You might not have heard, but Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid met with American automakers yesterday as well as with members of the UAW. Shock of shocks, today, following that meeting, the automakers are screaming that they need financial assistance, and they need it now, to the tune of billions of dollars or — zounds! — they’ll go bankrupt!
What happened?
In my opinion, they all cut a deal with Pelosi, their hands outstretched. Then they agreed to bleat, in unison the next day, that Life was much more dire than even they originally thought. They can’t make it! They need help! No, not physical help; they need cash. Your cash. My cash. The “government’s” cash.
Pelosi cut that deal because, in order to protect Obama and the Demorats, she can’t have any of the Big Three tanking in the first few months of the administration promising change. Yes, that would be change but not of the variety sought. Chrsyler is the weakest of all and, just wait, Ratan Tata (India’s Tata Motors) has his eye on that company, mark my words.
In my opinion: ENOUGH. That’s IT. Let anyone and everyone from this point on simply FAIL.
THIS MUST STOP.
BZ
We should have and should let them all fail.
YES.
Equilibrium will occur in time.
“A rising tide lifts all boats.”
BZ
If theyare going to give money away (the new pres AND congress are dems, OF COURSE they are going to give it away) give it to consumers who choose which companies make what they think is worthwhile.
GM wont make a car that is worth having. Ford cant design a car that consumers want either. They had to go back to the 60s to get people to buy the mustang.
They need to design a car that can get out of its own way, will actually seat 4 adults( a REAL back seat with LEGROOM) for more than a few minutes and can carry more than 1 small backpack and gets at least 25mpg. Kind of like what the japanese do.
A LOT like what the Japanese and Koreans do.
BZ
Couldn’t agree with you more, BZ. God Bless.
Hey! We will get nice, inefficient companies and with the UAW looking for a bailout AND card check we will get more inefficient labor which means way higher prices and way lower quality…
President-elect Obama: working hard to bring back the 1970’s.
Being from Detroit you’ll forgive me if I disagree. Why is it fine for them to just give nearly a trillion to banks and insurers but wrong to give a LOAN to the automakers.
“They need to design a car that can get out of its own way, will actually seat 4 adults( a REAL back seat with LEGROOM) for more than a few minutes and can carry more than 1 small backpack and gets at least 25mpg.”
Ford just did. It’s called the Flex and it gets 28mpg highway and seats 7 adult passengers with tons of legroom. I also rent lots of cars because I travel for my job, and I LOVE the new Mustang! If I didn’t have to haul a bunch of parts around I’d buy one. BTW- with cash back incentives that Flex goes for under 25K. Have any of you actually gone to a Ford dealership and seen what they have?
Domestic auto jobs account for 3 million jobs. I think that is worth saving.
One of the things missed is that a number of foreign auto makers are making cars in the US: Volkswagen, Honda, Toyota, Audi… those are domestic jobs, with foreign companies.
If we remember the backing of Chrysler it was to get them what they should have been doing *already*: reorganizing the company to get it on a relatively stable founding. And then find itself a nice foreign partner to help it, which would be Daimler.
When companies have sane fiscal policies, adjust to the market and show themselves to be market leaders in technology, quality and cost, then you have something. The market would have forced Chrysler to do what it did… or die and be divvied up or bought out by a foreign company. The point is: you don’t need a bailout to do the right thing. And if you got yourself in a financial mess there is no guarantee that a bailout will actually help. Somehow putting the federal government in an investment position in 5 major banks and actually the majority owner of AIG now, is *not* a good deal as it gives far too much power to the federal government.
Do you really want banks *and* car companies having to have the federal government sit on their boards and help *run them*? I was in Buffalo when Bethelhem Steel went under locally, taking a huge number of small plants with it, along with support organizations. It was a disaster for the economy, locally. Then the federal government came in with a ‘job retraining program’ and *lengthened* the amount of time people were out of work by a couple of years, instead of letting private industry absorb and retrain people. And the jobs they trained for would tend to be stagnant ones.
Yeah, I’ve seen it up close and personal.
I do *not* want the federal government in charge of doing ‘good things’, but equally enforcing the laws of the land and protecting the Nation from enemies foreign and domestic. The way to guarantee a ‘crisis’ gets worse is via ‘federal intervention’. Chrysler didn’t need a damned nudge or ‘help’ to do the right thing. Neither did the S&Ls, although we are still paying off that debt.
Who added years on to the Great Depression? FDR.
How? By putting government into a lot of places it didn’t belong and *causing* the recession of 1938 when all that federal stuff took a bite out of everyone’s hide in much higher taxes.
You want the current problems to go on for a decade? Then get federal ‘help’.
And force these companies and the damned UAW to figure out how to pay their own debts. I wouldn’t mind seeing the UAW go into receivership… I got to see them in action in Western NY at the Ford stamping plant and a couple of other, smaller plants. You want butt-kissing, slacker types to slow down work? Call in the UAW. Then give federal ‘help’ on job retraining with the help of the UAW. By the early 1990’s Buffalo had *still* not recovered from that ‘help’.
If American companies can make, market, and get a good reputation for a quality product at a decent price, then that is excellent. They don’t need federal ‘help’ to do that. And if they put themselves into unstructured debt positions because they couldn’t manage their way to get decent cars out for a decade or two, well… just why should they be supported. I’ve seen Buffalo. I don’t want that for the rest of America, TYVM.
Tim: concur. It was WRONG for ALL the OTHER bailouts as well!
BZ
Tim
The flex gets 28 (if you are lucky) on the HIGHWAY. Sorry but that is not where most people drive. Plus if you have a full load of people you cant fit luggage for all of them for a weekend. As for the mustang the back seat is a padded package shelf and the interior pannels look and feel cheap, they would be better off going back to the fabric over cardboard. And the design is from the 60s
BZ- A LOAN is not a bailout, but a LOAN.
We will be looking at another DEPRESSION unless the government gets involved.
WMD- The Flex get combined city/highway of 24 MPG, and I don’t think that there is any 7-pass vehicle out there where you can get them all in there and their luggage. I drive a lot of cars because I rent them when I travel for work. I don’t think that there is any comparision when price and overall quality comes up between Ford and most Japanese cars. Overall, I think that Ford has a better product for the money you spend. Toyota may be a little better car, but it is a lot more expensive.
As for the back seat in the Mustang, it’s not any worse than a lot of sporty small cars.