It gets much, much worse:
The draft rescue plan for Detroit sent to the White House by Congress yesterday calls for the appointment of a “car czar” who will oversee the Big Three automakers’ expenses over $25 million — which, by extension, would include media buys. Based on Advertising Age’s estimates of spending by General Motors Corp., Chrysler and Ford Motor Co., that would give the as-yet-unnamed car czar control over some $7.3 billion in marketing spending in the U.S. alone.
The marketing money controlled by the car czar would handily top that of Procter & Gamble, the country’s leading advertiser, which spends some $5.2 billion, and shove P&G’s global marketing officer Marc Pritchard off his perch as the most influential man in marketing.
(…)
The car czar would wield a budget more than double those of AT&T, Verizon, Unilever and Johnson & Johnson, which round out the nation’s top five marketing spenders, and give the car czar more clout with media and agencies than such famed names in marketing as Walmart Chief Marketing Officer Stephen Quinn and Anheuser-Busch VP-Marketing Dave Peacock.
The extent of the insanity that this plan represents is simply staggering.
[...] Just when you thought the auto bailout couldn’t get any worse (Below the Beltway) The draft rescue plan for Detroit sent to the White House by Congress yesterday calls for the appointment of a “car czar” who will oversee the Big Three automakers’ expenses over $25 million — which, by extension, would include media buys. Based on Advertising Age’s estimates of spending by General Motors Corp., Chrysler and Ford Motor Co., that would give the as-yet-unnamed car czar control over some $7.3 billion in marketing spending in the U.S. alone. [...]
If I was a manufacturer of vehicles in the US (other than the big 3)and this bailout went through, I would immediately file a lawsuit for the same money. Unfair treatment under the law.