In an earlier post I attempted to correct Dr. Austan Goolsbee’s incorrect and inflammatory statements about President Bush.I would like here to add my views to one additional question on the auto industry discussion on this morning’s edition of Fox News Sunday.

Host Chris Wallace moderated a discussion this morning with:

  • Dr. Austan Goolsbee, Member of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers and chief economist on the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board;
  • Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL), ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee;
  • Thayer Capital Chairman Fred Malek; and
  • Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

I offer kudos to Mr. Schmidt for his thoughtful responses throughout. And the hero of the discussion was Mr. Wallace, who in his questions demonstrated a deep understanding of the actual options faced by policymakers, the choices they made, and the serious consequences of those choices. I thank him for trying to elevate the policy discussion this morning.

Here’s Chris Wallace asking Fred Malek whether the Bush Administration have provided loans before a Chapter 11 filing:

WALLACE: Let me bring in Fred Malek, though. The President says that he has no interest in running businesses, he’s just trying to save them from collapse and get out.

[plays clip of President Obama’s press conference] Fred Malek, in the middle of a financial crisis, in the middle of a terrible recession, could the President really let General Motors and Chrysler, AIG and Citibank go under?

MALEK: … I think what you have here, is you have two different situations. I would label the injection of capital into the financial institutions, stabilizing the financial systems, that’s a war of necessity. You had to do that. But, getting into General Motors, saving General Motors and then taking them into bankruptcy, that’s a war of choice, it’s the wrong choice.

Senator Shelby later commented on this same question, as did Mr. Malek again:

SHELBY: First of all, I advocated last fall that General Motors and Chrysler’s best bet would have go to Chapter 11 then, it would have saved a lot of money, not a political restructuring like what’s happened, where the bondholders have been sacrificed, the unions have carried the day.

MALEK: I agree with Senator Shelby. Look, we’ve had for decades we’ve had a bankruptcy system in this country that has worked well, and has fueled the free enterprise system in a positive way. It is impervious to politics because it’s run by federal courts. Now, what have you done? You have taken it out of the judicial and you’ve turned it over to the executive, and I think you’ve injected politics into it. Senator Shelby is right, there was no sense in putting billions of dollars in and then declaring Chapter 11 afterwards. They should have let them go into bankruptcy and let the courts work it through. …

Mr. Wallace then asks the critical follow-up question:

WALLACE: Let me just ask. Mr. Goolsbee, if at some point, either the Bush Administration back in the fall, or you guys when you took over, had just said, go into Chapter 11, we’re not going to take an ownership stake, we’re not going to give you 50 billion dollars, what would have happened?

The answer is that GM and Chrysler would have liquidated. Neither GM nor Chrysler was ready for a complex Chapter 11 filing. Had the entered the Chapter 11 process in December or January, the firms and every outside expert told us that the restructuring would have failed and the firms would have liquidated. We estimated this would have resulted in about 1.1 million lost jobs.

Mr. Malek was right, the loans to GM and Chrysler were a choice, but they were not the choice that he and Senator Shelby thought we faced. The choice was loan or liquidate. There was no feasible Chapter 11 option available at the time. (GM may fail even now, after they have had five months to prepare for Chapter 11.) Mr. Schmidt frames it correctly:

Schmidt: It seems to me that what choice did we have except try to save General Motors, given the roughly million jobs that were related at a time of incredible pain and job loss. So if you think about it , the choice was bankruptcy, the supply chain goes away, the loss of the American automobile industry, or a band-aid. It needs to be a band-aid, and it needs to be something we get out of.