay is one of the great car collectors of all times, and is particularly knowledgeable about Detroit iron. He has a great web site that shows off his collection with both still and video art. And of course, he is a funny guy, and I have a feeling we’re really going to need a sense of humor before we work ourselves out of this mess.

Why is this man smiling?

In the Senate, the leading opponent of giving aid to the domestic auto firms is the man to the left. No, it’s not Rip Torn. It’s Alabama Senator Richard Shelby. And why is he so opposed? Could it be because, according to the Alabama Automotive Manufacturers Association, the number of automotive manufacturing jobs in Alabama has increased by 80% since 2001, and the state is home to nearly 300 plants? Close to 500,000 cars were manufactured in Alabama in 2005. Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Hyundai and Toyota all have a strong presence there.

And every one of those jobs is there for two reasons: First, because there are no unions in the south; and second, because Alabama gave enormous tax abatements and other financial inducements to the manufacturers in order to lure them to Alabama. Those inducements included things like building roads and railway lines to the plant locations at no cost to the manufacturer, but at great expense to the taxpayers. Hundreds of millions of dollars were given away.

It would be a major imprudence, in Sen. Shelby’s view, to use taxpayers’ money to help Detroit, but it was no doubt a highly prudent investment in the future of Alabama to set Toyota up with some free roads in order to get the jobs.

In fairness it must be said that if Alabama had not, then Tennessee, South Carolina and Michigan too would have happily done so. It’s a buyer’s market when you are looking for a location for a few hundred jobs.

Senator Shelby would be happy to see the Big 3 go under. He’s betting that will just mean more manufacturing jobs for his state, while the taxpayers of all 50 states will bear the cost of supporting hundreds of thousands of displaced workers, and their families, in the Midwest.

Will the real stooge please stand up

Why are the auto company CEOs getting so much grief from the press, pundits and Congress, while the Wall Street and banking CEOs are getting so little? Because the critics are gutless and self-serving. Financial organizations give out far more PAC money than the auto companies, and, being primarily New York-based, have a much cozier relationship to the media, who tend to be star-struck by the power and fabulousness of the masters-of-the-universe-types at Goldman and Citi.

But who really deserves the scorn? Running a car company is one of the most complex tasks in business. You must market and sell a very expensive consumer product to a very fickle consumer. You have to design those products for where the market will be in five years. You have highly sophisticated competitors from at least six foreign countries. You have to deal with massive numbers of employees and several very powerful unions. The products you make require the very latest in sophisticated engineering and production techniques, combined with outstanding design. The fluctuations in two very volatile commodities (oil and credit) can make or break you. Oh, and just to keep it interesting, by law, you must sell your products through 10,000 independent businesses, each run by a hoople who is sure he knows more about the car business than you do.

To be a successful banker you have to lend money at a higher interest rate than your cost of capital, look good in a suit, and be able to show the yokels a good time when they visit New York. To be fair, you must do all three of these things well. Two out of three is not good enough, as we are learning in an oh-so-painful fashion now.

Two of the three men running the Detroit auto companies have been there short times and came from other industries, and all three are struggling to overcome the big mistakes that were made over decades by their predecessors.

And yet turn on CNBC or any other news program and you will surely see some pretty face explaining in 90 seconds what Detroit needs to do to fix itself. Like they know. And of course the politicians are all shocked to discover that the auto execs make millions and don’t fly coach.

What stunning, self-righteous, hypocrisy. I never dreamed I’d be writing a post defending auto CEOs, but if they are the Three Stooges, then Lehman, AIG, Goldman and Fannie Mae were led by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.