GM about to go belly up and take the dollar with it!

Well son, that's why the generous taxpayer will bail out their a**.

 

I never wanted to be a Repo Man, but there may be plenty of openings once things collapse. May be the only thing that keeps the mortgage paid.

Too bad I like a desk job so much...

 

You did notice who wrote that right?

I'm not saying that big bankruptcies wouldn't hurt the economy, but for as long as I've been alive, Gold and Silver speculators have been predicting the end of the world within the next year

The only difference between them and the guy on the corner is that their sign says "The End is Near - Buy Silver"

 

The only question is whether Dubya's daddy's friends will allow the GM bankruptcy to occur on his watch, or hold it off until the next president (who will of course be a Democrat).

 

I did notice Google News on "GM bankrupt" is filled with 'warnings' rather than 'doom', but small cracks do take out big dams occasionally...

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(richard schumacher\";p=\"75773)</div>

Richard:

So why didn't Clinton - or Slick if you prefer - prevent GM from going down the path it did? Or Gore, Reno et al?? Maybe the Fed should immediately take over all car companies, Nationalize them, and force them to make "correct" choices?

The consumer was led down the wrong path in the 90's thanks to artificially low fuel prices. Now it's catching up to those consumers, and they're trying to find a solution pronto. Any company that depends on consumers and marketing trends should know this, except GM appears clueless.

GM has bet the wad on SUV's and pickup trucks. It appears they've rolled a bad hand.

Ford has bet the wad on the "new" Mustang and the "new" F-150. Ditto.

DC has bet the wad on the "new" Chrysler 300, Dodge Magnum, Durango and Ram with various Hemi motors. Ditto.

Toyota put a lot of money into the Tundra, Sequoia, "new" Avalon ... and the Prius. They appear to be covering all bets, and if the waiting lists are any indication they made a winner.

I have no sympathy for a dumb a** company that is totally out of touch with reality. I get royally p***** off with the suggestion that my hard-earned taxpayer dollars have to bail out bad decisions made by complete boobs.

I get even more p***** off when that dumb a** company tries to blame their workers (Health care costs, pension funds, etc), the consumer (Not "patriotic" enough to Buy American), or another company like Toyota for blowing their doors off. Tough s***.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Tempus\";p=\"75770)</div>

Thanks Tempus -- I completely agree.

GM might actually be on the verge of bankruptcy -- I don't know, there have been reports of there financial problems in a lot of places.

But I'd be suspect of the data in this particular article, given the source.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(richard schumacher\";p=\"75773)</div>

OF COURSE!! That is provided Condoleezza Rice switches parties.

[Broken External Image]:http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/images/100-DrRice-S161-31-th.jpg

But that will never happen. She has a Doctorate in Political Science.
She is too smart to lower her standards.

 

Patrick:

Man is Condi hot. She has it all: brains and looks. Sweet.

If she ran for Prez I bet she would easily win. I mean, when you compare the alternatives on the "other" party (Hillary) it wouldn't even be a fair contest.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(clett\";p=\"75725)</div>

that has to be backwards... GM's book value is WAAAY over 16 billion

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jayman\";p=\"75802)</div>

From what I've learned from a number of Priuschat threads, Clinton and Gore gave GM billions of dollars to fund a "supercar" and as part of the deal they allowed CAFE standards to "coast". In retrospect, it has been made clear that it was a mistake. But they at least tried to do something. Don't they get credit for that?

It seems to me that GM 'used" Clinton/Gore and took the money, took the weakened CAFE standards and proceeded to misuse the money. So now Clinton and Gore are horrible people because they trusted GM in some way? It seems to me that Clinton trusted GM and got burned. Blaming Clinton for getting burned is missing who is actually responsible.

Now there is no way that Clinton would have given those billions to a Japanese firm, but can you imagine if they had made that deal with Toyota? Or more likely, can you imagine if GM had the leadership that Toyota has shown that they have and used that money in a productive way rather than conning Clinton and all us taxpayers like they apparently did?

But in any case, Clinton and Gore are gone. When are people going to stop trying to defend the current administration by attacking the last one?

And no one is suggesting that our auto industry or any other be nationalized, but it's hard to argue with the fact that our industries were cranking along at a pretty good clip back when our unions were stronger and our government "meddled" more in the marketplace with both regulations and stronger anti trust law enforcement. I'm a strong believer in the free market, but not lassaiz faire.

