This is up

This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday August 26 2010. I'm Caleb Brown hiring at

Chrysler and GM is up and GM is about to announce a massive IPO.

So did the auto bailout work after all?

Only if you refuse to count up the costs, says Dan Eekinson,

Associate Director of the Cato Institute's Center for Trade Policy Studies.

There's a little bit more to that story than calling it a success.

A few months ago, Stephen Ratner, who was the Autozar, wrote an article in the Washington Post saying,

you know, isn't it time we call the auto bailout a success?

Well, this is, this notion of success is predicated on two quarters of profits.

Oksay, so-so-profits, and not as good as some of the other automakers in the United States.

And GM has got this IPO on the table.

It's going to happen perhaps next month.

That's great.

Let's get the government out of the auto industry as quickly as possible, but to call it a success is to ignore all of the costs.

It's a classic broken window fallacy.

The costs imposed on bondholders who had their property stolen from them. the costs to

on bondholders who had their property stolen from them. The costs to the market process, I mean Ford and Honda and Toyota and all these other

American producers, and I call Honda and Toyota American producers,

because they produce in America.

They were denied the spoils of competition.

We also had the rule of law was run roughshod over. We had starting with President Bush diversion

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