Zee4Money's Comments RSS Syndication from SeekingAlpha.com http://seekingalpha.comuser/10066/comments http://seekingalpha.com/article/155618-chevy-volt-hybrid-vs-byd-e6-pure-electric?source=feed#comment-626359 626359 Wed, 12 Aug 2009 09:05:31 -0400 http://seekingalpha.com/article/148910-what-cit-s-troubles-really-mean?source=feed#comment-588799 588799 Wed, 15 Jul 2009 09:06:48 -0400 http://seekingalpha.com/article/132900-why-high-inflation-will-not-take-hold?source=feed#comment-476144 476144 Fri, 24 Apr 2009 14:10:33 -0400 http://seekingalpha.com/article/131195-japanese-lesson-for-u-s-demographics-matter-a-lot?source=feed#comment-465558 465558 Thu, 16 Apr 2009 14:46:48 -0400 http://seekingalpha.com/article/130668-rick-s-announces-higher-revenue-than-expected?source=feed#comment-462815 462815 Tue, 14 Apr 2009 11:05:50 -0400 http://seekingalpha.com/article/120837-ford-a-likely-survivor-of-the-auto-industry-crisis?source=feed#comment-393557 393557
Full disclosure: I am long Ford notes due 1 Feb 2011


On Feb 17 11:45 AM TB3 wrote:

> I agree that Ford is the strongest of the three (faint praise unfortunately)
> and that Mr Mulally is by far the best of the CEO's. However, as
> an investment, I wouldn't be putting my money in a company as laden
> with debt as Ford, at least not yet. Remember that debts need to
> be repaid, and with Ford's excessive overhead and very weak sales
> revenues, they are still burning through cash. Until I see a positive
> cash flow, equal to and better than their short term debt payments,
> I think I'll wait awhile.]]> Wed, 18 Feb 2009 11:37:06 -0500
Full disclosure: I am long Ford notes due 1 Feb 2011


On Feb 17 11:45 AM TB3 wrote:

> I agree that Ford is the strongest of the three (faint praise unfortunately)
> and that Mr Mulally is by far the best of the CEO's. However, as
> an investment, I wouldn't be putting my money in a company as laden
> with debt as Ford, at least not yet. Remember that debts need to
> be repaid, and with Ford's excessive overhead and very weak sales
> revenues, they are still burning through cash. Until I see a positive
> cash flow, equal to and better than their short term debt payments,
> I think I'll wait awhile.]]> http://seekingalpha.com/article/120881-gm-and-chrysler-is-avoiding-bankruptcy-avoiding-the-inevitable?source=feed#comment-392061 392061

On Feb 17 08:12 AM nyc female lawyer- bondholder wrote:

> I am happy about the progress with the bondholders. Shame on you
> for recommending bankrupcies. The large law firms take tremendous
> fees and the stockholders suffer in bankrupcies.Also,the GM workers
> would lose their jobs and the National unemployment will rise to
> 15%or 20 % due to a GM bankrupcy
>
> I pray for GM to get more TARP money and stay solvent. I looked at
> the gcars for 2009 and they had great hybrids and are working on
> an electric car. Instead of writing this kind of article I suggest
> you buy a GM car this year.]]> Tue, 17 Feb 2009 11:06:26 -0500

On Feb 17 08:12 AM nyc female lawyer- bondholder wrote:

> I am happy about the progress with the bondholders. Shame on you
> for recommending bankrupcies. The large law firms take tremendous
> fees and the stockholders suffer in bankrupcies.Also,the GM workers
> would lose their jobs and the National unemployment will rise to
> 15%or 20 % due to a GM bankrupcy
>
> I pray for GM to get more TARP money and stay solvent. I looked at
> the gcars for 2009 and they had great hybrids and are working on
> an electric car. Instead of writing this kind of article I suggest
> you buy a GM car this year.]]> http://seekingalpha.com/article/111866-ricks-still-entertaining-or-ready-to-slide?source=feed#comment-337707 337707 Wed, 24 Dec 2008 14:25:49 -0500 http://seekingalpha.com/article/110247-auto-bailouts-mortgage-debt-and-the-economy?source=feed#comment-326321 326321
On Dec 11 09:09 AM Mike_I_N_Mich wrote:

>
> The following U.S. government policies, many of them having popular
> support, hurt the big three significantly relative to the foreign
> transplants:
> 1. Uneven union laws across states:
> a. The 1935 U.S. government Wagner Act granted the right of workers
> in the private sector to organize labor unions and take place in
> strikes. What this effectively meant was the labor unions were allowed
> to seize the plant and prevent its use until they got what they wanted.
> This created the ridiculous result in the US that workers are paid
> in proportion to the pain they can inflict by shutting things down.
> Trains, docks, garbage collectors, police, … get high pay. People
> in low capital or less critical to safety related industries like
> restaurants and retail get paid low paid. The relationship of pay
> to skill, work ethic, hazards goes away. Soon after the Wagner act
> the UAW took over the auto industry; GM and Chrysler in 1937; Ford
> in 1941. With no foreign competition the UAW monopoly flourished
> for about 30 years.
> b. The 1947 U.S. government Taft–Hartley Act tried to reign in the
> unions after a series of post-war strikes. While some provisions
> were national, the states were allowed to pass "right-to-work laws"
> that outlawed union shops. Such shops require workers to join the
> union and pay dues. Said state laws are serious impediments to union
> organization and viability because few people want to pay dues if
> not required.
> c. The vast majority of foreign owned plants are in right-to-work
> states providing huge advantages in labor costs and productivity
> relative to the big three.
> d. The big three would find it impossible to change the state laws
> where they are located due to union dominance of state governments.
> If they built in the South they have to accept the UAW because they
> would strike back in Michigan.
> e. No other country has this crazy system to my knowledge.
>
> 2. Promoted defined benefit packages and kept them in the company
> name. Did you ever consider how totally stupid it is to pin an employee
> retirement package, meant to last about 50-60 years from first hire
> until death, to the viability of their company? The top 10 companies
> in 1950 were very different than in 2000, with the railroads taking
> a big dive since then. And in 2020 it will be totally different again.
> Defined benefit packages were a bad idea, promoted by the US government
> till this day, and the big three are paying the price. If a company
> is in decline, due to the other items mentioned here, their retiree
> pool grows relative to gross income and number of active workers.
> Costs rise and competitiveness goes down, sales decline in a vicious
> spiral. Note also that while someday the transplants will pay pensions
> here in the US, the bulk of their corporate salary people (engineers
> for instance) back home get pensions from the government. Again,
> a totally crazy concept promoted by the Feds with widespread public
> support. And again, affecting the big three orders of magnitude harder
> than the foreign auto companies.
>
> In most western nations, if there is a defined benefit program, it
> is paid into a government fund and is divorced from the company.
> If the company fails, people don’t lose their pension. In the U.S.,
> the Pension Benefit Guarantee Company, a quasi-government / private
> company (like Fanny-Mae) supposedly fills in when the company goes
> belly up. But it is really a welfare program, with maximum limits
> far lower than promised pensions for many salaried workers. The airline
> pilots at United Air Lines, the current poster child of how wonderful
> chapter 11 will be for the big three, got screwed out of a large
> percentage of their “guaranteed” pension. Apparently the courts have
> ruled bond holders have first dibs on people’s defined benefits supposedly
> “held in trust”. What a travesty; only in the worse run country in
> the western world. These plans were in lieu of 401k plans. They are
> not deferred compensation as some say. There is a pot of gold with
> the employees names on it.
>
> See the PBS Frontline episode here for what happened at United.
>
>
> www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages.../
>
> All of you with defined benefit plans are in jeopardy. The Feds can
> fix these laws by simply making pension funding shortfalls first
> in line for bankruptcy allocations. Put the vulture chapter 11 lawyers
> and banks second in line after peoples pensions (which are essentially
> saving accounts).
>
> 3. No national healthcare. This is killing all US industry because
> we are competing with foreign companies with virtually no health
> care costs at home. Again, for transplants, the tens of thousands
> of such people at corporate headquarters are not in the U.S., but
> back home with free insurance. I’m basically a free market person
> but U.S. healthcare is so screwed up, and the employer based care
> creating such a competitive disadvantage, I give up – company paid
> healthcare must go and something needs to replace it. Watch for a
> future blog entry on that topic. Even though the transplants provide
> health care for their workers this is again an order of magnitude
> bigger problem for the big three because: 1) Corporate staff is back
> home with free health care, transplant workers are younger and therefore
> healthier, big three also pays health insurance for a million retirees.
>
>
> 4. Blunt instrument CAFÉ laws. The original purpose of CAFE was to
> reduce depletion of finite fossil fuel supplies and/or to reduce
> foreign imports. The Global Warming theory did not exist when CAFE
> was instituted but CAFÉ supports this as well. These same goals are
> achieved in almost all other Western counties via very high (on order
> of $3-$6 per gallon) federal gasoline taxes. That is the primary
> reason the cars are smaller in Europe and Japan. Our cowardly government
> did not want to be associated with taxes so instead wrote CAFE laws
> so the big three could do the taxing. I would argue that such laws
> fell, and continue to fall, disproportionately on the big three.
> The laws regulate an average fuel economy for a fleet produced by
> a given company. This forced the big three to abandon the cars they
> made money on, and build cars they don’t make money on, usually at
> a loss. The economics are simple: it takes as many overpaid UAW workers
> to put a door on a $14000 focus as a $30000 F150. So the bigger and
> more expensive the car the better the big three can compete. The
> above mentioned economic disadvantages of the big three are exaggerated
> on small, lower cost cars. And yes, people expect small cars to cost
> less. Screwed again by the feds! Ford, for instance, has trucks providing
> over 50% of sales. A rapidly increasing percentage of these trucks
> are used in the trades; try carrying a load of bricks or even a saddle
> in a Focus. Why does the Ford commercial truck have to go into a
> CAFÉ formula when a Mack Truck or Caterpillar dump truck does not?
> In the rest of the world, where gas taxes are used to reduce fossil
> fuel consumption, each company is allowed to compete in the part
> of the vehicle market where they do best. The customer takes the
> cost of gasoline with tax into consideration when he decides what
> size and features he needs, and then shops the brands that play in
> that market. With CAFÉ, the big three were forced at gunpoint to
> build and sell small cars at a loss just so they could meet the consumer
> demand for larger cars and trucks with their greater utility (carried
> more people for instance). The Japanese entered the market in the
> small car nitch where their low cost and experience from the sane
> countries with gas taxes gave them the greatest advantage. The Japanese
> became associated with small cars and better gas mileage, although
> for the same size car and performance there was no difference on
> average.
> It it were one or two of these items the big three might have competed
> better, but between the four the cost disadvantage in thousands per
> car and the hill too hard to climb. People seem to think Americans
> are superman, blessed with privilege, and the big three should have
> been able to overcome these odds against our oriental upstarts. In
> my opinion the big three did an amazing job lasting this long, as
> they are only mere mortals; doing the best they can given the stacked
> deck against them.
> In the end it is not the above items that are killing the big three
> right now. These items and the recent gas spike put the big three
> in a weak position, but they were recovering with the help of the
> UAW. Cars sell on credit, and there is no money available. Houses
> are also credit sensitive, but the housing industry doesn’t have
> the large capital equipment (factories, labs, buildings) and huge
> staffs (engineers…) to keep feeding when there is a drop in sales.
> And the housing industry is dominated by illegal alien workers which
> they just let go.
> This credit crisis in not of the big three’s making by any stretch
> of the imagination. The most likely biggest wrongdoers in the congress
> and the federal bureaucracy, will keep their jobs and pensions. The
> second biggest wrongdoers in the financial sector, are getting a
> trillion or so dollars of bailouts.
> The big three are asking for a 5% loan and all this hate comes out
> in the press and the web. The gap between perception and reality
> is staggering.]]> Thu, 11 Dec 2008 10:37:29 -0500
On Dec 11 09:09 AM Mike_I_N_Mich wrote:

>
> The following U.S. government policies, many of them having popular
> support, hurt the big three significantly relative to the foreign
> transplants:
> 1. Uneven union laws across states:
> a. The 1935 U.S. government Wagner Act granted the right of workers
> in the private sector to organize labor unions and take place in
> strikes. What this effectively meant was the labor unions were allowed
> to seize the plant and prevent its use until they got what they wanted.
> This created the ridiculous result in the US that workers are paid
> in proportion to the pain they can inflict by shutting things down.
> Trains, docks, garbage collectors, police, … get high pay. People
> in low capital or less critical to safety related industries like
> restaurants and retail get paid low paid. The relationship of pay
> to skill, work ethic, hazards goes away. Soon after the Wagner act
> the UAW took over the auto industry; GM and Chrysler in 1937; Ford
> in 1941. With no foreign competition the UAW monopoly flourished
> for about 30 years.
> b. The 1947 U.S. government Taft–Hartley Act tried to reign in the
> unions after a series of post-war strikes. While some provisions
> were national, the states were allowed to pass "right-to-work laws"
> that outlawed union shops. Such shops require workers to join the
> union and pay dues. Said state laws are serious impediments to union
> organization and viability because few people want to pay dues if
> not required.
> c. The vast majority of foreign owned plants are in right-to-work
> states providing huge advantages in labor costs and productivity
> relative to the big three.
> d. The big three would find it impossible to change the state laws
> where they are located due to union dominance of state governments.
> If they built in the South they have to accept the UAW because they
> would strike back in Michigan.
> e. No other country has this crazy system to my knowledge.
>
> 2. Promoted defined benefit packages and kept them in the company
> name. Did you ever consider how totally stupid it is to pin an employee
> retirement package, meant to last about 50-60 years from first hire
> until death, to the viability of their company? The top 10 companies
> in 1950 were very different than in 2000, with the railroads taking
> a big dive since then. And in 2020 it will be totally different again.
> Defined benefit packages were a bad idea, promoted by the US government
> till this day, and the big three are paying the price. If a company
> is in decline, due to the other items mentioned here, their retiree
> pool grows relative to gross income and number of active workers.
> Costs rise and competitiveness goes down, sales decline in a vicious
> spiral. Note also that while someday the transplants will pay pensions
> here in the US, the bulk of their corporate salary people (engineers
> for instance) back home get pensions from the government. Again,
> a totally crazy concept promoted by the Feds with widespread public
> support. And again, affecting the big three orders of magnitude harder
> than the foreign auto companies.
>
> In most western nations, if there is a defined benefit program, it
> is paid into a government fund and is divorced from the company.
> If the company fails, people don’t lose their pension. In the U.S.,
> the Pension Benefit Guarantee Company, a quasi-government / private
> company (like Fanny-Mae) supposedly fills in when the company goes
> belly up. But it is really a welfare program, with maximum limits
> far lower than promised pensions for many salaried workers. The airline
> pilots at United Air Lines, the current poster child of how wonderful
> chapter 11 will be for the big three, got screwed out of a large
> percentage of their “guaranteed” pension. Apparently the courts have
> ruled bond holders have first dibs on people’s defined benefits supposedly
> “held in trust”. What a travesty; only in the worse run country in
> the western world. These plans were in lieu of 401k plans. They are
> not deferred compensation as some say. There is a pot of gold with
> the employees names on it.
>
> See the PBS Frontline episode here for what happened at United.
>
>
> www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages.../
>
> All of you with defined benefit plans are in jeopardy. The Feds can
> fix these laws by simply making pension funding shortfalls first
> in line for bankruptcy allocations. Put the vulture chapter 11 lawyers
> and banks second in line after peoples pensions (which are essentially
> saving accounts).
>
> 3. No national healthcare. This is killing all US industry because
> we are competing with foreign companies with virtually no health
> care costs at home. Again, for transplants, the tens of thousands
> of such people at corporate headquarters are not in the U.S., but
> back home with free insurance. I’m basically a free market person
> but U.S. healthcare is so screwed up, and the employer based care
> creating such a competitive disadvantage, I give up – company paid