GM's current management just may be proving once again how a totally free market lassiaz faire type capitalism just does not work well.

CAFE standards is an example of government "meddling" in market forces. , something anathema to conservatives. I think it can be argued that those very same CAFE standards, by forcing to GM to build at least SOME fuel efficient products, prevented their demise years ago. Weakening that "meddling" and thus trusting pure market forces may result in their demise. Yet another example of where the "liberal" economic view and not the "conservative" economic view, has been proven superior.

And that is why I vote anti-Republican. I don't vote so much pro-Democrat as anti-republican. This is why I'm a liberal. Liberalism was the cornerstone of the American 20th century. And it worked.

 

actually gore had planned on forcing the big 3 to make better cars because he was still stinging from being played the fool on the Supercar Fund. and it wasn't billions we paid for it, but it did add up to over 400 million give or take a few million.

why do you think he lost? the big three saw to that along with the oil companies

 

As I've said before, Democrats have passed lots of laws that have hurt common people. I happen to believe that the backbone of America is in it's common people, not it's elite, NOT it's CEOs, NOT it's Bankers, NOT it's tycoons.

But when Democrats pass laws that hurt common people they do it by mistake, when Republicans do it, at least for the lat 25 years or so, it is by design.

And this current group is accelerating this.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(DaveinOlyWA\";p=\"76136)</div>

Who said Gore lost? Where did you get that misinformation?

But Gore could not have been all that successful. Although we can be pretty sure he would not have gone on vacation for the entire month of August 2001, so who knows how that may have paid off, he still would have had to deal with a Republican congress for things like CAFE standards.

 

As a Conservative, I don't trust large governments and I sure as h*** don't trust large corporations. However, if you want to believe that Clinton et al got snookered due to their doe-eyed innocence, that's fine. It doesn't really concern me and the end result is the same whether Clinton did it by design or by accident.

However, a *very* fundamental flaw in our approach to energy conservation was trying to build in efficiency with CAFE and not through higher consumption taxes. I think we'll all agree that most of CAFE is a Ponzi Scheme, especially Ford stipulating 5W-20 motor oil to achieve theoretical 1% fleet-wide "gains" to offset CAFE penalties.

There is also that CAFE nonsense about tiered emissions and fuel consumption levels, so something like a Ford Excursion or a Chevy Suburban can be classified as LEV low emission vehicle. Compared to what? An M1 Abrams tank?? The larger SUV's and pickup trucks are of course exempt in even reporting fuel economy.

So with fuel prices (Gasoline, diesel, electricity, natural gas, etc) kept artificially low - especially during the 90's - there was absolutely no incentive whatsoever for the average consumer to get a fuel efficient vehicle when they could purchase something huge and gas guzzling. The "marginal cost" was far offset by the "marginal benefit."

The Europeans appear to have a very sensible approach to their efficiency in that the price of gasoline and other energy has been very high - wrt our prices in North America - for a long time now. Depending on the country you live in, the registration and insurance rates are directly tied to vehicle weight or motor size or now CO2 g/km rating.

Note that CO2 g/km is directly related to fuel consumption. The more fuel the vehicle burns, the higher g/km in CO2, and the higher the tax.

So naturally the overall ownership of vehicles is less than here. On average, their fleet is far more fuel efficient. And thanks to those higher fuel excise taxes, their roads are on average of higher quality and there are much more mass transit options. I've traveled to Germany and Switzerland and - overall - am impressed with their transportation.

Applied to housing, you rarely find hot water storage tanks in EU due to their standby losses. For the most part, water is an expensive commodity, as it should be to discourage waste. You find most of the domestic hot water heated with tankless units, which have 0 standby loss.

Due to the higher cost of land, building materials, and transportation, MDU's (Multiple Dwelling Units) are more common. Overall, an MDU is more efficient to heat (Sandwiched together to minimize heat loss) and cool (Central professionally maintained chiller vs individual cooling units) than individual homes.

For example, I now live in a nice high-rise condo. I sold my nice home in the burbs around 4 years ago. Despite electric baseboard heat, my condo has far lower utility bills than my home did, and I had my home built with Energy Star rated appliances.

One may also argue that their population is more highly urbanized than here; that is, a lower spatial distribution. Again, the subsidized nature of our automotive and transportation industry and even housing has encouraged spatial distribution: the "bedroom community" effect where folks now routinely commute +25 miles to work.

