Should the US bailout the big three automakers?

[392cobra]

Originally Posted by gsharapa

Just remember what the auto industry did for the country during WWII. After 911 they contributed large amounts of funds and vehicles. What did Toyota and the rest do? Not a dam thing.........

Yes I work for Ford Motor Company and proud of it!!!!!

Gary,I have to call Bull Chit on that.
Maybe you've been drinking their Kool-Aid too long.

Honda and Toyota EACH donated more than Ford.

Honda gave 50% more than Ford.
Toyota gave almost 100% more than Ford.

http://www.nuketown.com/node/264

[Smokingcobra2]

Now if you where a UAW worker and got laid off you would get 80% of your pay for 5
years. NOT BAD and they wonder why they are gong broke!!!
Unless each company gets a loan payment book like i do when i buy a car NO MONEY!!
joeg

[khansmith]

Originally Posted by Smokingcobra2

Now if you where a UAW worker and got laid off you would get 80% of your pay for 5
years. NOT BAD and they wonder why they are gong broke!!!
Unless each company gets a loan payment book like i do when i buy a car NO MONEY!!
joeg

Wow...at Boeing...you are just gone! My bros just spent a nice chunk of time without pay on the strike. They all keep about 6 months cash to help weather the layoff periods. You get canned, you get nothing. Even with that scenario, they were offloading tons of work to non-union suppliers to keep costs down.

Edit: I mean, you get a bit of severance but not 80% of your salary for 5 years!

[Bartruff1]

Ford is up 350% , it might be a time to sell .....

[sparks]

Dont no 4 sure if thats a fact or not but that is a little recockulous. Or getting a huge bonus or stock option aint to shaby either!

[Jamo]

Absolutely true...been part of the contract for quite some time, which is why the Big 3 can't justify mechanization or efficiency moves. They are barred from saving money.

UAW leader told Congress this last week they were willing to "talk" about the layoff pay.

[sparks]

I knew i got in the wrong trade. DAM!

[puppster]

The domestic auto industry has been very generous with all sorts of chairitable programs in the past. Some I have been a part of first hand. I don't believe for a minute that the Foriegn companies could come close to matching.
However, since we are speaking about charity, we had a 72 year woman employed to empty trash cans at a UAW facility, and she claimed to be making $120K with all the O.T. she was "working" (I'm guessing she included her S.S. payments too). And my trash can was still overflowing.

[Don]

Source: New York Times.com

December 9, 2008
G.M., Under Pressure, Turns to Robert Lutz

By BILL VLASIC
DETROIT — From the start of its bid for emergency federal aid from Congress, General Motors has presented a mixed message — both apologizing for past mistakes and defiantly insisting that its problems are due to the financial crisis.

It is a strategy that frustrated and even angered some lawmakers in recent weeks.

G.M.’s blunt-spoken vice chairman, Robert A. Lutz, would like to clear up any confusion.

On Monday, the 76-year-old Mr. Lutz gave his first interviews since the Big Three’s campaign for a bailout began, and he dispensed with the polite, analytical approach that his boss, Rick Wagoner, the chief executive, used during four rocky hearings before Congress.

In making Mr. Lutz available to the press, G.M. is clearly hoping that his straight talk will help convince lawmakers to approve a bridge loan to stave off bankruptcy, and help fend off mounting criticism of Mr. Wagoner.

Mr. Lutz objected to recent suggestions by Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, the chairman of the banking committee, and others that Mr. Wagoner should be replaced, saying that firing him would be a “serious step in the wrong direction.”

“This has nothing to do with trying to improve the executive team,” Mr. Lutz said. “This is the equivalent of the Incan or Mayan days when everybody would go to the top of the volcano and throw a virgin in. It’s the feeling that if we make a sacrifice that somehow the gods would be appeased.”

A veteran of 45 years in the auto business and the force behind bringing such cars to market as the V-10 Dodge Viper, Mr. Lutz personifies the swagger and confidence that Motor City has lost in recent months, as a precipitous drop in auto sales has crippled the companies, forcing them to ask for financial aid.

“Why is it that we’re just dumb old Detroit all of a sudden?” Mr. Lutz said. “Going from a 17 million vehicle market to a 10.8 million market, that’s what the problem is.”

Mr. Lutz said the Big Three may be partly to blame for the chilly reception they received in Washington when they asked for federal assistance.

“I have personally been sensing this hostility on the part of Washington my whole life,” he said. “But it’s partly self-inflicted, because I think there was a period in the U.S. automobile industry where we did not treat Washington and the politicians with sufficient respect.”

The Detroit executives felt that backlash during their appearances at the testy hearings on Capitol Hill.

Representative Paul E. Kanjorski, Democrat of Pennsylvania, summed up the strained relationship between Congress and the Big Three during last week’s hearing before the House financial Services Committee.

“I have come to the conclusion that we are still talking at each other rather than to each other,” he said.

G.M., in particular, has struggled to come up with a consistent message for why it should get $18 billion in loans to stay afloat.

On Monday, the automaker put a full-page ad in the Automotive News , a trade journal, entitled “G.M.’s Commitment to the American People.”

One passage acknowledged that it had made many mistakes — more than it said in Congressional hearings — including letting quality slip and building too many large vehicles that were out of step in a changing market.

But the company then seemed to congratulate itself for 100 years of achievements. “We will continue to deliver personal mobility freedom to Americans using the most advanced transportation solutions,” it said.

Mr. Lutz, for one, won’t dwell on the disappointments.

“My sense of frustration is that all of this is hopelessly out of date,” he said. “Much of what I read and hear is reflective of the criticism that would have been legitimate of General Motors in the 1980s, but not today.”

He said he looked forward to working with a government oversight board monitoring G.M.’s use of federal loans.

