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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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Replying to: jimbres (Dec 05, 2008 3:10 pm)
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Replying to: lemko (Dec 06, 2008 9:31 am) China is our rival - not our enemy. There's a big difference, which anyone old enough to remember the Cold War can explain to you. Anyway, if you want to revive the American auto industry, you should be solidly in favor of bankruptcy for the Big 3. Perhaps Ford doesn't yet need it, but GM & Chrysler certainly do. Toss the dead brands (Pontiac & Dodge, for example) overboard & bring in fresh management to lead what's worth saving (Cadillac, for example). That just might trigger an industry rebirth.
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Replying to: jimbres (Dec 06, 2008 10:15 am) China was actually our ally during WW2. They saved some of our fighting men. Yes we are competing with them and trading with them. We buy more junk from them than they buy from US. Who's fault is it that we cannot get enough Nintendos and Gameboys? I look for China to buy a lot of the property sold in the liquidation of the Big 3. |
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GM should convert from a For-profit organizaton to a Charity not-for-profit organization. Heck, even charity organizations seems to be have done better 
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Since we appear to be on this path to socialism, I have a proposal. GMs market cap is $2.5B. They want over $10+B to survive (that's well over four times what the market thinks they are worth!). If the Feds are going to loan that money, that's way more than buying GM, right? So why don't the Feds require the following: 1 - use $2.5B to buy out all shareholders. Then the government owns GM. 2 - Replace Wagoner and the entire board. Obama can appoint new management, he's done pretty well with his cabinet. 3. New management works to turn GM around. 4. Government sells GM stock back to the market in the future, or GM fails and the government eats it. At least we would get rid of the useless Wagoner and the Board. |
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Replying to: tlong (Dec 06, 2008 12:37 pm)
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Replying to: tlong (Dec 06, 2008 12:37 pm) I love it !! And offer Cerberus $500M for Chrysler. I bet that's the best offer they'd get. But instead of running the 2 corporations as is, the corporations are declared bankrupt and liquidated. The government sells off the assets, with U.S. assets being sold to people who guarantee to reopen the auto plants - manufacturing autos or something else. On a related subject, this is supposedly Armageddon for GM and Chrysler. What sort of schedule do you think the execs. of GM/Chrysler and the suppliers, and the union are maintaining. I mean are they working round-the-clock on deals to sell Hummer, Opel, Chinese operations, Saturn? Do they have their lawyers writing new union proposals? I mean are they taking this as a life and death situation? |
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Replying to: tlong (Dec 06, 2008 12:37 pm) Wagoner seems to have been slow on the button, but in all fairness he inherited a lot of this mess. I think they are grooming this guy Fritz Henderson? they brought back from Europe to allow Wagoner a graceful exit in the near future after he wraps up the govt money. |
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Replying to: steve_ (Dec 06, 2008 12:48 pm) |
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Replying to: jimbres (Dec 05, 2008 8:05 pm) Call me cynical - I probably am - but what you see as "the right thing", I view as a calculated attempt to buy labor peace & then stick us, the consumers, with the bill. Rather than stand up to the UAW, Big 3 management took the path of least resistance: give the union what it wanted & then build the settlement cost into the price of new cars. Both management & labor pegged the rest of us as a bunch of passive suckers who would meekly pay whatever they decided to charge us. After all, what choice did we have? What were we going to do about it - buy imports? Much to their surprise - and eventual chagrin - that's exactly what we did. They - big 3 management & labor - badly miscalculated, & now they're running to the government for help. They couldn't win us over in the showrooms, so now they're asking the government to hold us down while they pick our pockets. It's too bad that management didn't do the right thing for customers & shareholders 30 or 40 years ago by walking away from the negotiating table & telling labor, "Go ahead & strike. We'll wait you out." Customers, shareholders & employees would all be better off today if management had shown some courage. I'm angry at the UAW, but I'm far angrier with management. In my view the UAW did what it was supposed to do in our Capitalistic system, i.e. fight tooth and nail for every single dollar in wages and benefits that it could get Management to agree to pay. Detachedly this is what they were supposed to do. As you correctly note it's mostly past management's fault for not being stronger in telling the UAW to 'Go Screw'. "We will put you on the streets and decertify you if you even begin to think the word 'STRIKE'." Managements past didn't act like good Capitalists in fighting tooth and nail on behalf of the stockholders. They though that they were doing the right thing by keeping the peace and keeping the profits flowing from continued production of trucks and SUVs but they lacked the foresight that 2008 might arrive some day. Mulally confirmed yesterday exactly what you said. He said that the D3 since the middle of the last century were of the opinion that 'If we build it they will buy it'. This credo permeated everything they did from crappy cars to bad service to over production to not having a view of the risks in the futre ( Prius, unbelievable fuel prices, death of SUVs ). That's why the three of them were there in front of Congress begging forgiveness for their sins....and for a little bite to eat and a warm cot to sleep on. In a
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