You’re not getting bailout money and I’m not getting bailout money.
So if you or I want to buy a house or car, exactly what incentive do we have to buy stuff at this moment in history? Hell, I’ve snapped my wallet shut as a matter of principle.
If ordinary Americans are going to be completely ignored while a trillion dollars flows to the very people who created this mess, basically they can bite me. I’ve been crotchety since I was about 14 years old, and with the exception of the Internet Toobz, I can survive on Spam and AM radio for a long damn time. Sure, the kids will get their toys, but I’m not going out of my way to buy anything at all right now.
I know economics is dismal and complicated and all that, but somehow I’m not understanding how “give free money to corporations or else” is going to work out in the end. If consumers can’t or won’t buy the products, then we’re just giving money to stockholders and executives. Once the federal money is gone, it’s gone. The situation is insane.
Some people would call this a heist. It’s like “The Great Train Robbery” with you starring as the money on the train. Or something.
Bite me, and pass the black beans and rice.
Shit, have you seen the price of black beans and rice lately? $1/lb for beans, and that’s if you buy ten pounds. Dumpster diving behind restaurants is starting to look good.
Watch the greedy assholes in the executive suites of GM and Chrysler play the same game as the crooked fucks running the financial industry….they’ll go humbly begging for Uncle Sam to bail them out, claiming it’s the only way to save hundreds of thousands of jobs. Then as soon as they get the dough in their slimy paws, they’ll close most of their factories and lay everybody off anyway, outsource what’s left to the other side of the world, and go play Gatsby on “Horseshit Island”.
Black beans are a $1.29/lb everywhere I’ve looked. Pintos are running a bit cheaper if you can come up with enough to buy a 25lb bag. Rice is as low as $15 for a 25lb bag if you know where to shop.
Fortunately we live in a culturally diverse region — I’d recommend looking for specials on ramen. Sometimes you can find it on special for around $0.25/package.
We might learn a lesson or two from some of the folks to whom fortune has been less than kind for a while already. A friend of mine who’s stuck in perpetual underemployment in Ohio (It’s a long, sad story. Suffice it to say he worked in the WTC on 9/11 and would be dead if he hadn’t been late for work that day.) tells me that Ramen’s no good, because it really doesn’t provide enough calories for the money–it fills you up, while starving you. The real deal is “welfare noodles” i. e. boxed mac-n-cheese. I guess the implication is that it’s better to gum up your arteries and have a heart attack than to die of malnutrition. In fact, if you’re lucky they’ll come pump on your chest and then haul you off to a nice comfy bed at Harborview with three squares a day until you get better. In the meantime, if you want to make believe you’re still a swell, toss in a few capers (they’re **cheap** at Costco) and don’t tell your pals you aren’t suffering as much as they are.
all the jokes aside – basic cooking from basic wholseom ingredients is absolutely essential to survive this
potatos, beans, rice, stewing chickens, vats of well made mac, light on cheese, dry milk, cheap cuts of beef used in stew ….all nature of veggies and all fruit, salvaged into sauce and canned–
with our better understanding of diet, granny cooking is cheap and full of the good stuff
buy on sale, and stock up
day old bread
anything marked way down, freeze and store properly
waste nothing – quilts?
sunday best and the rest, who cares
That’s why I asked Goldy in another thread if he was for or against the big 3 bailout, but he was afraid to answer.
Jon–
I’m with you on the anti-BailOut Schtick.
It’s BULLSHIT.
Why are the Democrats pushing so hard for the Auto Bailout?? I think I know the answer..in a word, it’s UNIONS! They are being pressured.
Also, we fail to read about Toyota, Honda et al actually EXPANDING US Plants.
There is a relatively finite demand for new cars. If GM, Ford & CHrysler tank, Toyota, Honda et al will pick up the production slack.
I am totally against pouring $$ down the GM/Ford rathole…throwing good money after bad.
Regarding Mortgage Bailout, we are also bailing out IRRESPONSIBLE INDIVIDUALS who bought houses they could not afford and gambled with non-fixed rate mortgages. Many also borrowed equity to buy shit they didn’t need.
They should have lost their houses…not been rewarded with Bailout Money too.
I know many rider like to visit ***RiderCupid. c om*** to have a fun, there are many rich sexy ladies, celebrities,millionaires,beauties on that site.
