mkporwit
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Posts posted by mkporwit
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At this point I'm flying out and driving back with a friend... definitely should do a pub club on Saturday.
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and the answer is YOU! THE AMERICAN TAXPAYER!
spin this anti-Detroit bailout shills: a bank failing because of it's own dumbass decisions is bailed out at a premium - $10 warrant, $4 share price by the American taxpayer.
Here we are, picking winners and losers
There's nothing to spin here, Hugh. I'm against this bailout as well. I wrote my congressman, my senators, and both presidential candidates when the TARP was initially considered. I got canned replies about how the first variant was bad, but the one full of pork a week later was the best bill they could come up with... Anyone who voted for the TARP did not get my vote (and my senators won't get my vote the next time they're up for reelection). That's about all I can do.
Whatever your preferred solution to this entire mess is, I hope you're doing something similar.
P.S. The idea of bailing out Detroit still sucks donkey dick...
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Wagoner has always been completely clueless and does not understand the value of making this symbolic gesture...
Ford isn't anywhere nearly as badly fucked as the other companies. Mullaly said during the hearings that they don't need the money now and might never need it, so he doesn't see why he should give anything up...
And Nardelli realizes that Chrysler is fucked and will do anything to get Cerberus bailed out and off the hook.
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This bailout has a stated purpose and a stated goal. There's much to be said for that.
A stated purpose and goal without any clue of what it will take to get to that goal is no goal at all. That's about as much as can be said about that.
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Rumcajs was a Czechoslovak cartoon about a cobbler forced into robbery to feed his family due to the oppressive royalty ruling the land... it was very popular in Poland when I was little...
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I have to ask... what's up with the Rumcajs avatar? Not something you see every day...
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Well, it did allow him to mature into a powerful proponent of non-violence and quickly bring about apartheid's downfall, so some good came of it.
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Frikin' Bushies. Because they went at this half heart sos not to disturb the "market forces" too much, the banks are holding back. Meanwhile across the pond the UK mandated how banks had to start lending with the taxpayer's cash and eliminated divedend payments to investors until the loans are paid back. WTF - Bushies could even get the solution to their screw up right. What a mess at the doorstep. A lot of work to do for Obama. Don't let the door hit you on the way out you Idiot.
Right, but the Democratic party leadership, including Obama, knew most of that before they voted for it. No?
Dodd was on NPR this morning sounding kinda schizophrenic. On the one hand he threatened that the new Congress would revisit the bailout legislation to specifically spell out things like "no dividend payments", "no acquisitions", because banks were not lending to customers... but when pushed as to whether he believed the bailout was currently working or not, he said, yes, fundamentally it is...
It was their legislation, they knew what they were voting for.
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Yeeeahh, git sum, beeyotches!
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The unstated major premise here seems to be that $25-$50 billion will prevent, rather than merely forestall, their bankruptcy.
The last US auto bailout (1.5 billion, >4 billion in today's dollars) worked for almost 30 years...
Yeah, but that was for one company, not all of them, and it had a leader that at least had a vision rather than merely desperation in their eyes.
On a related note, here's everybody's favorite leftie indie filmmaker, friend of the average working Joe, Michael Moore on the bailout... on CNN
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Where are you located? I'd be interested in the two sets of aiders, and possibly the hammer.
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The Big 3 are in competition with those other carmakers receiving a bailout! Who do you think will emerge stronger?
That will depend on the conditions attached to that bailout, whenever it happens. You're still assuming that the continued existence of the American car industry is a binary proposition -- either they exist in their current state, or they cease to exist. I'm hoping for some evolution.
GM should emerge a stronger company at the end of all of this. They'll no longer be the alpha dog, which is OK, but they'll continue to be a large player on the worldwide car stage. The path to that happy future goes through Chapter 11, not through continued enabling of their broken operations.
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You may find that the outcomes that result from so many people out of work living in densely populated areas in the current economic climate a bit more "dubious" than the "what's good for neoclassical economic abstractions must be good for America" idea you're running with.
For what its worth, let me restate that I'm not running with some neoclassical economic abstraction, as you say. I'm not anti-bailout on principle. I'm anti-bailout for GM and Chrysler for reasons elucidated in prior posts.
At their current burn rate, GM will plow through their share of the $25 billion in four months or so. The economy will still be fucked then, and four months isn't long enough to accomplish the type of restructuring needed to allow them to continue as a company. So they'll be back for more money. They need Chapter 11, and any aid to them should be directed so that they and their suppliers survive the ordeal. Why do the eight brands need four badge-engineered copies of the same crossover? Does Pontiac, historically their performance division, really need a penalty econonbox like the Aveo rebadged as the G3? What's up with the "Pontiac. We are car" slogan anyway? What happened to "We build excitement"? What's Saturn's raison d'etre, or Buick's? What do those lines stand for? Why drop the Chevy Cobalt, which at least was a base hit, in order to build the Cruze? What happened to iterative product development, which worked so well for the Asian transplants? Cadillac used to be the standard of the world -- do they really need to be moving downmarket and competing with Chevy/Buick? Anyone mentioning Caddy in the same sentence as Rolls Royce would now be laughed out of town. Heck, they can't even compete with the Lexus brand... and there's lots more stories of mismanagement, and that's just on the branding.
