Big news! What a way to emerge from the excitement of last Tuesday's election than to read about the three major automakers plea for another handout. Not a handout, they insist, only a loan of $25 billion from the Federal government to get rid of their debt. Ah yes, another example of socialism for the rich and capitalism for the rest of us. Isn't that swell? In the face of the 1973 oil embargo and the other economic crises tied to rising gasoline prices the country has encountered since then, America's Big Three have conducted business as usual with no inclination to find ways of making the OPEC nations drink their oil.
For years, American car-makers have been cranking out Humvees and other gas guzzlers without embarrassment. While a handful of entrepreneurs like Tesla Motors of San Carlos, California are demonstrating innovative ways to produce cars driven by electricity and other companies are experimenting with autos dependent on other alternative sources of fuel, all we hear from Detroit is whining about how expensive these cars would be to mass produce. Of course, Tesla's revolutionary autos are expensive at $109,000 per copy. But until GM, Ford and Chrysler dare to produce low-cost, fuel efficient revolutionary cars for American consumers and couple that initiative with a a massive sales campaign mounted abroad under patent, the cost of an innovative car will never come down dramatically. There's nothing more enticing to car buyers than a bargain. There's no better way to re-energize assembly lines in Detroit, in Ohio and other manufacturing sites which in turn would mean more jobs in an economy desperate to shrink its worrisome jobless figures.
But the Big Three's solution until now is to coax yet another $25 billion in low-interest loans from the U.S. Department of Energy to assist them in making more fuel efficient cars. Inevitably, you have to ask where in blazes has America's most important industry been, exercising the necessary kind of ingenuity all these years? What have the manufacturers done beyond unveiling glitzy experimental, models at their showrooms that are beyond the pocketbooks of most consumers? Have the car-makers been in the forefront of encouraging the development of alternative energy sources for a majority of American consumers? The answers are zero. They should taken a look at the size of automobiles driven by most Europeans for the past 30 years? All the American moguls had to do was walk through the neighborhoods of London, Paris, Berlin and Rome to realize that small is beautiful. Instead they've stubbornly shown little inclination to get their slick-looking but large-sized American clunkers off our roads that are used to cart single passengers up and down the nation's freeways. Listen to the complaints and frustrations over traffic paralysis and you can't help thinking the automobile truly is becoming the ultimate weapon of mass destruction.
Perhaps, the automakers can justify a case for help from American taxpayers, but first we ought to demand a pledge in blood that they will change their ways now and forever before giving them a dime.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/opinion/12friedman.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
THE INDUSTRY NEEDS TO BE BAILED OUT. America has little choice,
Here's how to do it -
ONLY VERY DRASTIC ACTION WILL SAVE DETROIT
Congress, pay attention -
http://pacificgatepost.blogspot.com/2008/11/solution-for-detroit-gm-friends.html
It’s this, or bankruptcy. The American Auto industry should be saved but under new conditions.
Now that Big 3 have stepped up to trough, how long do you think it will be before airlines step up?
I know of no other industry in the country where a labor force is paid such extravagant salaries. These are people who have nothing more than a high school diploma. Sure, they work hard...but who doesn't? Here in Mississippi, we work just as hard as they do, for a fraction of the pay that they receive. When they are paying a forklift driver over $100,000 annually to do a job that an average forklift driver receives $26,000 annually for performing the same task, then something is seriously out of whack.
I know that I will get lambasted for speaking the truth, so have at it. I read that some of those auto plant laborers are worried that they might get laid off, forcing them to give up their second homes. Come on, people...wake up. These auto industries have become a joke. I say, let them go bankrupt. Then, rebuild them from the ground up, with a sensibly paid workforce.
let GM/F go into chapter 11 first. the companies will survive, but shareholder equity MUST BE set to 0. If the govt. gives loans to GM/F, shareholder must be wiped out regardless.
Now auto manufacturers are scrambling to make changes to meet the earlier than anticipating surge in consumer demand, but now it's like turning around a train. Some japanese and euro producers were faster on the draw simply because Their homeland Consumers were demanding them sooner and were willing to pay the difference because they've been paying at the pump for years what we finally saw this summer.
We'd better be ready to 'Bail" because a US auto manufacturer falling thru would leave a hole in our boat as big as a Humvee.
There were fully functioning electric cars drivng the streets in California years ago!
These cars did not cost over 100,000 dollars. Average people could afford them!
Guess what they were all rounded up and literally compacted into trash because the major auto maker who produced them didn't want people to catch on to something that was inexpensive, good for the environment and required no Gasoline....
The electric car was here!! We had it and with the government aiding the Auto Companies it was taken away from US...
Open your eyes people
watch
WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR?
I never thought I would cry during a movie about cars but this movie will twist a knot in your gut as you try to comprehend how this country can be so backwards.
It is truly heatbreaking.
The auto industries have been saying they will have a viable, inexpensive electric car ready by 2010 since before 2000....
My bet is when 2010 rolls around and there still is no electric car they will be just saddened that it has "taken longer than we expected"
Can you imagine the advances in battery storage capacity if they had continued with electric cars?
Plug-in Hybrids.
Electric Vehicles.
High mileage, low emission vehicles.
All of the above with performance and power capacity similar to or better than that available in gas and diesel powered vehicles. They should be fun to drive, and have big advertising budgets. Any advertising spent on gas guzzlers after July adds to their obligation.
Three years to do this or we own these companies and do it ourselves. Heck, the Japanese are ready to do it now, we have numerous start-ups delivering prototypes... what are they waiting for? More free money?
Oh, and make cars that last beyond the warantees . . . You may be able to sell some of them.
The public has had enough of funding big salaries and bonuses for incompetent CEO's.
6.8 million Americans could receive a check of $22, 058 or 13.6 million Americans could receive a $11, 029 in stimulus money for the amount of $150 billion that has been given to one failing company, AIG. Now, they want to bail out Ford, Chrysler, and GM? This is an atrocious idea. Let the market determine the winner and losers.
WAKE up people! Your government doesn't give a rat's ass about you. I don't care if you are a Democrat or Republican, or whatever label you place on your forehead. In fact, stupid should be applied to all Americans. You should be boiling with rage at the very idea that these companies are receiving welfare checks as they are already being subsidized and receiving numerous tax breaks. You should be irate that these companies are privatizing their gains, while publicizing their loses. In fact, the ivy league economists, or so-called specialists don't have a clue how to re-stabilize this failing economy. They are only wise at spending our money and driving this nation in deeper and deeper debt. The powers that run the government are looking out for their own interests and their cronies.
Do you enjoy being pissed on by the power elites?
The government, too, isn't nationalizing more stuff. Want free market? Let's assist the free market with this sort of catalyst driven not by the industry, but by the consumer. Please note: the following isn't a plan; it's just an idea, but giving industry our tax money hasn't ever fixed anything except the losses for people who can afford them.
The Big Three will just have to get smaller, accept fewer profits [sorry stockholders, you don't have a constitutional right to capital gains, be smarter next time] and go green. Maybe then they'll survive. If not, I'm quite comfortable in my Honda.