Of course many folks like to blame scapegoats like unions, or ‘irresponsible folks who bought houses they couldn’t afford’, when those really at fault are still reaping the benefits. American managers are payed many more times what American workers are—at a much higher ratio than Japanese managers. In Europe and Canada exec pay is around 22x worker pay, here in the US it’s 475x
http://www.pbs.org/now/politic.....pay06.html
Also never mentioned are the health care costs and retirement costs of executives.
I would support a financial restructuring package for the auto industry that required limits on exec. pay, and adherence to new CAFE standards. We need to be able to make stuff here in order to sell it elsewhere.
The other problem is that folks need jobs to buy cars or even beans. Having the auto industry shed even more jobs, with the multiplier effect that would have on the rest of the economy is not a good thing to think about. Neither is the quickness that some folks have for blaming those on the bottom for the problems created by those on the top.
kirk, after you hand them over 20 billion dollars, and people still don’t buy their cars, what then? How will you make people buy their cars?
I think Chapter 11 bankruptcy is the way to go with the auto companies. Remember these guys do more than just make cars. A lot of their other businesses might be successful and good for the economy if freed from their dinosaur parents.
Let this stuff work its way through bankruptcy court. What emerges will be more viable than what we have now.
One pound of dried beans yields 6 or 7 one cup servings. At $1.29/pound, that’s less than $.25 per serving. Pretty good deal.
What’s your incentive to buy? My word liberals are a stupid bunch of dipshits. The incentive is low prices you ball sack. Housing prices are down, car prices are down, stock prices are down and wait until black friday because you’ll see that electronics goods are down as well.
Perhaps you need Marcy “I loved economics so much I got a degree in it” Burner to explain it to you…..
Absolutely amazing, the depths of stupidity abound on this site.
@13–It’s called “discretionary spending” for a reason. Most commenters kind of picked up on that, but thanks for making sure the Cesspool earns its name! If consumers are worried about the future they may tend to put off optional purchases. And with 70% of the economy driven by the consumer sector, that’s a problem.
Personally, I’m not spending, because I’m broke. We had an extended medical crisis in the family and now, I have no money left. None. I’m paying rent and utilities, BILLS and nothing extra left over.
No money for new cars, not even thinking of buying a house. ( Even if they are down 10% in WA. Bring them down 60% and I’ll be able to consider it.) No going out to eat, no shows, no toasters, no nothing.
If I cannot pay cash for it and I NEED it, I’m not buying it. I’m not getting anything, just because I WANT it.
So I guess I’m doing my part to ruin the economy and bring on the next depression.
Chapter 11 reorganization isn’t going to help except in the very short term. What people fail to realize is that Chapt. 11 is not a company re-organization, it’s only a debt reorganization. Company management will make all the same bad decisions it did before, along with some entirely new ones which are even worse.
All it will do is give the company the ability to renig on their existing contracts, making others pay the price for their mistakes. The smaller suppliers never get paid. The workers will lose their bargained-for benefits (while the company still keeps paying the lower wages it offered the workers in exchange for their promise of future benefits). The cost of borrowing money will go up for the companies. They will pay huge sums of money for experts, consultants, and lawyers to get through the bankruptcy process. Every last shred of employee loyalty will be destroyed.
Then after they are done, they will give the executives huge bonuses for their “hard work” in taking the company through the process.
That’s what United Airlines did, and although it survived the post 9/11 crash in the airline industry, it is still on thin legs, ready to be toppled by the next bad news, such as another surge in fuel prices which might send it right back into chapter 11. And the pilots, flight attendants, and mechanic’s unions are at this point unwilling to grant any more concessions, after they saw their sacrifices “for the sake of the company” go right into the executive’s pockets.
There is a lot of anger at executive pay. There seems to not be any shared pain.
Is it realistic to demand wage pain from the the executives? Could you get someone good to do the job for $250,000 a year without bonuses?
13. Rupert G Holmes spews:
Absolutely amazing, the depths of stupidity abound on this site.
It is because trolls like you are allowed to post here. We put up with your stupidity just for the entertainment value.
Thanks for playing.
By the way, how did the election work for you? Just asking…
With respect to autos, The Economist, as an example, has said for at least the last decade that there are 10% more cars being built every year, worldwide, than the demand that exists to purchase them. And it’s part of why there’s been a fair bit of consolidation of the industry over the last few years.