Chrysler has Cerberus to turn to for cash. If Cerberus hangs them out to dry, Chrysler will go into Chapter 7, which will probably result in Jeep being sold -- the last figure I heard was about $2 billion, with Nissan/Renault probably buying the truck portion of Dodge, and someone picking up the minivan line. Everything else is a craptacular waste of money and likely won't fetch a dime. They're doing their best to kill the Jeep brand by diluting it with bizarre non-core vehicles and with the abomination that was the Jeep Commander. They should sell it before they devalue it further. Their cars are the worst of the D3, and there's nothing on the horizon. They mismanaged the minivan line to the point where they're number 3 in a market they created.
Ford has a relatively solid cash position, a credible CEO, and a promising product mix not built on pie in the sky visions. We have time to ponder how to best help them. It does not need to be in this knee-jerk fashion.
An AP article I read last night stated that there are ~250K employees directly working for the D3, another 750K employees working for parts suppliers and the like, and 1M working in dealerships and so on. The parts manufacturers like Delphi will show up with their own begging bowl about 30 seconds after the D3 get their money, so let's just look at the 250K direct employees. With a $25B bailout, that's 100K/employee. That will only last about 4 months... so we'd be paying 300K/employee/year? Wow, that's some salary... even accounting for the 750K other employees, say the parts manufacturers get $50B on top of the D3's $100B (which is my prediction for final cost of this), you're looking to spend 50K per employee over the next year or so...
Of course all of this is going to be lost on you. You'll come back with your predictable "save jobs at all costs" chant, reminiscent of Helen Lovejoy's "Won't someone please think of the children".
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However, that does not mean that we should spend still more money on something that will likely have a dubious outcome.
You may find that the outcomes that result from so many people out of work living in densely populated areas in the current economic climate a bit more "dubious" than the "what's good for neoclassical economic abstractions must be good for America" idea you're running with.
Maybe, maybe not. What's your plan? The rust belt didn't just spring up overnight -- Detroit's woes have been building for 30 years, briefly interrupted by the golden era of the SUV. That's a lot of years of piss-poor planning by the car companies, various economic development councils, the state governments and the generation or more of workers that have come along since things started heading downhill.
I'm facing the possibility of getting laid off in the very near future, where the fuck will my bailout be? I won't have Paulson, Bernanke, Levin, Stabenow or Frank riding in to save my bacon.
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What the Chinese are doing is in some sense their own affair. They run their economy a little different than we do and we shouldn't really aspire to be like them in that respect. Germany will probably bail out their own automakers if need be, and that's their prerogative.
Ah - ignorant American isolationism at it's best!
"War in Europe doesn't concern us" "We have nothing to fear from Japanese expansion"
You're twisting my words. All I'm arguing for is that we should not rush to ape the knee-jerk reactions of other countries. We may yet decide on some sort of bailout, but it shouldn't be "because the Chinese are doing it".
Besides, so far all we've heard is the chinese car manufacturers asking for money, not the Chinese government saying it will help them.
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We're better off with the banking industry, the best poised to profit from highly leveraged risk, believing they are the only industry in America too big to fail? We are better off diverting even more talent in America to the random roll of the dice of capital allocation?
No, we'd be best off if no industry thought they were too big to fail. However, saying that America would be better off with TWO industries that think they're too big to fail rather than with just one is unconvincing.
To remain competitive America needs a diverse economy; China is currently poised to bailout their own automakers. Any wonder which will emerge stronger? We're cutting off our leg to save our nose!What the Chinese are doing is in some sense their own affair. They run their economy a little different than we do and we shouldn't really aspire to be like them in that respect. Germany will probably bail out their own automakers if need be, and that's their prerogative.
Of course I agree that America needs a strong, diverse economy, however a Chapter 11 by GM is not the same as liquidation of the entire car industry. Where I think you and I differ is I don't subscribe to the worst-case scenario that a failure of one drags all three down into a certain Chapter 7, whereas you seem to be buying into that.
Look, it cost GM something like 2 billion dollars to put Oldsmobile down, and that was, what, 7 years ago? They have eight more brands, of which most (probably six) should be taken out behind the barn and shot because they're beyond saving. They have an unsustainable cost structure which can be remedied by one of two ways -- either Chapter 11 or GM once again owning 50% of the US car market. Which one is more realistic?
They should take their medicine now -- file for Chapter 11, the current management and board is run out of town on a rail, the VEBA gets renegotiated, the pensions are transferred to the Pension Guarantee Corporation at pennies on the dollar, the US government then provides bridge financing and gets seniority on any payout. The UAW could be given a preferred position in the shares of the new company so that they have a chance of recouping some of what they gave up, but they'll probably have to kiss their current benefits goodbye and settle for something a little more realistic.
And they should stop bragging about the Volt.