Outside overseers, Mr. Lutz said, would get a first-hand look at how difficult it is to be a profitable car company but be hamstrung by huge legacy costs, and comply with dealer franchise laws and regulations on fuel efficiency and vehicle safety.

“They would have an inside look at the stress that a lot of this government regulation is putting on our industry,” he said.

G.M. kept Mr. Lutz out of the spotlight during the Congressional hearings for fear that some of his earlier stances — including that global warming was a “crock” — might make him a lightning rod.

But with Mr. Wagoner under attack and with the bailout legislation uncertain, the automaker decided to give Mr. Lutz a chance to forcefully defend the company.

“You get these people who say, ‘I know what I’d do if I were C.E.O. of G.M., like close up all the union plants and set up plants down South with non-union labor,’ ” he said. “Well, any idiot can figure that one out. But how conceivably can you get that done?”

[Bartruff1]

Originally Posted by puppster

The domestic auto industry has been very generous with all sorts of chairitable programs in the past. Some I have been a part of first hand. I don't believe for a minute that the Foriegn companies could come close to matching.
However, since we are speaking about charity, we had a 72 year woman employed to empty trash cans at a UAW facility, and she claimed to be making $120K with all the O.T. she was "working" (I'm guessing she included her S.S. payments too). And my trash can was still overflowing.

It's just not fair that poor old Alex Rodriguez only makes about $150,000 a game in a "industry" that is exempted from anti trust laws and subsidized by the taxpayers...

[RedBarchetta]

It just sickens me to hear that Congress is so quick to provide emergency funding of $15B "for a couple months", when it does nothing to solve the problems. And then Sen. Reid has the audacity to state, "And if during that time they can't come up with a reasonable business plan, we can call back the loan." And with what collateral?!? I suppose Congress doesn't understand that all of the existing secured loans and lines of credit have a first position?!? Does Congress just believe that all of the existing lien holders are going to be subordinated overnight?!? DREAMERS!!! This is becoming the biggest cluster f*** in the history of mankind. Whatever happened to free market economics? Whatever happened to patience? What ever happened to swallowing the nasty tasting medicine and moving on to better health?

[jhv48]

Originally Posted by RedBarchetta

It just sickens me to hear that Congress is so quick to provide emergency funding of $15B "for a couple months", when it does nothing to solve the problems. And then Sen. Reid has the audacity to state, "And if during that time they can't come up with a reasonable business plan, we can call back the loan." And with what collateral?!? I suppose Congress doesn't understand that all of the existing secured loans and lines of credit have a first position?!? Does Congress just believe that all of the existing lien holders are going to be subordinated overnight?!? DREAMERS!!! This is becoming the biggest cluster f*** in the history of mankind. Whatever happened to free market economics? Whatever happened to patience? What ever happened to swallowing the nasty tasting medicine and moving on to better health?

Congress will inherit 150,000 unsold GM cars to sell and recover their loan.

Now there would be a sale!

[What'saCobra?]

All great questions, Red.

Meanwhile, Lutz is not incorrect in the Mayan analogy. Dodd & the dems, caught red-handed with their own incessant mischief in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, wish a show "trial" of Wagoner (and others) and would prefer a virgin sacrifice if possible. Wagoner might have to do sufficiently to take the heat off the inept Congress and its irresponsible oversight of the mortgage market failures due to both their laws and Clinton's paranoid obsession to have more black and hispanic and union democrat votes. (Did i ever describe how Dodd and Kennedy reportedly shared a number of waitress "sandwiches"?) Free houses for the "disadvantaged" helped change the entire voter-sales market, along with extra big dem money for "walking around" funds.

Lutz would be an excellent replacement. However, he is pretty blunt... a strength says i. He is also mostly correct. But, he isn't very popular in the hallowed halls of Congress, Detroit or the UAW. All strengths, says i.

Anybody that can land a civilian jet fighter wheels-up, walk away smiling with his head high and keep flying is my kind of chap. Of course, being rich helps.

Watch that Lutz's accolades about how Wagoner walks on water might turn into a not-so-subtle bid for the Chairmanship. He has little chance, but it would certainly be fresh air, more like a tsunami. HE can do the job.

[speed220mph]

One word why they shouldn't: NATIONALIZATION

[Tom Kirkham]

Looks like the cure might be worse than the disease...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122875608562688401.html

[Bartruff1]

Originally Posted by Tom Kirkham

Looks like the cure might be worse than the disease...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122875608562688401.html

I'm out, nice ride from $1.01 to $3.40 but this bailout may be a poison pill with all the "politics'" in it. Between the greens and the unions and the bust the unions and the other prescriptive agenda's it will be next to impossible for the companies to survive and that is to bad because this was a chance to right size and capitalize them to be a viable 21st Century Industry . It looks like the market is stuck between 7800-8800 and just waiting for the Obama Infrastructure Program.....bring it on...lets roll...

[Tom Kirkham]

Something else to think about...

http://www.businessandmedia.org/arti...211131911.aspx

[Bobcat]

I haven`t heard that before Tom , but Jim DeMint has always been a conservative ... and bucked that moron Lindsey Gramesty on the illegal amnesty issueand John McCain . It`s also interesting that our Governor is one of only several voices that are against any bailouts ... Auto or States . I believe the Governor of Texas is another . If anyone is interested , Goggle what Gov. Sanford wrote in the WallStreet Journal .

[Tom Kirkham]

Ford of Brazil

http://info.detnews.com/video/index.cfm?id=1189

Listen what the reporter says at the very end...

That plant should have been built in the US...

It is also very interesting what Sen McConnell has to say...

http://mcconnell.senate.gov/record.c...305737&start=1

[CobraDan]

http://news.morningstar.com/articlen...aspx?id=267461