Realistically, there’s Honda, Toyota, Renault (which owns Nissan pretty much outright), BMW, Daimler-Benz, whatever the Americans support, whatever the French support, and whatever the South Koreans support. The Chinese may come up with something, and there are other countries that dabble in car production from time to time (Great Britain, Malaysia), but in reality, that’s it. Virtually everybody else makes “coiture” models or is owned by someone else outright.
And, as with American-based airlines, everybody is waiting for someone else to fall to save the market for the survivors.
Okay, the real problem with the bailout plans is that it’s being executed as another “trickle-down” economics. Taxpayer money is being given to the top with only a few strings attached, in the hopes that the benefits might “trickle down” (or “tinkle upon”) the masses at the bottom, eventually, after they have worked and paid more for the priviledge.
What we need is a “bubble-up” recovery – where a benefit to the masses eventually lifts the best-managed companies to the top.
I had an idea, based upon the original idea of the VA, FHA, and HUD loan programs (before the current administration muddled things up). Let’s set up a federal corporation to lend money to consumers for car loans. Fund it with federal taxpayer money, or with private money backed by federal guarantees.
To participate in the program, auto companies would have to meet the requirement that a high percentage of the vehicle would have to be made in the U.S. (85%?), corporate taxes would have to be paid in the U.S., and it would have to agree to restrictions, including limits on out-sourcing of jobs, executive pay and bonuses, honoring existing union contracts, etc. Also, if the company files Chapt. 11, the stock in the company reverts to the federal goverment, as trustee on behalf of the taxpayers. You could also write into the requirements provisions regarding fuel efficiency, etc.
The result would be that U.S. consumers could get loans for new cars from U.S. carmakers at reasonable interest rates. Rising sales would generate jobs, and the restrictions on profit-skimming by corporate executives would mean more money is available in the corporation to pay wages and benefits to workers, for more research and development and quality control, etc.
@20
And what if people STILL don’t buy their cars, and the big 3 come back yet again and say they need 20 billion or else they’ll go under. Will you give them more money?
@9:
This is like the old joke about GE’s CEO complaining about how he can get cheaper engineers from India and China, to which one person suggested that he could be just as easily replaced, given that American managers are pricing themselves out of the market. (He didn’t take the comment too well.)
I require a car that is reliable, gets great gas mileage and should look good. That’s been a Honda, for the last 20 years.
A union shop could do that, if they were allowed to. I blame management of the US auto companies for poor decision making. For doing things that generate good executive bonuses at the cost of the company.
I only want a bailout with a lot of strings attached. The banks should have had that too, by they way. I require they have to have a plan that makes a car that is reliable, gets great gas millage and looks good. If they cannot do that, then they should go under.
Blue John @ 17: I’m always amazed at how Republicans defend executive pay as needing to keep rising in order to be “competitive”, but how everyone else’s pay needs to keep dropping to be “competative”.
As for who can do the job, the real key is how you define the executive’s job.
If you define the job as being one where they manage for this quarter’s financial results, and for the purpose of making a personal killing in short-term stock options, bonuses, and through taking a public company private or a private company public, and expect to rotate through several CEO positions and corporate board positions in their final ten or fifteen years on the job (raking in additional millions with each new job change), then there are a limited few that can do that. The reason is that managing a company in such a way requires that you have lots of contacts and allies in other firms, wall street, banking, investment firms, and politics in order to get away with it. They scratch your back so that you can scratch theres, and the long-term benefit of the corporations, the small share-holders, and certainly the American taxpayer is of no consequence to them.
Unfortunately, almost all large U.S. corporations are managed that way, and an elite few control them through inter-locking board memberships and rotations through the highest exective offices of those corporations.
But if you define the job as one where you run the company for the rest of your professional life, and then leave a stronger company as their legacy to their successors, and your personal financial and social success is based upon the long-term strength of the company, then there are any number of lower-ranked management in the companies that could handle the job, with some training, for a salary of $250,000 or even less. That’s the way it’s done in Japanese companies, where the real payment is the prestige which comes from managing a well-run company, not the monetary rewards.
In Japanese companies, long-term training is a continuing process for all workers, and those in salaried office jobs will be rotated regularly among the various divisions and jobs within the company, and even loaned to their vendors and other business “partners”. By the time a salaried worker rises to the top of management, he knows the company inside and out, he knows who they do business with and how they operate, and he knows the industry well.
In Japan, they don’t ask you what your job is, they ask you who you work for. Your job assignment is temporary, but your social status is affected more by the prestige of the company for which you work. So you wouldn’t say that you were an “accountant” or a “purchasing agent” or a “manager”, because that implies that the job is transferable between different companies. You would simply say that you work for “XYZ” corporation. If your company does well, you do well. If your company fails, then your career as a salaried worker is gone, as other companies have little incintive to bring in employees of a failed corporation.