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10 times the public debate for 1/20th the cash, 10 times the jobs and 10 times the strategic importance.
Ahhh, America.
I won't argue with you that the hasty $700 billion was a good idea. It was a hasty decision with unintended consequences. However, that does not mean that we should spend still more money on something that will likely have a dubious outcome.
Still, what you're saying is effectively a cop out along the lines of well, we gave to those wall street types, so we should give to the car guys as well, and that's fundamentally a pretty piss-poor argument.
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Given the number of other industries laying off employees, namely ALL OF THEM, I'd say 10 is well within reach.
Yes, but a lot of those industries are not clamoring for a bailout ('cause they'd be laughed out of Washington, most likely). Why should the auto makers get one, especially given that Chrysler and GM have no plan going forward and Ford is really only doing a "me too" right now? Any bailout given to them does not address the structural inefficiencies that encumber the industry that can only be shed via a Chapter 11.
We can depend on Detroit to defend the country. Wall Street? Well, not so much.Well, no. Detroit could be counted on to defend the country in the past. It is not at all clear to me that any future wars we would be involved in would require the same type of industrial capacity that our effort in WWII did. I would suspect that it would come to a nuclear exchange long before we were stretched that far.
Also, and this came as a surprise to me, less than 50% of automotive workers now work for the Detroit Three. Apparently the transplants have established an even larger industrial base here than I thought... so should push really come to shove we're probably better of repurposing Toyota's modern Tundra factory in Texas than some of GM's antiquated facilities.
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And another one debunking some of the panicky numbers being tossed around by Rick Wagoner, Ron Gettelfinger and Bob Nardelli
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/business/economy/19jobs.html
Nice bit of puff pastry there. First time I've heard 14 million tossed around in my reading, I guess 1.5 to 3 million looks a-okay then. More reality-divorced theorizing about how foreign auto-makers will swoop in to inoculate the living dead and take over the productive capacity left behind after the liquidation. Why is it you can hunt pheasant these days within Detroit city limits? Which industries will be absorbing all the excess capital, human and otherwise? This one? No one on this board who's advocated letting the big-3 twist in the wind has even speculated as to what 1.5 million (much less 3 million) unemployed people would look like, where they're likely to go, what they're likely to do. How come?
Well, according to the Bureau of Labor statistics, the US economy lost 2.8 million jobs between October of 2007 and October of 2008. That translated into an unemployment increase of 1.7 percent, for a grand total of 6.5 percent. Y So another 3 million would bump our unemployment up to, oh, 8.4 percent or thereabouts, right? That's still quite a bit lower than the 10.8 percent peak in November of 1978. While not pretty, that's not nearly the catastrophe that you're making it out to be.
What's your solution, prole? Given them money? Then in three months when they've blown through that give them more money? The $700 billion bailout has already repeatedly shown that decisions made in haste have all sorts of unintended, nasty consequences. I wasn't for that bailout, and I'm not for this one either.
GM especially should be left to twist in the wind. The management of the company ran it into the ground, all this time denying that they had any sort of problem. The shareholders did not hold management accountable. Over the last few years that killer product was always a few months away, always with disappointing results. Remember when the GM900 trucks were supposed to be the savior? How about the crossovers? And now the Volt? Please...
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Because losing 3 million jobs and dismantling communities isn't panicky enough?
The CAR is a lobbying group funded by the automakers, so that number isn't exactly unbiased. Even their own most recent study suggests that 40-60% of those jobs would be back within a couple of (admittedly very lean) years...
The whole bailout for the car industry thing is a three ring circus... and really shouldn't be necessary
1) GM is fucked. No way around that. They don't have the product, they don't have the money, they don't have the plan and they don't have the management team. Giving them even a dime would be throwing good money after bad. Chapter 11 would be sweet, sweet relief from the bloated dealer network, the horribly confused and mismanaged multiplicity of brands and the inflated cost structure.
2) Chrysler has a rich sugar daddy in Cerberus. Why should we be bailing out a super-rich hedge fund? If Cerberus is sincere in their assertions that they bought Chrysler to run it as a car company and not for a strip and flip then they can plow a few billion into it. Otherwise they fall into the same situation as GM, only doubly so.
3) Ford hocked the family silver and secured enough credit to hopefully weather the storm. They dumped the PAG while someone was still buying. They got an outsider to run the show and actually gave him the power to make changes. They have a plan, they have the product pipeline. They seem to be turning the corner all on their own power and do not appear to need a cash infusion with the same immediacy as their Detroit brethren.
Ergo, doing anything right now is a dog and pony show.
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And another one debunking some of the panicky numbers being tossed around by Rick Wagoner, Ron Gettelfinger and Bob Nardelli
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/business/economy/19jobs.html
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Various organizations have climbing clubs or sections...
You could try looking into the Mountaineers, the Bushwhacker climbing club, the Washington Alpine Club... these clubs provide you with a ready selection of people to go and have fun.
Also, you could try posting on the board at Stone Gardens (I'm assuming they have one)
To ARRRRRR is human
in Spray
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