-News Update: Who's been bankruptured so far?-
Chrysler: TERMINATED - That's one thing they couldn't Dodge.
GM: TERMINATED - But they promise that in a couple of months, "I'll Be Back".

The only one of the American Big Three that hasn't been LOAN PWND is Ford. Now, because I'm bored and because I *did* kind of make a Flash mocking the Big Three... (http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view /476704)

...Here's a lil' economics tale about what ***might*** happen with Ford in the upcoming months.
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------- Tales of Economics: Ford Crying Out Loud ---------

Now with GM and Chrysler out of the way, Ford is going to be like... a spoiled only child or something. Seriously, did you see how Ford's stock just *happened* to go up when GM got pwnt? That was almost as awesome as the time swine flu caused every single public medical company to jizz in their pants.

Naturally, the American public will also start being protective of Ford - every single Japanese person may wake up each morning with a jujitsu routine, but not even a gallon of pure kick-ass can defeat the tariffs that will be imposed to placate teh Ford, made in the USA. Of course, they're not going to CALL it tariffs. Probably something more along the lines of:

"It is imperative -- way past time, in fact -- for America to be as mercantilist [meaning reducing imports - probably with tariffs] as are our trading partners. We must forcefully counter the illegal subsidies, [uh... bailouts?] the manipulated currency exchange rates [uh... federal reserve and inflation??] and the unfair labor and environmental practices that some of them are employing to strike at our economy.[Hey, you're the country with bigass auto worker unions and corn ethanol subsidies.]"
~Leo Hindry, current economic advisor to Prez Brock Obama.

Oh yes, Ford would love nothing more than these tariffs to reduce competition from Honda, Nissan, Toyota, and those other Japanese cars that you can recharge by plugging into your iPhone or something. This will pretty much just hand over to Ford a monopoly status. (Isn't it ironic how government, the enforcer of antitrust laws, produces the most monopolies?)

Ford will take advantage of their effectively coercive-monopoly status - I mean, who wouldn't? I like big bucks I cannot lie, you other brokers can't deny. When crap slaps the fan, it's time for the government to face the music, fess up, and start blaming someone else. My money's on blaming the free market. (The alternative, blaming Iraq and pwning them over oil, just isn't as popular anymoar.)

----INTERMISSION----

Now, there's something called regulatory capture. It's basically a nice euphemism for 'lobbyists are going to rape your wallet and not use protection'. Lobbyists lobby because they get huge benefits, while the costs are spread out across the public. For example, if I were a rich white old guy with friends in Parliament, I could lobby the Canadian government to give me one BEEYLUN dollars, which would cost each individual taxpayer only about $2.50 per month over a year.

Naturally, I would personally have quite an incentive to lobby the government for this, but who's going to lobby back, over a measly $2.50 lost per month? Every lobbyist knows this, and eventually all these $2.50s pile up on the taxpayer until *BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM*. Government is pretty much like a tragedy of the commons - again ironic if government is supposed to CONTROL externalities and market failures.

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So the American government will decide to regulate Ford, and possibly, even nationalize Ford. Regulatory capture takes over, and now not only is Ford a monopoly, it's got the government right in its back pocket. The bureaucratic costs will explode into a million pieces, cars will cost you the arm and leg you could have ridden a bicycle with, Ron Paul will get a heart attack, the Japanese will start planning a remake of Pearl Harbour with kamikaze Priuses, and little kittens will die in a fire.

And all because someone made a hybrid. Damn you.

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Next time on Tales of Economics, it's a heartwarming story about how Ben Bernanke fell in like with Zimbabwe's economic policies. And by 'fell in like', I mean Ben Bernanke likes a good ol' stimulus package down there in his private sector. He also has an inflation fetish.