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the dem do not care
they promised the states up there by detroit
they would bail them out
they KNOW if they do not BAIL them out
they would NOT vote for dem for a long time
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122660438304425269.html
House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio said Thursday that a multibillion-dollar rescue of Detroit auto makers would be "neither fair to taxpayers nor sound fiscal policy" without requiring dramatic reforms of the companies.
"What assurances will Democrats give taxpayers about their chances of getting their bailout money back?" Mr. Boehner asked in a statement, questioning why Democratic leaders haven't insisted that auto makers produce a "credible plan to strengthen their financial health."
the dem do not care
they promised the states up there by detroit
they would bail them out
they KNOW if they do not BAIL them out
they would NOT vote for dem for a long time
They already GAVE them 25 BILLion right before the bailout bill passed!
ducks, did you read what Dodd said? Him and the other chicken Dems won't pass this relief without having the Republicans on board. They have the votes already on the Demo side of the shop, but they want the political cover of having Republicans be on the hook for another giveaway that pisses off the majority of Americans.
It's cowardly. They'll still do it in the spring to pay back the unions and companies up there who delivered Michigan's electoral votes to Obama in the election, but I hope the Republicans tell them to off when they do and pass it on their own.
The best thing that could happen would be for the big 3 to declare bankruptcy. They would have to restructure, and as part of that restructuring the unions would be dissolved, which is about 95% of their problems up there.
99% of the problem is that they build ty cars...
at AHF addressing his post to ducks as if ducks has the faintest clue about what's going on
Here ducks, let me translate what he said
Despite Aggie's spin, the real reason Dodd won't bring this to a Senate vote is because it needs a 60 Senate member veto-proof majority...
Right now, I don’t think there are the votes,” the chairman, Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, said, adding that he personally was in favor of using money from the $700 billion financial rescue program to help General Motors, Ford and Chrysler. But Mr. Dodd said he did not believe such a bill would get through the Senate.
“I don’t know of a single Republican who’s willing to support,” Mr. Dodd said. “So I want to be careful about bringing up a proposition that might fail in light of the fact the authority exists, and under an Obama Administration there seems to be a greater willingness to deal with the issue. So there are some political considerations to be made.”
Passing any legislation to aid the auto companies would require 60 votes in the Senate. Democrats and Republicans each have 49 seats, and two independents caucus with the Democrats.
American cars are not really particularly ty. Actually, they are generally quite good, BUT they are the wrong cars for fuel economy, and their assembly lines are horribly rigid. It is very expensive to retool under the system they've had in place, especially for SUVs and Heavy-Duty Trucks.
In fact, Korean cars have pulled ahead in price vs. quality over Japanese and American (which is why they have grown so fast).
Blaming all of the problems in American automobile manufacture on union contracts is just a partisan, short-circuited reflexive excuse for a more systemic problem.
The entire entrenched corporate culture in Detroit is toxic. The union-management conflict and the historical tendency of management to give up the farm is just part of it.
Every thing that can go wrong in big business does there. Managers prioritize the building of their own fiefdoms over cooperation with other parts of the company. People withhold information from each other. They make decisions that save their little part of the business a small sum of money while costing everybody else large sums. They form echo chambers. They place the responsibility for corporate vision in the hands of beancounters. They sabotage one another to make themselves look good.
And above all, they are convinced that this is the only way to do things, so if a new CEO comes in and tries to reform, they do all they can to destroy him.
Little to none of this applies to line workers, drafters, engineers, designers -- you know, the people who get work done. It's the foremen, the middle managers, the line managers, the VP's. Even if a bright young manager comes in with good intentions, it doesn't take long for the Detroit culture to tear him down.
One thing that needs to happen if any of them are going to survive is a relocation of corporate headquarters from Detroit, and a purge of lots of white-collar paper-pushers.
I think that's a very reasonable analysis of the situation, Extra Stout. Clearly, the entirety of the Detroit schema is screwed up and has been for decades. It just didn't reach critical mass until this point. Complacency and the allure of short-term personal gain appears to have led to massive self-sabotage. Union honchos and CEOs are both heavily involved.
