Naomi Klein: The Borderline Illegal Deals Behind the $700 Billion Bailout

By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!. Posted November 18, 2008.

Goodman: Your final thought, this, on the bailing out of the auto industry, the Big Three in Detroit, starting with General Motors? 

Klein: Well, obviously, it shouldn't be a blank check. You know, I always think about what the International Monetary Fund does when developing countries come and ask for a loan. Think about what they're doing right now. The International Monetary Fund says, "You want a loan? Well, here's our list of conditions." They used to call it structural adjustment. The same thing could be done to the auto industry. If they're coming for a bailout, they should be structurally adjusted, and taxpayers should be playing IMF to the auto industry and insisting that they change the way they work, that they build green automobiles, that they protect jobs. It can't simply be a blank check.

That said, what's really disturbing is the way the Bush administration appears to be using the desire among Democrats to bail out the auto industry to horse trade the free trade deal with Colombia. You know, what we're really seeing, Amy, is a resurrection of the entire free trade -- discredited free trade agenda. This crisis being used -- the shock of this crisis being used to resurrect all of these discredited deals. The Colombia free trade deal, the International Monetary Fund, the Doha round, they're all coming back from the dead at precisely the moment that we should be actually burying, for good, this whole agenda of deregulation.

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Amy Goodman is the host of the nationally syndicated radio news program, Democracy Now!

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