> healthcare must go and something needs to replace it. Watch for a
> future blog entry on that topic. Even though the transplants provide
> health care for their workers this is again an order of magnitude
> bigger problem for the big three because: 1) Corporate staff is back
> home with free health care, transplant workers are younger and therefore
> healthier, big three also pays health insurance for a million retirees.
>
>
> 4. Blunt instrument CAFÉ laws. The original purpose of CAFE was to
> reduce depletion of finite fossil fuel supplies and/or to reduce
> foreign imports. The Global Warming theory did not exist when CAFE
> was instituted but CAFÉ supports this as well. These same goals are
> achieved in almost all other Western counties via very high (on order
> of $3-$6 per gallon) federal gasoline taxes. That is the primary
> reason the cars are smaller in Europe and Japan. Our cowardly government
> did not want to be associated with taxes so instead wrote CAFE laws
> so the big three could do the taxing. I would argue that such laws
> fell, and continue to fall, disproportionately on the big three.
> The laws regulate an average fuel economy for a fleet produced by
> a given company. This forced the big three to abandon the cars they
> made money on, and build cars they don’t make money on, usually at
> a loss. The economics are simple: it takes as many overpaid UAW workers
> to put a door on a $14000 focus as a $30000 F150. So the bigger and
> more expensive the car the better the big three can compete. The
> above mentioned economic disadvantages of the big three are exaggerated
> on small, lower cost cars. And yes, people expect small cars to cost
> less. Screwed again by the feds! Ford, for instance, has trucks providing
> over 50% of sales. A rapidly increasing percentage of these trucks
> are used in the trades; try carrying a load of bricks or even a saddle
> in a Focus. Why does the Ford commercial truck have to go into a
> CAFÉ formula when a Mack Truck or Caterpillar dump truck does not?
> In the rest of the world, where gas taxes are used to reduce fossil
> fuel consumption, each company is allowed to compete in the part
> of the vehicle market where they do best. The customer takes the
> cost of gasoline with tax into consideration when he decides what
> size and features he needs, and then shops the brands that play in
> that market. With CAFÉ, the big three were forced at gunpoint to
> build and sell small cars at a loss just so they could meet the consumer
> demand for larger cars and trucks with their greater utility (carried
> more people for instance). The Japanese entered the market in the
> small car nitch where their low cost and experience from the sane
> countries with gas taxes gave them the greatest advantage. The Japanese
> became associated with small cars and better gas mileage, although
> for the same size car and performance there was no difference on
> average.
> It it were one or two of these items the big three might have competed
> better, but between the four the cost disadvantage in thousands per
> car and the hill too hard to climb. People seem to think Americans
> are superman, blessed with privilege, and the big three should have
> been able to overcome these odds against our oriental upstarts. In
> my opinion the big three did an amazing job lasting this long, as
> they are only mere mortals; doing the best they can given the stacked
> deck against them.
> In the end it is not the above items that are killing the big three
> right now. These items and the recent gas spike put the big three
> in a weak position, but they were recovering with the help of the
> UAW. Cars sell on credit, and there is no money available. Houses
> are also credit sensitive, but the housing industry doesn’t have
> the large capital equipment (factories, labs, buildings) and huge
> staffs (engineers…) to keep feeding when there is a drop in sales.
> And the housing industry is dominated by illegal alien workers which
> they just let go.
> This credit crisis in not of the big three’s making by any stretch
> of the imagination. The most likely biggest wrongdoers in the congress
> and the federal bureaucracy, will keep their jobs and pensions. The
> second biggest wrongdoers in the financial sector, are getting a
> trillion or so dollars of bailouts.
> The big three are asking for a 5% loan and all this hate comes out
> in the press and the web. The gap between perception and reality
> is staggering.]]> http://seekingalpha.com/article/108951-will-the-fed-target-long-term-rates?source=feed#comment-319643 319643 Wed, 03 Dec 2008 08:32:35 -0500 http://seekingalpha.com/article/103199-shorting-the-long-bond-the-obama-solution-meets-china?source=feed#comment-295035 295035 Fri, 31 Oct 2008 10:11:41 -0400 http://seekingalpha.com/article/96631-some-thoughts-on-the-plan?source=feed#comment-261384 261384 Mon, 22 Sep 2008 10:24:53 -0400 http://seekingalpha.com/article/94350-election-speculation-steaks-and-strip-joints?source=feed#comment-259345 259345

