Automakers: A Pitiful Trio 16 comments
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Neither Rick Wagoner, Alan Mulally, nor Bob Nardelli, the three CEOs of the biggest automobile companies in the US, could play a credible John Galt in th e upcoming movie version of Ayn Rand's novel.
As Wikipedia describes the hero of Atlas Shrugged:
Galt is discovered to be a creator and inventor who embodies the power of the individual. He serves as a counterpoint to the social and economic structure depicted in the novel. The depiction portrays a society based on oppressive bureaucratic functionaries and a culture that embraces the stifling mediocrity and egalitarianism of socialistic idealism. He is a metaphorical Atlas of Greek mythology, holding up the world and namesake for the title Atlas Shrugged.
An engineer by trade, Galt's actions include withdrawing his talents, 'stopping the motor of the world,' and leading the 'strikers' (in this case the captains of industry) against the 'looters' (in this case the mob rule of strikers and the common man).
No, none of our three CEOs is going to play this heroic role, at least not this time around. They are incapable of fighting the unions on their own, one-on-one. And let's face it: They're probably making an astute business move in the context of the present economic climate. All three giants banded together, plus the government, against the UAW, now that's going to be a match worth watching. If only the government didn't have such a bad record of messing things up.
What a pitiful trio they are as they raise their right hand in unison before a grandstanding Congress, begging for help, the picture of utter defeat--or at best of pragmatic, cynical groveling. You almost could have heard them mumbling through their teeth-clenched grin, as they step out of their symbolic hybrid driver's seat: "There is no level to which I will not stoop."
They might have a more successful acting career if they tried out for the other Galt, Henry, the main character of Garet Garrett's 1922 book, The Driver. In Garrett's story, Henry Galt is "an entrepreneur, ... blinded by the intense wealth and power ..., [against whom] the general population and government turn, ultimately destroying him instead of celebrating his success."
Ayn Rand was an optimist; Garrett apparently a pessimist.
Is there any hope left for the American entrepreneur in this strange new country in which we live? Since 1913 government has been screwing around with our monetary unit. Now we have to undergo the embarrassment of watching as they nationalize our banking system, our mortgage financing, and soon our auto industry.
What got us here?
I maintain that it is not corporate greed. The root cause is not, as President Bush claims, housing; nor is it the securitization process. It is not China; it is not speculation per se. It is not Wall Street. It is not the wealthy, or special interests.
The cause of this crisis--i.e. what turned what would normally have been a healthy business cycle contraction into a recession, and perhaps a depression, are the over-expanded governments of the world, and most particularly their mishandling of the money supply. It's that simple.
For some of the tenets of my argumentation, see my previous blog posts, as well as this and this, (my article page 1 and 2); and this, this, and this (another one, pages 1-3).
Let's hope that Congress doesn't use the upcoming bailout of the Big Three as an excuse to pass the compensatory and ironically named "Employee Free Choice Act," which would take away an employee's right to a secret ballot, thereby pushing the U.S.A. towards the U.S.S.R.A. by allowing unions to put pressure on employees to agree to (and finance) the unionization of their workplace.
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This article has 16 comments:
First of all, this is not the first industry which is going bust. We have constantly noticed that the steel industry, power industry and many other have had sharp declines.
What i personally noticed was the poor shape everything was in. My conclusions
1. As in an other article of mine, I noticed that private companies are driven by profit and not quarterly reports. I have seen investment plans being dropped since investors did not want any programs longer than 1 year or more. The question is, are private companies better than state ones in the long run?
2. The way government works. As with the example of the GM that baught the public transport network in LA and shut down everything to promote its vehicles and install normal buses. You must realize that US is major corrupt. Look at the people sitting in government, Bush, Bush, Bush, Kennedy, Kennedy and so on. Its a clan that support its self, and it gets even better, they are being paid by private companies.
For all people that are going to scream at me. I do not propagate communism, and for the CIA that is monitoring my post, I do not wish to change your system or get blacklisted for entry, it is just my personal opinion.
The Auto industry, like other industries got its self into this through arrogance and greed (of company CEO and shareholders and everybody buying a car).
Everybody always puts the blame on the government, but that is just too easy. You voted bush, you wanted the war, you wanted tax cuts, you want good roads, you want good schools.
But the companies failed.
Chance of picking the Ace of Spades from a deck of playing cards
1:52 Easy Peasy 101 Stats
When I tell you that the guy picking the card is a magician in amagic show...hmmm. well 1:1 Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
Maybe however the magician is incompetent, he kps pulling cards and doesn't find the Ace ...
Why it's right here in your purse ma'am.
The real world magicians are the cabal of Bankers ,their auditors, who have prepared frauduent Balance sheets for years with all sorts of off BS chicanery and financial legerdemain, paying profits and bonuses until their capital base has disappeared.