What we need is a “bubble-up” recovery – where a benefit to the masses eventually lifts the best-managed companies to the top.
We’re getting a version of that through the passage of Prop. 1. For every billion dollars the agency spends, it will create 37,000 new jobs – and those are good union, green jobs. They pay much better than “bean-meal” salaries. We’re starting to see the benefits locally already. On Dec. 1 500 new positions will become available, and that’s just the leading edge of the bubble-up. We’re talking a ~$20B bubble over the next decade and a half, which represents a sea change in union job growth.
Read the “Shock Doctrine” by Naomi Klein. We are being robbed, and both parties are in on it. Our 2 to 3 trillion dollar bail out is only going to pay for the bankers long island mansions, and isn’t helping main street hardly at all. We would get a lot more bang for the buck handing the money out in almost any way other than they way the Fed did, filling the bank’s bank accounts with no strings attached. Heck, they won’t even tell us who they gave the trillion plus to.
I am sick of this.
I say claw back every cent in bonuses these banker maggots took selling their “swaps” and if they complain, lock them up for 20 years or so. Now there’s economic fairness.
Any banker that knowingly violated the TILA should go to jail. They were doing it for commissions, and should do the time for their crimes, just like the rest of us would have to do.
I the taxpayer am sick of getting reamed by the corporations, and the politicians in both parties they control.
RAPE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The market capitalization yesterday of GM and Ford was about $5.5 Billion. If we took that $5.5 Billion from the proposed $25 Billion and bought GM & Ford outright, we could can all of senior management, maybe all of management. That would resolve one problem. Then round up all the pickups and SUVs sitting on dealer lots and corporate storage yards and ship them to Brazil and the Middle East where there is at least some market for them. Next, close all but 1 or 2 pickup and SUV plants. That would restore some rationality to the auto market. Finally, contract out management of GM & F to someone else, say Toyota and Honda and use the rest of the $25 Billion to prop up the companies while the reorganization takes place.
No, that is probably not the answer. I know that, but it will take some dramatic and bold steps to restore the industry, not dribbling out $25 – $50 Billion or more. Business as usual isn’t going to work.
Mitt Romney is correct on this issue. Let Detroit go bankrupt.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/
So the workers have to be punished because of the leadership of the companies?
I have an idea. Offer to bail them out on the condition that the executives only get as much as similar executives get at Honda, and Toyota. If that isn’t good enough for them, then we expect to see their resignations, and start looking for their replacements immediately.
How they expect stock holders to pay them millions a year, when because of their greed, and incomprehensible ignorance, their companies lose billions a year is beyond me.
and @16. rhp6033 spews: “Then after they are done, they will give the executives huge bonuses for their “hard work” in taking the company through the process.” Is how the bankruptcy game works. The employees, and pensioners get screwed, and the execs get bigger houses, bigger yachts, and a faster Ferrari.
The key idea, missing in this discussion, is that the government MUST switch from the now failed model of free market capitalism to a model more like that lf Europe and Japan where the government itself is a major investor.
The essence of 19th century capitalism was the concept that entrepreneurs would do the tight thing by investing in productivity AND helping the consumer increase his purchasing power to but the new goods. That idea is now fundamental to all economics, even in China. What is different is that we developed a bizarre system that diverted capital from productivity to money itself. A HUGE part of our capital was invested in financial schemes that drained capital from everything else.
Those schemes were like the pre-capitalist idea of money as a goal itself, an idea that led to the failure of pre capitalist systems. We are, I suggest, now paying a huge price for a return to the ideas that drove Imperial Spain to ruin.
This is why the idea of subsidizing the consumer is bad. We need to find ways of investing in our national .. and now world .. productivity.
A good start is to think of large, successful nations, as competitors for capital. Leave aside the religious belief of laissez-faire and communism but create world law that encourages countries to compete with each other commercially.
Done well, that sort of competition should benefit the citizens of the country that “chooses” the best system for its citizens. As a Jeffersonian, I believe that system will be American.
Blue John, people aren’t buying cars. Handing over 25 billion will only prolong the inevitable.
