Stock portfolios, though, they can relate to.

Relate to stock portfolios that is. The Village is a wealthy place.

He says to hell with them - the execs, that is.

The companies, and the jobs they still create, are worth saving but the executives have to go. As well, the Big 3 are only worth about $11 Billion fair market value so why not just buy them as part of any bailout deal?

Nationalize them, fire everyone from vice-president of anything on upward and install new management (Bill Clinton is looking for a role, and how about that Al Gore guy?) then shift production ASAP to high-mileage affordable vehicles only - no more gas-guzzlers, period. Use the same technology and worker skills to start building more light rail and busses and high-speed corridor trains, doing the right thing for the country long-term while bringing decent jobs back to Flint and the greater Detroit area.

Once things are back on track, spin the companies back out as multiple private entities in a public offering that will earn back for the taxpayers much more than what was invested to keep them going, never mind the avoided communal cost of massive layoffs and unemployment and loss of technological and manufacturing capability. Done right, saving the automakers is an investment opportunity, not a cost.

As it stands, the automakers are planning on taking that money and using it to build new production plants offshore, in Russia and China, and they will just keep on running the US facilities into the ground. If the culture at the top is not changed and the corporate charters restricted to building in the US for the good of the US, then a bailout will just be money down a rat-hole.

And yes, the same thing should have been done with the financial system bailout but was not. Is it reasonable to argue the massive mistake made then is justification for doing it again now? I don't think so, and neither does Michael Moore.

...progressive friends is that the auto industry is apples and the financial industry is oranges. Comparing the two bailouts makes no sense.

Can anyone with a with sharp eye in the financial world help me debunk that argument?

I felt like common sense was sufficient, but apparently I need something deeper.

One of these industries is directly connected to the well-being of a few million vulnerable workers and laborers that without these jobs may not get any, or be herded into "Walmart" jobs. The failure of one of these industries will cause unemployment in a good deal of our states to skyrocket totally draining umemployment benefit reserves, swamp already strained food pantries, fill homeless shelters, places many many more homes up for forclosure, wreak absolute havoc on local and state budgets, etc...In other words, one of these industries is directly on the frontlines of this crisis. Picture the people who suffered when Lehman Brothers went out of business and where they ended up, and know picture the people who will suffer when say GM goes into insolvency and where those people are likely to end up. Any questions?

Another way to think about it is to think of how each of the two industries got into trouble. One of these industries is very directly responsible for their own downfall through criminal mismangement and outright fraud (if you ask me) peddling things they knew didn't exist as if they existed. The other is a result from not being nimble enough and poor, but far from malevolent, decision-making. They got themselves into a position where their reserves weren't large enough to weather a severe recession, and to a point where they had become unable to borrow from banks (who, BTW, are using money they are supposed to be loaning to buy up other banks), thus having to go to an unconventional source for a loan: Congress.

I agree, it is like apples and oranges. And, I fail to see how that is an argument against one bailout over the other. In fact, if one bailout makes more moral sense, it is the one that protects the more vulnerable of the two from being thrown overboard.