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Americans are always junking cars and trucks--14 million last year, according to R.L. Polk & Co.--but this time they went scrap-happy. In just over a week, the program ran through most of its $1 billion in funding. The House of Representatives quickly voted to allot an additional $2 billion. In the Senate, opposition from John McCain and other deficit hawks slowed passage but appeared unlikely to stop it. "I always thought that cash for clunkers would be an effective stimulus, but it seems to have exceeded expectations," says Princeton University economist Alan Blinder, an early booster...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Spotlight: Cash for Clunkers | 8/17/2009 | See Source »

...caught in a cycle of convulsive agricultural booms and busts driven by massive irrigation projects and abetted by copious supplies of undocumented immigrant labor. A combination history book, documentary, autobiography and topographical survey, Imperial is Vollmann's obsessive, strangely engrossing attempt to articulate the whole twisted truth of this scrap of cursed earth, where every square foot is soaked in blood and money and despair. It doesn't come easily. "This is a secret, secret place," an Imperial resident tells Vollmann. "In a way, it's like the Nam. Just like the old guys don't make friends with...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: The Skimmer | 8/17/2009 | See Source »

...Over the past few weeks, Hamburg police at the shipyards have turned up 43 cars that had been declared scrapped but were illegally earmarked for export to buyers in Africa and Eastern Europe. The numbers so far seem small, but some law-enforcement experts warn that as many as 50,000 cars destined for the scrap heap have already been sold illegally - at the expense of German taxpayers...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Germany's Cash-for-Clunkers Black-Market Scandal | 8/7/2009 | See Source »

...problem for the police is that German lawmakers were in such a hurry to approve the money to boost the car industry that they did not create sufficient controls to prevent abuse of the system. Dealers are supposed to scrap the cars, but if they don't, it's only considered a minor violation, not a criminal offense. "It just opens the door for abuse," says Ronald Schulze, an official at the Federation of German Detectives. "We can't charge them with fraud because lawmakers failed to define the crime." (See the 50 worst cars of all time...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Germany's Cash-for-Clunkers Black-Market Scandal | 8/7/2009 | See Source »

...probably too late for Germany to do anything about its black market in clunkers. The abuse could have been prevented if lawmakers had also created a control system to track each car from the point of hand over to the scrap heap. And the police could have prosecuted dealers who sell the cars instead of scrapping them if lawmakers had made it a crime. Instead, the hands of the police are tied, and as Germany's cash-for-clunkers program runs its course - it's limited to 2 million cars - public interest in cases of abuse will likely fade...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Germany's Cash-for-Clunkers Black-Market Scandal | 8/7/2009 | See Source »

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