US auto rescue - a society health check

By Julian Delasantellis

During the summer, a local car dealer, eschewing the standard offers by his ilk of "free balloons for the kiddies, and all the franks you can eat", offered those taking a test drive in one of the dealership's new cars shares of stock in either Ford or General Motors, as the ad put it, in "America's great car companies".

I wasn't looking at a car back then, and even if I had been, I think I would have gone to the dealers offering the barbecued hot dogs instead of the stock shares. Now, it doesn't really matter. Both the franks of summer and the stock shares currently share a similar fate, in that they have degenerated from being items of at least some value to now being absolute excreta.