It's true, I don't blame the workers (as a whole). Many of them would likely agree to a pay cut if it meant continued employment, while others are part of the problem on that side as well.
A formula for disaster and it appears that the eureka moment for that formula is upon us.
A small example to illustrate the larger pathology: Ford, up until recently, designed individual seat tracks for just about every model in its line. Different engineers designed each one. They had separate supply contracts for each one. They had to keep inventory on each one.
Honda has two seat tracks, and they use either one or the other on every model they make in the world.
Duh.
That has nothing to do with unions.
Let Big3 go bankrupt and into reorganization, operations continue, as with the bankrupt/reorg airlines.
If they can make it through reorg, what will emerge will be very different, including much lower salaries for union workers, stockholders wiped out. Mgmt will, of course, come out with tons of money, which is always their priority.
If they don't make it, they don't make it.
I agree with Boutons!
Do not bail them out, let them fail. In the long-run this will be healthier. Just let them fail.
Failure is needed to succeed. You look back and learn from your mistakes. You cannot just keep throwing money at a problem!
This bailout nonsense makes me think of responsible forest management. For far too long, this country had been scrambling to put out every forest fire to "protect" the forests and the homes people had built near the forest. Fires--for the most part--are just natural events that occur from time to time to clear out undergrowth and dead and dying trees, so as to promote the development of new, healthy trees.
After fighting forest fires so aggressively for decades, our forests have become overcrowded with undergrowth and thus vulnerable to bigger and harder-to-contain forest fires. (Supposedly, there are more trees in the US today than there were in 1492.) By trying to contain the problem, we've made it far worse.
We've recently shifted, thankfully, to a more reasonable forest management policy. Shouldn't we let the current economic fire burn, to clear out dying companies and industries so that new, more productive ones can take their place in the future? Keeping GM or Ford or whoever in business will only make the inevitable economic fire bigger and harder-to-contain.
Except that right now there are a load of homes built in this Forrest and if it goes up its going to effect a large segment of our population. I'm going to stop with the analogy right there because I think its fundamentally flawed since our economy is tied to real peoples lives and isn't just a few groves of trees.
Detroit failing would have severe consequences at any time much less now when the economic situation is already bleak as . Immediately putting 3 million people on the job market is not a situation you're going to resolve quickly by any stretch of the imagination. Its not like we're going to see an American company come in and fill the void left - we're just going to see foreign car makers see an increased share of the market and while I have no doubt they'll see them higher more American workers but no where near the amount that would be impacted negatively by letting these companies fail.
Yes, they need reforms and they need it severely. Yes, any money you give them needs to have some huge strings attached. But letting them fail would be simply another case of cutting of your nose to spite your face.
PS And I'm also pretty sure that fire management involves setting small fires in a controlled fashion, not letting the largest of them burn out of control.
Haven't you ever heard that sometimes things need to get worse before they can truly get better?
And why do we need an American company to come in and "fill the void"? If it's jobs for American workers you care about, why does the employer have to be American?
The best way to force reform on a company is to not bail it out. They need to remain compe ive on their own. Relieving them of compe ive pressures by making the American taxpayers foot the bill will only make these companies lazier, stupider, and less productive.
And it's not like "immediately" 3 million people will be out of a job. These struggling companies will continue struggle mightily, some will adapt and survive, others will fail; keep in mind that there is a market for automobiles in this country and elsewhere, and that demand will still exist regardless of whether or not these companies fail. A great many of those workers will soon find jobs in the automobile industry, working for Toyota or Honda or something, and some may have to take some time to find other jobs. Is that such a bad thing, really?
Moreover, as a consumer, you should want to buy products from the efficient and well-managed companies that will fight for your business--not the large, sclerotic failures that take your business and the government's indulgence for granted. I think it's very disturbing that people think of certain large companies as fixed ins utions in our country. That's a really bad thing. There should be no such thing as "too big (or important) to fail."
