@High Seas,
Quote:Hamburger - you are mistaken. "Massive unemployment" isn't the issue, it ain't gonna happen; what will happen is a 50% cut in that $72/hour average wage.
Did you know that Daimler Benz only found a buyer for Chrysler by holding on to the pension liabilities (ie by essentially paying the hedge fund to take that deadwood off its hands), after of course taking a massive loss of $50billion? No, you did not - if you had studied the numbers you wouldn't be making such baseless statements.
do you believe that a 50 % cut in wages is going to cure the ills of the big 3 ?
imo there are many other - and deep seatied - problems to be solved .
to the best of my knowledge the japanese cars aren't cheaper than big 3 cars - pound for pound they are probably more expensive .
if the big 3 are going to be run by "some other" corporation , the big 3 won't have the money to take on the pension and other liablities .
daimler had the financial resources to take on its liabilities from chrysler -
but the formerly big three ??? i have grave doubts that they could take on those liabilities without help .
as an aside , daimler did take a hit from the chrysler fiasco - which was really foreseeable .
on top of it , daimler quality dropped like a stone .
looking at some quality reports of consumer reports and other magazines tells a clear story (and so do the stories of owners of daimler cars made about 3 to 7 years ago ) .
daimler is beginning to improve product quality again , but it'll have work to do to regain its former name .
from "business week" :
http://www.businessweek.com/autos/autobeat/archives/2007/03/mercedes-benz_s.html
Quote:Mercedes-Benz Scores Zero in Consumer Reports. Ouch!
Posted by: David Kiley on March 20
We all know vaguely that Mercedes-Benz had had some quality “issues.” But whenever J.D. Power and Associates come out with their Initial Quality Study, or some other ranking that shows Mercedes falling, we get the Mercedes spin machine bad mouthing the methodology.
But then Consumer Reports comes out. And it’s ugly if you are a Mercedes fan. You know how many Mercedes-Benz vehicles the magazine recommends? Zip. Zero. Nada. Zilch. The methodology is flawed, you say? Skewed to the lower-end of the car buying public? Then how is it that the magazine does recommend nearly two-thirds of BMWs and 45% of VW-Audi vehicles. CR went out of its way to indicate that a used 1998 LS400 would be a better buy than a 2006 Mercedes ML500. Actually, it says that the 1998 Lexus had fewer problems than last year’s ML, but you get the idea.
Among the least reliable used cars ranked by CR: The MB SL, SLK, CLK, CLS, E Class sedan, R-Class, M Class.
