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Automotive News & Views How does gas at $4 and higher impact you?
2183 messages, Last post on Nov 21, 2009 at 5:13 PM
You are in the Automotive News & Views Forum. Your Hosts are steve_ & claires
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Replying to: kdhspyder (Oct 16, 2008 3:31 pm)  This recession is long overdue. Dropping the interest to keep the economy rolling was not a wise Greenspan move. I guess in 2001 it seemed like a good idea. If all the Big 3 survive it will be a miracle.
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Replying to: kdhspyder (Oct 16, 2008 2:54 pm) "Everytime you bring these figures up I will continue to correct the erroneous conclusion." I know you , meant well, being fuel efficient, versus wasteful . Thanks, sincerely for the mea culpa but here is how the real world works. It was never supply vs demand as the demand was gamed., They are running for the hills. Paradigm = busted . I'm glad you drive a Prius. You drive some serious miles and even at the coming low levels it will make sense. Who does Chin-India sell to ? While we were not in global recession in the 1st half of this year we are now. Time to change the name of this forum, Oh did I say that before  I quote yet once more, oil doth love it extremes. g:, I couldn't agree more , post on sir.
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Replying to: gagrice (Oct 16, 2008 4:49 pm) |
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| I went sight seeing in Manitou Springs and Old Colorado Springs. We have been driving around all week on $3.39 gas and decided I should fill up so we don't have to when we leave Colorado after this weekend. $2.96 and less that $48 to fill my tank. It seems as if the Gas crisis is caused more by speculation than I thought. I hope we remember this in the future. | |
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Not sure how you're heading home from Colorado, but gas in Utah is more expensive than it is in Colorado. ' Hope you saw Garden of the Gods and Seven Veils Falls while you were in the Springs. You sure picked a good time of year to come visit!
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Replying to: michaell (Oct 18, 2008 11:01 am) |
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Gut-wrenching declines in the stock market, a financial panic that some have compared to the Great Depression and the realization that the U.S. may be headed to its worst recession in over a generation have trumped what should otherwise be good news: The return of $3-a-gallon gas. Better yet, with 401(k) statements arriving in the mail and families worried about keeping their homes, has anyone even noticed? A gallon of regular gasoline fell .049 cents overnight to a new national average of $2.991, according to auto club AAA, the Oil Price Information Service and Wright Express. Prices have not been below $3 nationally since Feb. 16. Saturday's price is slightly above the national average price of $2.81 a year ago, but 27 percent lower than the all-time high of $4.114 reached July 17. Before Saturday, gas prices already were below $3 in 23 states, according to AAA.
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Replying to: lemko (Oct 18, 2008 3:19 pm) I sold all my stock in 2007. One of my jobs has a defined benefit pension so I'm OK. Built my own house so I never had a mortgage. Still haven't figured out how to make my car run without gas so I'm real glad prices have dropped. Still too high though. I'd like to see it down to about 2002-03 levels of about $1.55 for RUG. "I cursed the fact that I had no shoe until I met a man who had no feet...then I was jealous because the lucky bum didn't have to spend the money on shoes." 
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This just out, thought you guys would like the explanation this veteran banker gives on the causes of the economic crisis: Earlier this week I interviewed a veteran banker at a major Wall Street investment firm, seeking an insider's view on what caused the current economic crisis, what life is like for people on Wall Street, and what's ahead for the economy. On condition of anonymity, the banker provided a blunt assessment of the risks taken, mistakes made, and the toll of the financial destruction. Here are the highlights: Q: What's the cause of the economic crisis from your perspective? A: There is an awful lot of blame to go around on Wall Street, in Washington, and in the irresponsible behavior of individuals. But stepping back, the critical error was that everyone [thought] there would not be a substantial, nationwide decrease in real estate prices. The whole subprime debacle was predicated on the fact that people said, "Well, this borrower is not really credit worthy and can't afford the house, but in four years it will be up 20 percent or more." It was widely believed that if you had bad mortgages from different geographic areas that all those [real estate markets] weren't going to go down together. You had a pool of 100 bad mortgages from borrowers with low income or bad credit, that were each a piece of [expletive]. The idea was you put them together and now it's not a piece of [expletive]. People believed that through geographic diversification you can diversify risk. That was what undergirded the entire breakdown, and this was not a 3-year phenomenon, it was building for 10 years. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were absurdities; those firms were recklessly and incompetently run. Q: What role did the rating agencies play? A: The rating agencies facilitated this by giving investment-grade ratings to the securities. In the stretch for yield, you could [buy] AA-rated corporate bonds and earn 50 basis points over Treasuries, but if you bought AA-rated mortgage-backed securities you'd get 150 basis points. From the buy side, there was a real breakdown in their fiduciary obligation, because they overly relied on ratings agencies and didn't do their own research. Rating agencies are incredibly powerful; you can't do debt financing without them. You have to play by their rules. They hold themselves out as these objective providers of ratings advice, but they are human beings, and [rating structured finance deals] was a higher-margin profit [center] for them. But I think [the bad ratings] were more due to sheer incompetence than being bribed. Q: But weren't these the so-called "smartest guys in the room"? A: These are not the smartest guys in the room. The ratings agencies don't pay as well, so people working there are using it as platform to get on the Street, or they work there because they're tired after a career on the Street, or they couldn't get hired on the Street. Q: But wasn't leverage the real problem? Lehman was leveraged about 30 to 1 when it collapsed. A: The investment banks were imprudently leveraged, but what killed Lehman and Bear was they had bad assets. You can survive a painful downturn -- and believe me, de-leveraging has been painful for everyone, but you can survive. Wachovia was only levered ten times, but had terrible exposure [to bad mortgages] and therefore couldn't raise capital. In hindsight Lehman shouldn't have been leveraged 30 times, but in a bull market having [a leverage ratio] of 25 times is not necessarily crazy. The real issue is asset quality. Q: What's your view of the government's $700 billion-plus bailout? A: I think Paulson was well intentioned around the notion of moral hazard, but he was wrong. I think if he could redo it, he would have saved Lehman. The devastation of Lehman failing -- the implication of their failure is hard to predict. I think you're seeing it play out in the stock market and the credit markets; I think you're going to see some hedge funds go out of business. Some of it has already been made public and some will come soon, but there are a lot of implications of Lehman reflected in the capital markets. |
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Chrysler may be bought by GM. That, once this happens, they will discontinue production of all models except Jeep and Minivans. This is a dark day my friends...They say 66.000 employees including dealerships will be cut or merged if this happens. They also say for every autoworker that is laid-off, 5 other people lose their jobs since they feed those automotive plants parts or rely on automotive business to come in such as doctors, hospitals, schools, whole communities like Ann Arbor, Detroit, the whole state of Michigan will be affected. I hope it does not happen. And just when we thought a turn around would occur with the new generation of electric cars coming for these ailing automakers. 
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