The Homa Files

To me, the most stunning aspect of yesterday’s announcements re: GM and Chrysler wasn’t Rick Waggoner getting canned, or Chrysler being shotgun wed to Fiat (anybody out there own a Fiat ?) … it was Team O’s announcement that the Federal government would now be standing behind the car companies’ warranties.

First, I didn’t know that the Constitution gave a president the unilateral right to declare that my tax dollars will go to keeping somebody else’s shoddy car running for 5 or 10 years. 

More interesting: how exactly is the Federal government going to fulfill the warranty pledge?

Let’s pretend that both Chrysler & GM are headed to the junk heap.  Following them will be their dealers — the guys who currently provide warranty service.  Will they just put a couple of repair bays outside the White House?

More likely, it’ll just be an insurance program that reimburses independent garages who will be licensed to make repairs.  The process for handling the claims ? The reimbursement rates ? The fraud protection ?

And, many warranty repairs require parts.  Where will the parts come from? Answer: probably from China since domestic suppliers will crater soon after GM.

Does anybody in the administration give even a moment’s thought to implementation details?

I guess this program will be good practice for nationalized healthcare.  If they can do it for cars, they should be able to do it for human lives, right?

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This entry was posted on March 31, 2009 at 8:00 am and is filed under Autos - Travel, Financial Crisis, Obama Administration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.