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Governments should not micromanage GM

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 8, 2009

Here are excerpts from editorials in newspapers around the world:

The Toronto Sun, Canada, on General Motors:

In normal times, Tuesday's taxpayer-financed bailout of General Motors would be one from which any sane investor would run away screaming.

GM is being saved by an investment of $59.5 billion ... from North American taxpayers, $9.5 billion of that ... coming from the Canadian and Ontario governments.

In exchange, Canadians get a 12 percent stake in GM, whose American parent Tuesday filed for bankruptcy protection.

Even Prime Minister Stephen Harper conceded Ottawa isn't counting on getting our money back, although taxpayers will presumably get some return when the government sells its stake in the company, assuming this bailout works.

The deal contains no job guarantees for Canadian workers, who have already made major concessions to keep the company afloat, merely an agreement to keep 16 period of North American auto production in Canada.

Problem is, if GM still goes belly up down the road, 16 percent of nothing is nothing. Plus, taxpayers will lose their entire stake in the firm. ...

Governments will also have to resist the urge to micromanage GM.

That means avoiding bonehead decisions like ordering GM to stop or slow production of its popular Chevy Camaro muscle car in Oshawa ... because it's not "green" enough.

If nonsense like that starts happening, we can all kiss the billions ... put into GM on our behalf Tuesday, goodbye.

Daily Star, Beirut, Lebanon, on the bombing in Lahore, Pakistan:

(The) bombing in Lahore comes as a deadly reminder of the growing threat that Islamist militancy poses to the Pakistani people. Over the last year, the country has been rocked by more than a dozen major attacks that have killed or wounded hundreds of civilians -all in the name of Islam.

The militants often argue that such attacks are aimed at America or the West and therefore serve to restore the shattered honor of the people. But does anyone really believe that Americans in Washington or Britons in London are sitting around talking about how defeated they felt when someone killed a few policemen in Lahore? ...

This begs an obvious question: Where is the Muslim outrage over such senseless killing? ...

What does it say about the state of Muslim societies when the publication of a cartoon can mobilize more outraged demonstrators than the killing of scores of innocent civilians can? Where is the conscience of Muslim men and women when children are being murdered in the name of Islam? ...

If those who take up arms and strap on suicide belts would look around themselves, they would see that scores of their fellow countrymen are undernourished and undereducated, as well as lacking in sanitation, decent living conditions and economic opportunity. Blaming the West for this state of affairs may be justified, but it will not help to resolve any of these issues. And choosing to respond to the status quo by investing scarce resources into acts of violence only exacerbates these problems. ....

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