It's an asymmetric world and it's the magicians who hold the cards.
I wrote an article about the loans to the auto industry and why they're necessary. The situation is not all the fault of the Detroit 3 and their products are better than the media gives credit for...
uh2l.blogs.com/things_...
UH2L
Now THAT's accurate analysis! It is so refreshing to read a member of the press who "gets it"!
> jack
Capitalism and the Moral High Ground
By Craig Biddle
Concretizes the selfishness-enabling nature of capitalism and shows why this
feature makes it the only moral social system on earth.
www.theobjectivestanda...
Or: tinyurl.com/5ltyzd
Which reminds me of Arnold Schwarzeneggar's solution-joke for gay marriage: "Gay marriage should be between a man and a woman."
Ayn Rand came from one of the wealthy Russian families who lost their fortunes after the Russian Revolution. Like the Cuban exiles in Florida today, they joined the anti-Communist movement and romanticized the American system of monopoly capitalism that Marx, Lenin and Stalin had characterized as criminal.
Any Rand transformed Karl Marx's evil "Mr. Moneybags" into a romantic figure called John Galt, and later, one of Ayn Rand's lovers, Alan Greenspan, helped to produce the Great Economic Expansion, I suppose while imagining himself to be an incarnation of Ayn Rand's hero.
The real solution for the problem of the Big Three is to let Steve Ballmer, Bill Gates and Larry Ellison run them.
To accomplish this, we need to form a Galtist political party in America. Alan Greenspan would be the first Galtist president, of course.
His campaign slogan would probably be "Green is beautiful."
Vienna does not seem to identify the difference between; a private company, a public company, GSE's , & state owned companies - the variety of structures bring all sorts of responses, strategies, and results to the "bottom line".
Katy is correct, I believe, in her conclusion that the governments mishandling of money supply is within the root causes of our current predicament. "Atlas Shrugged" is replete with all manner of great analogies to the present day circumstance & our "cast of characters" loose in D.C & the greater U.S.A.!
I'm betting on two things at present:
1) Someone will do a great book on the role played by the CRA, Fannie & Freddie, Congress, & the "sub - prime" mortgage market in precipitating the financial debacle now at hand.
2) Detrioit or, "The Big 3" automakers will not deliver the vehicles that we need or, in fact, will want in 2 or 5 or 10 years hence! They will come, I believe, from other sources outside of our current frame of reference.
Somewhat jokingly, I referred (in another recent comment) to the fact that Dean Kamen brought us the "segway" & that the french revolution gave us the "tumbril" - take your pick! More likely, however, is a car like the "Aptera" now being developed in California! "Like you like it - fer sure!"
The common good of the nation is properly the business of government, which should permit private enterprise to thrive when it is properly conducted, but to intervene when it threatens the economic well-being of the nation.
The housing bubble, the excessive risks undertaken in the financial sector, and the failure of the American automobile manufacturers to lead in the development of new technologies (oh, how they and their lobbyists resisted!) all cried out for government intervention years ago.
We are now reaping the bitter harvest sown for us by the ideological deregulators. Ideologies are a smokescreen to subvert rationality and pragmatism. Fortunately, Barack Obama has recognized that truth.
On Dec 07 02:06 PM A Loeb wrote:
> as a former senior official at the U.S. EPA in a program (to take
> lead out of gasoline) that succeeded in saving the consumer billions
> of dollars in waste, in saving children and aging adults from the
> scourge of IQ deficits and heart attacks, in preventing violence
> and raising SAT scores, and in averting long-term damage to public
> health while strengthening national security, I resent ideological
> people such as yourself that trash the government and its many beneficial
> programs. moreover, we did all this by introducing an untried market-based
> trading mechanism that has been copied successfully for CFCs, acid
> rain, and soon for climate change. it was called the "lead phasedown."
> by contrast, Atlas Shrugged is fiction, and though it is appealing
> it is still fiction. that is, someone made it up from her imagination.
> by contrast, what we did at EPA is fact, and if you study the history
> of the conflicts between the auto industry and its petroleum allies
> you will see that laissez-faire is a dangerous ideology when there
> is no institutional mechanism to offset its extremes. so you folks
> that trash the government ought to give some thought to how lucky
> you are that this incredible return on investment was achieved on
> so little public investment, and then think about how much worse
> life would have been for you and your own descendants had they lived
> in the world that would have existed without our efforts. all you
> are offering against the fact of what actually occurred is fiction.
> I suggest you stop misleading people with stuff that isn't even factual.
> you are an ingrate of the first order.
On Dec 08 11:06 PM User 271917 wrote:
> So the goverment did one good thing.What they have done now to this
> country is a disgrace.All that shit be proud to be an American is
> for suckers.
Modern economics is complicated stuff. Government controlled by ignorant and highly opinionated ideologues of any stripe is a disaster waiting to happen.