Blue John, let’s say we give them 25 billion of our money. Then one year from now the economy is still in the toilet, and people aren’t buying big ticket items, and the big 3 come back for another 25 billion. Do you give it to them because “we can’t punish the workers for poor leadership?” And if your answer is yes, then to you give them another 25 billion a year later?
Troll – let’s just say we already gave 350 billion to the banking industry and credit is still bad and tight – do we give the other 350 million?
And when do we fix the problems tht the “free market” and deregulation caused?
Maybe the government should just take over the banking and car industries because they are so inept?
Maybe we should just let those industries die and go straight into the great depression. Maybe we should not have listened to Bush say over and over that the economy was fundamentally sound. Where were all the republicans on the economy last year? Oh, screaming about off-shore drilling. Wow, that would have really helped….I see gas prices have come down now because of all that new drilling (hahahaha). what a joke!
Let’s see. We’re discussing the choice between handing over another $25 Billion of taxpayer money, or GM and Chrysler going bankrupt. (Ford is in favor of the bailout, but isn’t asking for any of the money. That in itself is interesting.)
Either/or. No other options?
Of course it isn’t that simple. I’m actually rather pleased with the process so far (on this mess).
Exactly how will the money be used? What restrictions on executive pay? How are the companies planning on becoming more competitive? What’s in it for the taxpayer?
Comparisons are being made to the AIG bailout, and those comparisons work on both sides of the argument. Certainly that bailout looks suspiciously like welfare for billionaires.
But if AIG had folded, there is a valid argument that could be made that it would have taken even more of our economy with it.
Either/or is a false argument. Certainly the auto industry is important enough that we need to save it. “Just let it fail” really isn’t an option.
But the folks wanting the money are the exact same people that created the problem in the first place. Simply handing them more money isn’t a reasonable option either. These folks need adult supervision.
An additional observation. Oddly enough, the final act of the Republican administration may be to socialize both the banking and auto industries.
(Four years from now, they’ll blame President Obama for that, while claiming credit for solving the problem.)
Let’s recap. The Republicans created a crisis, whereupon they socialized at least one, and perhaps several major industries.
Ok, we Democrats will also have participated in socializing the industries, but it won’t be us in the lead on that, and “socialism” is less of a dirty word for us than for the Republicans.
We have the Republicans leading the country into socialism. It is now official. I have fallen through the looking glass.
11 Their “other businesses”? Oh, yeah…you mean like feeding from the trough over at the Dept. of Defense? So, are we supposed to keep a couple of wars going on indefinitely so the Army can justify a steady stream of replacement Hummers?
The automakers also own quite a bit of real estate, which probably ain’t worth a whole lot at the moment.
And, of course they’re in the banking business. Remember a couple years ago GMAC was writing loans for people to buy Suburbans and Tahoes with nothing down except whatever heap they traded in and no interest? That’s even dumber than writing usurous mortgages to people who can’t afford them.
Blue John @ 23: I agree that Honda makes great cars. My own experiences:
My first car was a ’71 Ventura (a Pontiac version of the Nova). Simple, pre-emission control V-8 engine, horrible fuel economy but easy to maintain and reliable. I later regretted getting rid of it.
The ’78 brand-new Pontiac Grand Prix I replaced it with was a piece of junk, heavy and underpowered, generally bad quality and things broke faster than they could be fixed. (I should have kept the Ventura).
We bought a Honda Accord in ’84 (an ’85 model) and drove it until it finally gave out, almost 20 years later. My son is now looking at buying a car. Although he’s shopped around quite a bit, he really prefers to buy a Honda.
I also bought an ’89 Dodge Dynasty for $50.00 in ’98. It was a piece of junk K-car, but I have to say I got what I paid for. I drove it until 2002, while we were growing from a two-car family into a four-car family as my children began to drive.
Around 2002 I replaced the Dodge with a used ’93 Ford Explorer. It’s still doing well, although it certainly drives like a truck (it’s really a large car body on top of a small truck chassis). But it’s going to need engine work in the next year or so. If the transmission gives out, I’ll have to scrap it – it’s not worth the cost of a replacement transmission.
We also bought a used ’93 Subaru Impreza around 2000, as a “third car” when my kids started driving. We drove it until this past summer, when a drunk driver hit it and totalled it. It was a well-made car, but uncomfortably small (I got leg cramps, and I couldn’t drive it more than a couple of hours).
We replaced the Subaru with a new 2008 Saturn Vue this summer. I’m suspicious regarding the quality of a GM car, but I’m willing to give it a try – so far, so good. This is my wife’s car, although I drive it when I need to transport out-of-town business guests.
