A Bad Week for American Competitiveness

Jack and Suzy Welch document a bad week for American competitiveness, and our ability to grow our way out of this recession.

The unions, which had a hand in killing Chrysler, now own half its equity, and GM looks to be going in the same direction. As one of us (Jack) put it on Twitter: “Even France wouldn’t do this.”

Look, we don’t know how the Washington-Detroit negotiations played out. But the ease with which the large bank lenders appeared to cave to a pennies-on-the-dollar deal might suggest that TARP was involved; the government was wielding a big stick, and it wielded it in favor of the unions over the conventions of bankruptcy law. Is such a radical upending of the economic system good for business confidence and capital formation? It’s hard to imagine how.

And so, we are beginning to feel afraid — very afraid. We believe America needs to be more competitive than ever to get out of this recession.

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