Bush approves Big Three bailout

Built in America by radiospike photography

Pretty much everyone (Detroit News, Detroit Free Press, mLive, NY Times and Wall Street Journal) is reporting that President Bush has approved a $17.4 billion bailout. Assessments vary, but as the WSJ writes:

…it likely will achieve what officials recognized as a more important — and perhaps conflicting — goal: preventing a collapse of one of the country’s most important industries, at a time of broad economic weakness. The administration was particularly worried about what it termed a “disorderly” collapse of the industry.

“We lost 533,000 jobs last month,” Mr. Bush said in an appearance Thursday. “What would another million jobs lost do to the economy? What would that do to the psychology in markets? What would that do — how would that affect the working people? And so as you can tell, we’re all in, in this administration. And if need be, we’ll be in for more.”

Watch Bush’s conference via The YouTube. After listening to his speech – I have to wonder What took so long??? Actually, I’m also wondering: will it be in time or are we already over the cliff, Thelma?