On Sep 12 10:43 AM User 260719 wrote:

> Clinton handed over a busted economy that was well on it's way to
> depleting the supposed surplus. Bush inherited Greenspan's mess.
> Obama is a muslim, he's said it himself in freudian slip interviews.
> He is going to undermine the US with his tax policy, weak defense,
> and cohorting with the enemies. It is only a matter of time before
> you democratic blame layers are on your knees praying to mecca with
> a gun to your head.]]> Fri, 19 Sep 2008 14:36:15 -0400

On Sep 12 10:43 AM User 260719 wrote:

> Clinton handed over a busted economy that was well on it's way to
> depleting the supposed surplus. Bush inherited Greenspan's mess.
> Obama is a muslim, he's said it himself in freudian slip interviews.
> He is going to undermine the US with his tax policy, weak defense,
> and cohorting with the enemies. It is only a matter of time before
> you democratic blame layers are on your knees praying to mecca with
> a gun to your head.]]> http://seekingalpha.com/article/95454-five-companies-peg-ed-for-growth?source=feed#comment-259340 259340

On Sep 17 01:11 PM Socialism cannot compete! wrote:

> "Naked girls are not as recessionary as many people think."
>
> Um, yeah...the addiction play. Thanks, but no thanks. I have zero
> desire to make money by promoting bad morals or worse yet, capitalizing
> on others' addictions. I think we can all do better than that.]]> Fri, 19 Sep 2008 14:32:55 -0400

On Sep 17 01:11 PM Socialism cannot compete! wrote:

> "Naked girls are not as recessionary as many people think."
>
> Um, yeah...the addiction play. Thanks, but no thanks. I have zero
> desire to make money by promoting bad morals or worse yet, capitalizing
> on others' addictions. I think we can all do better than that.]]> http://seekingalpha.com/article/93714-commercial-banking-and-bank-failures?source=feed#comment-245436 245436 Thu, 04 Sep 2008 11:20:54 -0400 http://seekingalpha.com/article/82968-the-budget-deficit-and-declining-dollar?source=feed#comment-194160 194160 Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:01:58 -0400 http://seekingalpha.com/article/81606-rubinomics-is-back-part-two?source=feed#comment-187044 187044 Tue, 17 Jun 2008 10:30:24 -0400 http://seekingalpha.com/article/80886-is-the-u-s-trustworthy-what-the-world-thinks?source=feed#comment-184017 184017 Thu, 12 Jun 2008 08:57:33 -0400