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Automotive News & Views Do You Favor A Government Loan To The Detroit 3?
3958 messages, Last post on Oct 02, 2009 at 4:52 PM
You are in the Automotive News & Views Forum. Your Hosts are steve_ & claires
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a second volley of e-mails to my representatives in congress, asking them in no uncertain terms to turn down any proposal for an automotive bailout. I also e-mailed Nancy Pelosi's office. These folks in congress are so hot to burn taxpayer money giving it to everyone and their mother, I am sure the automaker bailout will go ahead despite my protests, but I just thought I would do my part for the democratic process. 
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Replying to: dave8697 (Dec 02, 2008 6:25 pm) About 7,000 GM dealerships, so 50 people per dealer on average? Yikes.
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Replying to: bumpy (Dec 02, 2008 7:37 pm) |
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Funereal November Sales Provide More Ammo for Bailout Plea (AutoObserver) 
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Replying to: steve_ (Dec 02, 2008 8:16 pm) |
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Replying to: cooterbfd (Dec 02, 2008 1:34 pm) Now there were multi-billion-dollar investments by GM, Ford and Chrysler that are being moved to Mexico and China. As a matter of fact if I read the blurb accurately part of the strategy of one of the detroiters is get cash from Congress, close plants as fast as possible, have dealers go out of business and make as many vehicles as possible outside the borders of the US where the UAW can't get at them. Why would the transplants NOT leave? It's cheaper to make the vehicles here. Again you are ignoring the basic economics of currency exchange rates. Right now the cheapest and most stable place to buy land, build buildings and employ labor is right here in the USofA.....unless that labor is UAW. Then that's a deal killer ( see the above paragraph ). |
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Replying to: Smoothie (Dec 02, 2008 7:29 pm) Are you serious? You do mean the American auto companies, right? And how would the oil companies be hurt if any of the Detroit 3 go under? For every vehicle lost in sales from a company that goes under, another auto company would get that sale. |
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I worked for IBM for 15 years right out of college and in a way, its downfall to Microsoft and others looks similar to the downfall of the Detroit 3 to the imports. They just couldn't keep up with a faster moving marketplace and made some fundamentally bad long term business decisions. At one time IBM jointly held 50% of the rights to Windows, known at that time as MS-DOS, and they also owned 30% of Intel. It wasn't until they sold those two assets to the parent company that things really started to go bad for IBM. There was a good show on, I think, the Discovery channel called "Revenge of the Nerds" that detailed how IBM was take down from the mid-1980s until about the late 1990s.
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The way I see the proposed bailout of GM in particular is this: GM owes $66 billion that they are going to tell the lenders too bad so sad cannot pay it. That leaves US to pay the banks GM defaults on. GM wants $4 billion for Christmas or they will take down GM and millions of Americans will suffer with them. Along with that GM has not kept the money they were obligated to keep in the pension fund for 450,000 retirees. Did they borrow against it or just piss it away? That leaves US with untold $billions to keep those retirees from freezing, unless they retired to Florida. GM and the UAW have conflicting stories on wages and benefits. One says they will be equal to the industry by 2012. They other says they are already equal. Someone is lying. The dealers they are concerned about will get NOTHING from the bailout, so unless GM comes up with cars people want they will continue to die. The suppliers will get nothing except whatever continued orders for parts. I do not believe for a minute that the GOOD parts suppliers will not get more orders from the automakers that survive this. No way will GM bring Ford and Chrysler with them. That is just cheap rhetoric. If the board at GM want to keep Wagoner, that is their choice. I say no cash if his team of losers is not fired with NO severance. They do not deserve the pay they have stolen from the stockholders over the last 40 years. It is the good ole boy club in some of the major corporations that have brought this country to their knees and they will get away with it scott free.
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Replying to: mikefm58 (Dec 03, 2008 6:00 am)
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