Bankruptcy in combination with a bailout to do things in a different way plus a tough, but fair, bankruptcy judge to oversee it. This is probably how the whole financial crisis should have been addressed. BushCo is currently doing a horrid job of overseeing the financial bailout.
Why does it matter if its an American company? Because companies based in America pay American taxes. Foreign companies are not going to employee as many Americans either. Without a doubt they'll take over some of the factories and make use of the facilities here but its going to be a far reduced clip. The loss of these jobs is going to gut a large segment of middle class America and is going to end up costing the country more in the long run than this bailout. There is no struggling for these companies. When they declare bankruptcy the game is over because there is no way they're going to be able to get the parts they need to continue manufacturing. This isn't an airline who can operate while bankruptcy proceedings go through. This is an entirely different animal.
And once GM goes down the ripple effects are huge and they will happen quickly. There is no continuing on in this situation and thats important to understand. The 3 million jobs estimate is within the first year. Thats a huge increase in unemployment at the worst possible time.
http://www.cargroup.org/do ents/CA...ember42008.pdf
CAR estimates the cost at 150 billion + over 3 years. So one way or another we're already on the hook for this and thats an important thing for people to remember.
Capitalistic ideology is all fine and good, but its important to step away from it and realize that a more pragmatic approach in these situations is sometimes far better.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/...n4603869.shtmlThis is, admittedly, a worst-case scenario--the sort of dire projection you'd expect from a Michigan-based think tank that receives a small amount of industry money. (And, as a Michigan resident, I should disclose my own small conflict: My wife, an engineering professor, once directed a research project funded by Ford.) But the economists and industry analysts I tracked down this week vouched for CAR's integrity and suggested the group's estimate was in the right ballpark. Susan Helper, an economist at Case Western University and a specialist on the automobile industry, told me her rough calculations suggest the most optimistic outcome would be "just" half a million jobs lost--and that's only if the failures are contained to GM. But she expects much worse, given the likely spillover effects: Her best estimate is that between 1.5 and two million jobs would be lost. The price of addressing such human misery with unemployment benefits, Medicaid, and other services would be huge, making a $25 billion loan seem like a bargain-particularly if the companies pay it back, just as Chrysler did after its bailout in the 1980s.
I'm posting this just in case someone disputes CAR's objectivity. I'm looking for other economists opinions as well. I was hoping Krugman had written something but no cigar. You guys need to realize the potential cost of millions of people losing their jobs in the next year when you think about whether or not we need to be on the hook for this bailout.
No amount of money is going to save them. Only time and restructuring will solve the problem. GM burns $3billion a month.
anyone who says it's all the unions fault or it's only 1% unions the unions fault are partisan hacks or plain dumb.
two primary problems: product line & Labor Cost.
Did you even read what you just wrote there?
And tell me, are you out of your ing mind?
Foreign car companies are not going to re-employ 2-3 million Americans to try and "fill the void". But you can damn well be sure 500,000 Japanese workers are going to have new jobs.
Since this is a Spurs fan site, I presume you already know about this: http://www.toyota.com/about/our_busi...cturing/tmmtx/
This is the point: companies are not patriotic or nationalistic organizations. Companies are interested in making money. If there are a bunch of Americans in the job market who have skills in the auto industry, Toyota and Honda will surely consider hiring them. Toyota and Honda won't just hire a bunch of Japanese workers without first considering the pros and cons of hiring Americans, or Europeans, or whatever. These companies are concerned with the bottom line, not the employment of their "fellow countrymen." We may need to consider the possibility that American auto workers just cost too damn much.
Shoot, I might as well post some other links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ssembly_plants
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_..._North_America
None of that is being disputed. Whats being disputed is your notion that Toyota or any other foreign automaker is going to come in and somehow employee the people that are put out of work and that a having a foreign producer is the same as having a domestic producer. Its not the same thing on so many levels and it has nothing to do with patriotism or nationalism but the numbers.
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