RWCMom

Cramer's Mad Money - Is the Obama Index Making the Grade? (2/20/09)

I'm not impressed with that artificial Obama index. Obama is certainly not one who is looking to benefit large corporations with top heavy exec comp. He is aiming to help more individuals and would hope his policies would favor companies with good employee policy track records and environmentally friendly firms. Small & medium stocks that develop through internal growth rather than constant acquisitions. His would look more like an SRI index not a balanced fund. Many of his index businesses would not even be publicly traded.

Bail Out Capitalism, Not Detroit

There is a great deal of middle ground between minimum wage with no benes and a wage-bene package in the $60/hr wage range that many much better educated Americans can only dream about. No doubt, we expect the executives to take some substantial shaves themselves before asking the unions to do so.

There are many ways to accomplish this and the unions can either be in the forefront of designing this or they can wait for a judge to nullify the contracts. Possibilities: workers work only when they are needed, shave management levels; hours pools where rather than cut jobs each person works fewer hours so as many as possible stay employed.

You can whine all you want but the rest of the world is hungry and not listening.

On Nov 21 03:15 PM mitchm wrote:

> Let's crucify out of jealousy the poor american auto worker for making
> a decent wage. We need our manual labor folks to understand they
> should be working for $10.00 an hour and shame on GM for having given
> American workers a decent living wage for 100 years. The same workers
> who take that money and drive this great economy of ours by buying
> homes and TV's and sending their kids to college. Let's pull them
> back to the third world standards they deserve for such low brow
> work. This company is looking for a loan, no handouts, to be paid
> back with interest, because the gov'nment has killed the credit makets
> and the economy for the next 6 to 12 months. You are so worried
> about the tax payers, we give more cash to third world dictatorships
> with no payback for purely political reasons. Give them the loan
> and get out of the way and they will be fine. Arm chair quarter
> backs with an ax to grind, you ake my backside hurt.

Should We Really Bail Out the Big Three Automakers with $73.20 Per Hour Labor?

Under "Safe Harbor" grandfathering tax laws in the US Toyota has been able to get away with paying many workers as independent contractors, thus avoiding FICA and health insurance responsibilities (I have a relative is in this unfortunate situation). The safe-harbor was recently removed and you will probably see Toyota's labor costs going up in the near future