Economic Research: Peters Auto Mall

Tuesday 25 December 2012

Peters Auto Mall

This past Sunday marked the third anniversary of Chrysler's exit from bankruptcy, and next month will mark the same milestone for General Motors. At the time there were many observers who thought that one or perhaps both companies would fail, including Senator John McCain who in late 2009 said "anybody believes that Chrysler is going to survive, I'd like to meet them." The skeptics were wrong. We have now had 27 straight months of private sector job growth, and one of the strongest areas of our economy has been the auto industry. Since June of 2009 when GM and Chrysler exited bankruptcy, the auto sector has created more than 231,000 new jobs. Yet we are seeing a concerted effort on the part of the Republican Party to discredit one of President Obama's greatest economic success stories in order to harm his chances at being reelected.Mitt Romney has made questioning the successful intervention in the auto industry a centerpiece of his campaign. After writing an opinion piece in the New York Times in 2008 titled "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt," he has repeatedly claimed that the government should not have invested taxpayer dollars in GM and Chrysler.