Compliant, because dependent, banks bowed to the administration's demand that they accept less than settled bankruptcy law would have given them as secured creditors. Next, the president denounced as "speculators" remaining secured creditors, who then folded and accepted less on the dollar than an unsecured creditor -- the United Auto Workers union -- is getting. This raw taking of property from secured investors penalized those "speculators" -- retired Indiana teachers and state police officers whom Mourdock says are being "ripped off by the federal government."
He is asking a court to declare that the Obama administration's actions have violated "more than 100 years of established law by redefining 'secured creditors' to mean something less," and that the actions violate the Fifth Amendment protection against the seizure of private property. Furthermore, he says the government is guilty of "misuse" of the Troubled Assets Relief Program, which gives the Treasury authority only to aid financial institutions, not industrial companies.
One New Deal improvisation not yet emulated by the Obama administration is the September 1933 slaughter -- while the unemployment rate was 25 percent and millions were hungry -- of 6 million young pigs. The purpose was to raise the price of pork by reducing the supply of it. But the "cash for clunkers" idea is a cousin of that.
The Wall Street Journal's Joseph B. White reports that proposals percolating in Congress would further subsidize Detroit -- and chill the planet, of course -- by bribing people to turn in old cars and trucks (dealers have 400,000 unsold large pickups) and buy vehicles that get better gas mileage. In one plan, if the new truck gets one mile per gallon more than the old truck, the buyer would get $3,500; a two mpg improvement would be worth $4,500.
Such a policy would counteract the president's environmentally harmful policy of forcing Detroit to quickly produce cars that are much more fuel efficient -- meaning light, cramped and dangerous. Such products will be powerful incentives for Americans to continue driving their old, more polluting and less fuel-efficient cars. This will deprive Detroit of some customers, but surely the government has thought this through.