I’m not sure what car I’ll buy next, but I expect to be in the market within the next year or two to replace the Explorer, as soon as I pay off the Saturn.
All Facts @ 30: Actually, filing bankruptcy is said to be the art of “taking your wallet out of your jacket pocket and putting it in your back pocket, shortly before giving the jacket and the shirt off your back to your creditors”.
@27
I’d say Alan Mulally at Ford should stay on. He’s done an amazing job turning Ford around in the two years he’s been there.
Then again pretty much everyone agrees Ford is in the best shape of the US automakers and the one in the need of the least help in order to survive.
@33
I already covered that in 23
@40
Would you give them another 25 billion a year later if they needed it?
Barelli @ 35. Nice summation.
Of course, the Republicans are already trying to divorce themselves from both the responsibility for the economic problem, and for their own solutions to it. They are trying to pretend that Bush was simply an unfortunate mistake that nobody really wants to talk about, someone who didn’t practice “real conservative values” and therefore doesn’t “really” represent the party. By this time next year, I expect they will be arguing that he was really a Democrat, given their penchant for revisionist history.
@37:
Car biographies! I luvs me some car biographies!
My first car out of college was an ’85 Pontiac Sunbird. Terrible fuel injection system early on (fixed), but it made it to 220K miles before throwing a rod in the middle of nowhere in southern Oregon.
My ex was pregnant at the time and very, very paranoid about debt, and I had a friend that collected Buicks to restore. His wife was jumping down his throat about all the cars that were slowly rusting away in the yard, so he offered me his ’76 Buick LeSabre for peanuts. It was whittled out of a single piece of steel, and it had a small dent or two, but this was before gas prices went crazy, the engine was indestructible, and it intimidated the daylights out of the folks that usually tried to play games with me on the highway with their BMW’s and Mercedes.
I finally let the LeSabre go when I was offered a chance to buy a ’91 Honda Civic Wagon. I drove that car half to death and back, but I enjoyed every moment of it.
When the Honda finally was costing more to repair than it was worth, I pretty much gave it away and now have a Mazda Protege5, which has been a fun, but underutilized car – too much working from home, too much using my feet and the bus when necessary as gas climbed in price.
Now my daughter is about to ask for a car to start driving with, once she’s been through drivers ed, and I’m trying to decide if we get a clunker to allow her to learn and abuse on, or we let her drive the Protege5, or we trade in the Protege5 for something I can live with and can allow her to drive – the Protege5 has a little too much “oomph” for me to trust my daughter with.
And it’s weird, coming from a family that at one point had four cars to deal with, to realize that I can’t entirely see the need for two in ours.
Just a reminder: this whole “bailout” idea got started back in the early 1980’s when Lee Iaccocca (sp?) went hat-in-hand to the government to get a loan guarantee to allow Chrysler to survive until it got it’s K-cars to market. Chrysler survived (for a time), and ended up paying back the guaranteed loans ahead of time. It was a very controversial practice at the time, and many feared it would set a bad precedent.
It was indeed used as a precident a few years later for the bail-out of the Savings & Loan collapse, which was then used as a precident for the bail-out of AIG and other banks and financial instutions this year.
I want everyone to take notice that when I ask the question of pro-bailout commenters here if they would give them another 25 billion a year later if they needed it, they refuse to answer.
It’s our economy, after all. And it depends entirely upon our money. So why aren’t we calling the shots?
With absurdly risky speculative hedging, the financial geniuses broke the “private” sector system for fueling the consumer economy. So now they are demanding “public” sector funds.
Fine.
We can finance it. But why shouldn’t the money come with strings attached? If you’ve ever “bought” a company, you know that what you are really buying is the company’s balance sheet of assets and liabilities. You don’t get to buy one without the other. But companies like AIG and The Big Three are asking us to do just that. Bullshit.
We should be buying controlling stakes in these companies and then fundamentally restructuring them. Just like any other intelligent investor would do. But we gain the opportunity to restructure them with broad public interest in mind, rather than the narrow interests of board members and executive management ciphers.
@2 When are people finally going to figure out that CEOs, bosses, investors, and shareholders don’t create jobs? Customers create jobs, and when the customers have no money, there are no jobs, and throwing more money at people who already have most of the money accomplishes nothing beyond making the rich that much richer. Nothing ever trickles down.
