The NY Times today chimes in on a possible bail-out for Big Auto. It echoes earlier posts by Empty Wheel, (for example, here), and today’s column by Bob Herbert. It argues that government loans to Big Auto, and by extension, to any other major industry, should be contingent on restructuring concessions.

That’s fine, as far as it goes; those are not new arguments to readers of FDL. And it’s good to see a major daily make the point, especially as accomplishing such things would involve sustained hand-to-hand combat with lobbyists, companies and their pet Congress Critters. The Times does in its own argument, though, when it blithely says,

This goes beyond firing top management, forbidding the payment of dividends to stockholders and putting limits on executive pay — all necessary steps.

Hank Paulson demanded none of those changes before lavishing billions on his Wall Street peers. He fought them and still does. And neither he nor Ben Bernanke at the Fed even want to tell us where the money went, what, if anything, we should expect in return for it, or which outsourced provider arranged it for what fees.

No, the changes the Times assumes as basic are likely to be resisted more than any others. By comparison, it would be easy to prohibit scandalous interest rates and penalty fees on consumer loans, or to rebuild factories, or to stop sending our best technology to China. But threaten top managers’ jobs and compensation? There will be hell to pay. It would threaten an industry of compensation and “human” resource specialists, psychological evaluators, tax lawyers, boards of directors, and what not, all of whom would be turned on would be reformers. Touch the layer of golden eggs and the giant will drop down the beanstalk to trample you all. Or so managers hope.

The silver lining is that with the depression, so-called irreplaceable executives can readily be replaced with dozens or hundreds of others who have been fired, not for incompetence, but because of “downsizing”, gender, age, insubordination, smoking, sexual preference, or for not getting with the program. There’s plenty of talent to go round, demanding an opportunity to show what it can do.