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A big mistake does not excuse a small mistake!
I love the wording of the captions: “Amount banks got so far” vs. “Amount committed to automakers.” So the banks got theirs and are getting more. The feds have committed (as in a sacred bond) bucks to the automakers, without any implication that there will be further payouts.
Ain’t English grand?
Anyway, I think you’ll also find that the $24.9b figure is a wee bit low; it doesn’t include the $25b Department of Energy Retooling Loans. John Horner’s weekly bailout scorecard up in a few…
Its the Detroit News, credibility slashed. By now, an old tune.
Implies (states that?) one single kind of industry in limited areas of the country should be equal to banking that handles all money for all industries and worldwide. Sound like something they would do, but to what end…I (don’t) wonder. Could backfire on the 2.8.
People still can’t imagine their houses being worthless all around the world????
The US Taxpayer has $273b in equity in some suffering banking businesses that have contracts for assets that might recover in the long term (who knows), while the “other” US Taxpayer has $25b in insolvent automakers who can’t (won’t?) change.
Time to stop comparing bailing banking to bailing structurally busted manufacturing. Remake the manufacturers yes, but prolonging the structure is doomed.
+1 for Robbie also.
I think we have to many banks anyway so maybe some of them should have been allowed to close their doors. Its not like we have 100 car manufacturers in America. We only have three home grown (which should be two by the end of the year). We dont need all the different banks. I dont like the bailouts at all but I would have like to have seen less go to the banks (since they just spend it in Vegas) and more to the car companies.
What’s wrong? Not just the logical fallacy (banks got a lot, so should the D3), but the graphics. As Edward Tufte would point out, the News has used two-dimensional objects (circles) to represent a one-dimension contrast (amount of dollars). Are we supposed to compare heights of the respective circles (and they don’t appear to have a 10+ to 1 ratio anyway), or the area (too difficult to measure visually, and again they appear disproportionate). Indeed, the circles are shaded and the labels are “ballooned” so actually perceive them to be globes–so we have three dimensions at play! The difference is further magnified.
The Detroit News is graphically illiterate. Or maybe they intended to be propagandistic. There’s a lot of that going around nowadays.
What’s wrong? The scale of the graph is *way* off. According to the labels on the chart, the bank bailout is about 11 times the size of the bank bailout. Since the chart is (presumably) three-dimensional, the bank bailout sphere should be about 2.2 times the width or height of the auto bailout sphere (cube root of 11.) In other words, the auto bailout sphere should be a little under half the height of the bank bailout sphere.
This type of dishonest chart was exposed in the classic book How to Lie with Statistics.
@50merc:
I’m a big fan of Edward Tufte.
@50merc:
Good explanation, and you’re a faster typist, too!
There’s nothing wrong with this picture.
Let’s stipulate that both the banking bailout and the D3 bailout are boondoggles, and that the banking bailout is about 10 times the size of the D3 bailout.
(Note: this neglects the $140 billion tax break that the Bush/Paulson crime family slipped into the bailout when no one was looking.
http://tinyurl.com/c8qdoy)
Given the above, why is it the wailing and gnashing of teeth about the D3 bailout about 10 times that of the complaints surrounding the banking bailout?
Including such hypocritical whoppers as the D3 bill mandating union employee wage cuts, while the Wall Street tycoons issue themselves $18 billion in bonuses on the taxpayer dime.
Class warfare much?
Justin, it’s nice to hear from another member of the Edward Tufte fan club. Wonderful books, gorgeously illustrated. And if you haven’t been to one of his lectures that he gives around the country, be sure to catch it. He’s marvelous.
While both Tufte and Huff (How to Lie with Statistics) are right and correct, the principle and criticism thereoff is older, much older. The first exposure was in Graphic Methods for Presenting Facts by Brinton in 1914. Spookily the book is as relevant today as it was when first published and I would much recommend it to anyone who needs to present facts for a living.
Also the pic grossly mis-states what the banks have received. This only accounts for the TARP portion of the bailout. In actuality they have received ~ $3 Trillion.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=aGq2B3XeGKok.
Children crying about how little jimmy got more allowance from mommy-n-daddy than sister sally.
Aint welfare maggots special?
Cascading debt defaults always lead to cascading taxpayer handouts…Like Japan since 1990.
I find it ironic that when you consider this TTAC post that Detroit thinks that it is unfair that they get a small sliver of what the banks gets.
According to the other post, Detroit claims the reason sales are down is because people can not get credit to buy cars. So therefore wouldn’t it make sense that Detroit would want banks to get capital, so that they can issue loans, so that people can buy Detroit’s products?
I guess not. They just want to skip the whole “work to sell a product or service” bit and just get money.
Robert,
Would it be moral relativism to point out that American farmers also have received about $175 billion over the last decade or so?
I think that Detroit and Wall Street are symptomatic of a larger problem. I don’t think that’s moral relativism but rather moral absolutism. I think there’s a unified field theory of whats wrong with America that ties Detroit and Washington and Wall Street and Sacramento. Almost everybody, one way or another, benefited from cheap credit, lavish benefit plans and kicking the can down the road. Looking at the wages, pensions and benefits for government employees, the way state, local and federal governments have managed our own financial obligations, Social Security and the “stimulus” package, RenCen begins to look more like the rule than the exception.
Have Americans, through our elected officials, acted any differently than GM stockholders? Detroit’s just seeing the day of reckoning a bit sooner than the rest of us. The news articles about underfunded public pension obligations are starting to come fast and furious. Cities and states around the country have enormous deficits and unfunded obligations.
As far as the DetNews article is concerned, I think it’s a waste of energy for Detroit defenders to whine about Wall Street, even if most of the whining is accurate. The energy should be directed to reinventing Detroit.
What’s wrong? Both numbers are ‘way too damned large.
What is wrong… bad companies should fail, otherwise our children and their children are going to be screwed.
RE: “amount got” vs. “committed to” wording.
THIS is exactly why I avoid the mainstream press at all costs. This is an example of dirty, filthy, insidious bias. It would be one thing if it only appeared in paid advertisements, but examples like it appear in NEWS stories quite regularly.
This is why I’ve given up on my local newspapers and television news.
Airhen, our children and their children are going to be screwed to such a huge extent by the stimulus inter-generational theft bill now before Congress that the presence or absence of car company bailouts will nearly be negligible by comparison.
The politicians needed to take care of their benefactors. Who cares if the big banks, the ones too big to fail, are lead by unethical sycophants who expect to be bailed out for their mistakes while telling their customers in the same position to pay up.
Same goes for GM and Chrysler. Based on market share, though, I guess they’re no longer too big to fail, eh?