Freedoms Truth

Auto Industry Watch: You Can't Get Different Results Doing the Same Thing

Corker was right and did a great thing ... look at the arrogance here from the UAW ... " Alan Reuther, the chief lobbyist for the union, said labor leaders back in Detroit were astonished at what Mr. Corker was attempting to accomplish — a virtual rewriting of the U.A.W. contract, which typically takes the better part of a year to negotiate. That’s one thing that our folks in Detroit were just amazed at,” Mr. Reuther said. “Does Senator Corker really think he can do a restructuring of the industry in six hours?”"

WHAT DOES HE THINK THIS BAILOUT IS? Just free money to be poured down the drain while they waste another year screwing the auto makers? EXCUSE ME MR REUTHER! you need to fix it NOW. The country and GM and a ton of jobs are on the line ... AND YOU ARE GOING TO WASTE A YEAR SAYING NO TO VITAL CONCESSIONS!?!?

Screw it, if UAW would rather GM go bankrupt than make a few reasonable concessions, thats their call. we need to STOP calling this a GM bailout, this is clearly a UAW bailout.

If you want to save GM, let them do a chapter 11, restructure and rebuild. Every stakeholder has to take a haircut, the unions, mgment, debtors, retirees, dealerships, etc.

If you want to see GM become a suck-all sycophant plaything of politicians, sucking wind and losing market share and value - a socialist hellhole like the european state-owned colossi of yore - because the feds wont do a mercy-killing and get out from under the crushing weight of debt, pension obligations and UAW contracts ... support this bailout. The bailout will in time be seen as the disease and not the cure.

Meanwhile the govt will destroy more jobs with CO2 regulation and healthcare mandates.

Let's Hope the Auto Bailout Has Failed for Good

"My eighty year old mom lost her retirement through the rulings of a Federal Bankruptcy Judge. Thankfully the Union and the Federal Gov't picked it back up. If the company I worked for goes belly up, I could lose my retirement and health care. "

And excellent reason to end defined-benefit pensions and change them to 401(k)s where you at least know what you have in your account.
The retirement costs have killed GM, and we are supposed to bankrupts our future trying to bail out these failed approaches and over-payment packages?

What the ‘bailout’ of GM will do is turn it into a useless zombie institution that, thanks to the govt teat, wont be willing nor able to do the real restructuring it needs to do to beomce a healthy company.

The bailout negotiations failed in the Senate because the the GOP Senators and UAW locked horns over whether the UAW would make labor cost concessions in the next year, to bring wage costs to be competitive with folks like Toyota. Unless and until GM labor costs align with Toyota etc., they will be INHERENTLY unprofitable. So the GOP Senators were right to demand this UAW concession, to ensure this bailout wasnt a money pit. No concession means no deal is a good deal.

Harry Reid thursday night lamented the breakdown of the negotiations and said that he hated to see what would happen to the markets Friday... well the markets did fine. These guys who think govt bailout of GM will save anything are full of beans.

Will Detroit's Loss Be Japan's Gain?

"The US model is everyman for him or herself"
Baloney! That's a liberal talking point contrary to facts. The Government spending on health care is higher per capita in the US than in Canada. over 50% of health care spending in the US is Government funded or directed.

All those stats about infant mortality neglects the fact that would change quickly if Canada had 30 million illegal aliens, like the US does.

Will Detroit's Loss Be Japan's Gain?

"a national health-care system for all americans would help to level the playing field. "

Yes, it will destroy whatever standard of living advantages we have left over the Europeans, suck us into a permanent high-tax, low-performance economy, and leave us all with less choice and quality in health care. The claims that " is the only wealthy industrialized country in the world that lacks some form of universal health care" is false - in the US, we even treat illegal aliens in emergency rooms; the other countries spend less because they ration health care.

All this disaster of socialized healthcare because we ddint have the guts to tell the UAW to suck it up and accept changes to outdated benefits!?!? absurd!

The Tyranny of the Shareholders

Yes, lets bail out the taxpayers and the productive, honest, working people, not the failed businesses, unions that forced contracts on management to pay people to do nothing (Job Bank idea), and other non-productive rat-hole expenditures. This just mires our economy in mediocrity.

GM: Buyout Better than Bailout

"Drill baby Drill is less than a bandaid. "

That's idiotic. 85 BILLION barrels are off-limits due to US Govt rules, USGS estimates, that is a 2 DECADES of US oil consumption, and a study showed that changing the rules does change the prices of oil immediately. Add in shale in CO and we could have a serious reduction in foreign oil use.

GM: Buyout Better than Bailout

"Great comment, genius, but you omitted one key point -- what's your solution? Let go of another 4 million jobs (directly and indirectly) and push the economy from recession to depression? "

How about
1. repeal sarbanes oxley
2. Declare that the Bush tax cuts and current tax rates will be made permanent, instead of increasing taxes like the Democrats plan
3. Push for *real* middle class tax cuts by lowering rates below $200,000 to 15%.
4. End the offshore drilling ban, permanently.
5. Announce and declare that since UCLA economists have analyzed and figured out that FDR lengthened the Great Depression, that we wont be following the failed FDR New Deal model of socialism and wage regulation.
6. Put the uptick rule back in.
7. Spend the rest of the TARP money on buying the 'bad assets' but at market prices only. Given the fact that orange county housing prices have bottomed, this $350 billion purchase would likely be a net positive for long-term Federal balance sheets.
8. Make assurances that mortgages wont be rewritten in bankruptcy proceedings.
9. End the rule that discourages repatriation of capital via excessive corporate income taxes on foreign earnings. (If a company makes money in say Ireland, they have to pay the 35% rate on it, ON TOP of the rate paid to foreign government, *unless* they keep the money overseas. Its like punishing companies for bringing money back to the US!) This flaw in our tax law is why corporations are set up overseas and discourages US investment. Its nuts. Have a 2 year holiday on that tax, which will likely increase US capital investment by hundreds of billions.
10. Make a declaration that we will NOT destroy the energy and coal industries with cap-n-trade restrictions on CO2. This bill would be the equivalent of a huge job-killing tax hike.
11. Declare that the US Government does not want to feed failure but reward success. $100 billion of the TARP bailout will be set aside for a 1-year reduction in corporate income taxes from 35% to 15%, so long as the difference is invested in the US.

Since Obama was elected, market went down 20%. If these policies were announced, we would get that 20% back IN A DAY, and the recession would be short and not as bad as feared.

GM: Buyout Better than Bailout

If anyone could do it ... give it to Mitt Romney to fix. Car history going back to his Dad, VC history, etc. He could have turned GM around. He probably can fix Ford.

But GM is so in hock to these UAW contracts that the only way out is chapter 11, tear up the contracts, revamp the debt load, and get a clean start as a smaller but profitable company.

The Govt 'bailout' is a terrible idea precisely because it is a 'fix' that prevents the real solution from taking place. It will continue the economic vampirism of having GM ship dollars out with every car they make.