The stats are sobering: the United States uses around 30% more energy per capita than the average EU country. Canada uses twice the energy per capita than the average EU country. That will catch up to us.

I believe it's inevitable that energy prices (Gasoline, diesel, electricity, natural gas, etc) in North America will match the prices in the EU. We may then look back on unemployment numbers under 10% as the "good old days." We will also have a collapse in the housing market, as once the price of gasoline passes $4 a gallon I doubt folks will want to live in the burbs and commute +25 miles to work.

I say gradually increase the taxes on gasoline until within 3-4 years they match EU prices. Stipulate that money must go to improving roads and building mass transit. Get rid of artificial restrictions on small cars like the VW Lupo 3L. Let consumers demand highly efficient small cars and good mass transit.

The Big Three can either meet the consumer demand or they can go belly up. As the Big Three have met this demand in the EU, they can meet it here too. All of them offer highly efficient small cars: DC in particular builds everything from the VW Lupo 3L to the S class, so you have options.

After all, in most of the EU, you're free to purchase whatever car you want. You might find this hard to believe, but you *can* buy a Chevy Tahoe or Suburban in places like Sweden, Germany, and Switzerland (They must have turn signal repeaters on the front fenders).

The person who purchases such a large vehicle pays enormous registration and insurance fees, and of course they have to pay every time they fill the tank.

That should only make sense.

So I really don't feel sorry for GM et al, as they have proven in the EU that they can produce efficient vehicles. Here in North America, we had to turn to the Prius, which is fine too. Lutz and Company can either get off their fat a** and make something the consumer demands, or they will find themselves out of work.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(prius04\";p=\"76133)</div>

From the research that has been presented, Toyota did their hybrid thing on their own. They foresaw a future of higher energy prices, strong consumer demand for fuel efficient cars, and the opportunity to be a market leader in that area.

So for Toyota, it was great engineering, fantastic marketing, and shrewd business decisions. That's a good combination.

And can somebody please explain to me why we entertained giving taxpayer money to The Big Three when they already had fuel efficient cars in the EU?? Once again another Ponzi Scheme.

As you can tell by now, I certainly don't feel sorry for GM, Ford, or DC. They made some remarkably bad marketing decisions, you can go so far as to say they *really* f***** up. So fire their marketing department.

"Hey, the price of fuel is going to skyrocket, so let's bet the farm on large gas guzzling pickup trucks and SUV's! Anybody seen my Haldol??"

:silly:

It tells you something about the mentality of a company when they belatedly recognized strong consumer demand for small fuel efficient cars, and had to import that Daewoo thing from South Korea and call it the Chevy Aveo. Well, it's small, cheap, but not particularly fuel efficient.

"The Heartbeat of America ... made in the good 'ole South Korea!"

In the meantime, I'll keep driving my Prius.

 

Anyone who proposes any kind of tax increase would be committing political suicide. It may be brave, but what good are you if you are gone.

And it has been (American style) conservatives who have made the idea of rasing taxes under ANY circumstances a bad one.

I also think that increased taxation in this area is a good idea. Then specifically earmark that money for anything other than the ICE, or to replace the ICE. Maybe on a 50:50 formula.

There is yet another Republican effort to kill Amtrak. But isn't mass transit a way out of our mess?

The conservative approach to all this is less government and less taxation -- at least on the rich -- and let the free market solve the problem.

And GM has been building cars for what the consumer wants for 100 years. The only way they are going to make cars to help fix our mess is if government makes them do it. The market tells them to make SUVs, so they make SUVs.

And CAFE standards may be filled with foolishness, but they helped. The solution isn't to get rid of CAFE, but to strengthen them.

The (American style) liberal approach, if there still existed a real liberal in government anymore, would be more government regulation to foster GM to go in a direction that may make the next few quarterly reports suffer, but would pay off in 15 years. This could be done with taxation, and rules like CAFE or other MPG rules.

Jayman, you cite 3 or 4 "socialist" European countries as doing it "right". Are you sure you are a conservative?

 

Prius04 your post of March 26 4:35pm is well thought out and one again you have shown considerable insight. I couldn't have said any point better myself. I do continually find it shameful that conservatives get backed into a corner they still try to turn it on the previous administration. It is SO transparent that 'their boy'W jr. is nothing more than a shill, unlike Clinton who had a brain and used it for the public good. Keep up the good posts!