We’ve now had 38 years of Wingnut Whack-O-Nomics in this country and the result is we’ve sent our manufacturing jobs overseas, shuttered our factories, put our local retaiers out of business, filled China’s treasury with our money (which they’re using to buy missiles, aircraft carriers, and submarines), and in the process kicked the legs off our own economic stool. Talk about stupid people, that’s how stupid conservatives are!!
Until last summer’s financial meltdown, the financial industry was the largest segment of the U.S. economy. But what does the financial “industry” actually produce? Nothing, when you stop to think about it. All it does is take money from one pocket (yours) and put it in another pocket (theirs). When your entire economy consists of moving money in endless circles, all you end up with is paper money that can’t buy anything, because you’ve produced nothing.
@46 It’s the same old conservative bullshit. We have to put up the money and take the risks, and they get the share certificates and profits. Fuck ’em! When workers and consumers get nothing from the economic pie, they’ve got nothing to lose, so let’s just shut the fucker down and make ’em live like us for a while!
Palamedes @ 43: I figure every teenager is going to get into a fender-bender or two before they reach the age of 18, so I’m a big fan of having them drive a “disposable” car during that era. That means one which is sufficiently reliable so they won’t get stuck somewhere, but if they want something “sexier” then they can damn well get a job and buy it themselves.
I made my own kids pay for their own insurance, so they would have a vested interest in keeping their rates low.
My son “inherited” the Honda Accord in the last years of it’s life. By the time he got it, it no longer had a high gear – it couldn’t get above 30 MPH. Which was just fine for me – he could drive it locally to school and work, but he couldn’t go far or get on the freeway, much less be tempted to race it. I suspect that the engine finally gave out because he tried to force it to get up to 35 MPH or 40 MPH a few times.
Working in Bellevue, however, is a strange environment for me. I’ve mentioned before that I hear strange conversations during lunches among the crowd from Bellevue High which go off-campus for lunch. One young lady was indignant that her parents wouldn’t give her a brand new Lexus for her 16th birthday – she absolutely refused to drive the two-year old model they gave her instead. She would just DIE of embarrasment if anyone saw her driving a USED car!
Troll @ 45: Blue John answered you. Twice. You just didn’t read it, didn’t recognize it as an answer to your question, or chose to ignore it.
Come to think of it, there’s a great untapped market for the auto companies: A cheap but indestructable car that can’t go above 35 MPH! Parents would love to buy it for their kids!!!!
Oh, wait. That was the Pinto, wasn’t it?
@48 It’s the same old conservative bullshit.
Conservative would mean no government intervention, bone head. It’s the Dem Congress that’s pushing for paying off the Unions with this bailout.
Do you need a dictionary so you can have conservative political philosophy explained to you?
@50
Would you do me a favor and go back and find what he wrote and cut and paste it for me in your comment? I don’t want to read through old comments. Thanks.
#52 Holmes, I hate to break it to you, but “conservative” economic policies is what has taken America, and the world for that matter to the brink of ruin. If the “cons” buddies aren’t raping and pillaging the tax payers, they are looking for someone else to blame for the nightmares they have caused. Like blaming some black folks getting loans they could not pay back for the “swaps” implosion of our whole banking system. Like removing ALL REGULATION AND OVERSIGHT, AND REFUSING TO PROSECUTE CRIMES, is all someone else’s fault.
The word Conservative now means FRAUD and not much else.
Boy the cons sure love re writing history. Are they still trying to blame Clinton for the Bush Disaster?
By the way. You can take your trickle down economics, and stick them where the sun don’t shine.
@49:
Believe me when I tell you from personal experience that Bellevue High is the exception, not the rule, when it comes to kids and cars in this neck of the woods. My daughter is at a different high school in the district, and it’s a very different story – but then, students and their families have to bid, last I heard, for open parking spots at Bellevue High, and you don’t, if memory serves, at the other three high schools.
Since Pintos are hard to find (a good car once you get the lousy extra part for it that makes it safe – there’s a rally or racing league for them now, if memory serves, so demand is up for them), I was thinking about an older Saturn SL2 as an alternative – not a lot of pep, but relatively safe, and four doors. If I want to spend more money, I may go for a standard Protege – as good as a Civic, and, with less cachet, less demand, and a slightly cheaper price.
51 The PINTO???!!? You mean the “Explodes-On-Impact” plastic slug with the gas tank hung back between the rear axle and the flimsy bumper? I don’t think so.
