Chrysler is better at defending Keynesianism than the administration

Hehe.

I'll admit, even I was a bit skeptical about the auto bailouts a few years back, even if I thought they were necessary. I supported them less from a protectionist standpoint - I'm just not sympathetic to that argument - but from a Keynesian standpoint. This is one very clear instance in which Keynesian economics worked perfectly, saving jobs, creating demand, and stimulating domestic industry. Had the US embraced Austrian economics in 2008/2009, these firms would not exist. Period. Now we all have egg on our faces, but not nearly as much as we would if we'd listened to the Austrians and let these American firms die.

It's also a lesson in how best liberals and pragmatists can talk about Keynesian policies. Rather than implying that we know how the system will work and building sweeping policies based on it, we target recognizable and distinct communities under threat and save them. Ram the point home that we aren't in school or playing a video game, and that the firms who collapse under untenable market conditions represent the destruction of livelihoods, communities, and the engines of American prospertiy. Chrysler here has no secret objectives or liberal commitments...and, though it may be too early to say, it seems that US automakers have learned hard lessons without having to be let out to pasture. That's more of an argument than the Obama administration seems comfortable making.

As an aside, who else loves the new commercials Detroit has been putting out? I'm thinking of this one specifically, but there are others like it.