If Ford Motor Co. wants to update an old slogan, it might consider "Capitalism is job one" -- because its outlook today, far brighter than that of General Motors and Chrysler, speaks volumes about the free market's virtues and government control's perils.
Ford essentially mortgaged nearly everything it owned in late 2006 to raise $23.6 billion in capital markets. That money financed a product-line overhaul that's now filling showrooms with new models that can compete with Japanese and Korean models' quality and fuel efficiency.
Ford still hasn't taken a dime of government money and now has rising U.S. market share, a stock price that has tripled in less than two months, the No. 2 rank in U.S. sales for April (beating Toyota) and plans for a $2 billion stock offering. That's all inconceivable for GM and Chrysler, which took federal bailouts that enabled the government, not stockholders, to control them. And now, GM likely is just days away from joining Chrysler in bankruptcy reorganization.
Ford's future hardly is secure. It still has to repay creditors without government help, after all. But on Wall Street and on dealer lots, investors and auto buyers are rewarding Ford for the risk it took in obtaining private, free-market financing and relying on private management.
That's how capitalism ought to work. Ford is proving it does.
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