I had a Pinto. It had over 200,000 miles on it when I sold it. It had a 2.0 instead of a 2.3 though…
@13: Hey Holmes, before you go calling people names – it is DARCY NOT MARCY Burner.
Thanks for showing us what a great intellect and an incisive mind you have. You didn’t even know enough about Darcy burner to get her name right – but you sure knew how to insult her.
Oh, and as far as your economic theory – we did eight years of trickle down economics, union busting, inflated executive salaries and rampant free market. It has decimated the banking and auto industries and doesn’t work – even Greenspan admitted that the free market cannot police itself.
Next time you pontificate in a vacuum, you might want to have some actual data to back up your opinions gleaned from talk radio morons. These same guys and Bush told us the economy was fundametally sound for two years before this collapse – they lied and so you are too. Deregulation does not work. Health care costs are crippling our competitiveness. Executive salaries are orders of magnitude higher than anywhere else. Address those competitive problems first…and maybe we can start to straighten out the economy and support the middle class instead of hoping and wishing for a trickle down that doesn’t happen.
@45. Some of us work for a living.
It depends. If the car companies can prove they need more money to finish designing cars that are reliable, gas efficient and good looking, and can prove the money won’t be spent on lavish parties and excutive bonuses, then yes. Otherwise, no.
I expect that if we all think about it, there isn’t a single one of us (well, maybe Marvin) who wouldn’t say “Hell NO!” to just handing Detroit $25 billion to continue doing the same stupid things until that ran out.
The traditional “American” auto industry is a dead man walking. The real question is whether there’s anything there worth salvaging, and if so, how to go about it.
15. Blue John spews:
How can I help you?
Seriously.
I drove a 1993 Ford Explorer over 250,000 miles…then bought a new Toyota 4-Runner. It will probably last 14 years too. Mrs. C has a 1998 Ford Windstar Van bought new with 150,000 miles now on it. We are keeping it for rafting & fishing/hunting trips because it has a trade-in value of about $1,000 max. She wants a new Toyota Highlander.
Screw US Auto Makers. Their products pale in comparison to Toyota these days. All things equal, I would buy Ford or GM…but it’s not even close.
The Auto Workers are in a dying industry. They have been for years. The Unions should have been preparing them for the future…but instead kept pushing the dead horse until now, it has collapsed.
They ought to move from Michigan and go to work for Toyota, Nissan and Honda. Go where the jobs are…now.
One of the reasons Car Companies are broke is because they were forced to re-tool at cost of Billions. Stupid.
Government should stay out of this and let the market work. Stockholders will get ZERO, which is what they should get….just like Merrill-Lynch and others should have gotten.
Let the Bankruptcy Courts sort this out.
Like they should have sorted out the Financial Markets.
Another case of Government making things worse.
Troll @ 53: No, it’s all in this thread. You can read them yourself. I don’t have time to do ALL your work for you.
Cynical @ # 63: “Forced to re-tool?” Who’s forcing them? They should be re-tooling regularly. You don’t see Toyota or Honda crying about being forced to re-tool – they do it regularly. This crisis wasn’t caused by the government. It was caused by the car companies ignoring the entirly predictable rise in oil prices, making inferior products, and then blaming it on everyone else.
Well, at least U.S. automakers are making a bit better cars than the Yugo. The last one is rolling off the assembly line in Serbia.
Source: It’s the end of the (punch) line for the Yugo
63 Re-tool????? Re-tool WHAT?????
Ford’s most ballyhooed “new” model this year was a resurrection of the Mustang Steve McQueen thrashed around San Francisco in a 40-year-old movie, with even more horsepower and louder exhaust. Just what we need to save the republic–a gas-guzzling four-wheeled dildo that middle-aged ego masturbators can strap on to make up for their wilted peckers.
After pissing and moaning about how it was impossible to add a few things to make cars safer and reduce the rate at which they poison the air, the carmakers bolted on the stuff they’d probably designed decades earlier and passed every fucking cent of the cost plus a hefty mark-up on to their customers.
It would be worth having the government seize GM, Ford and Chrysler just to see how many patents they’ve got locked up in their vaults so they could continue to convince us we have no choice but to buy the same junk with minor cosmetic alterations every few years.
@15 “We had an extended medical crisis in the family and now, I have no money left.”
I’m very sorry to hear about that. I hope everything turns out OK. But if things truly get dire, I’m sure we could somehow come together for you and help out. I wouldn’t know you if I saw you but all the same, you have friends here, including me.