Let GM go Bankrupt

That one company and the thousands of companies in it supply chains is a large percent of our total ability to manufacture heavy goods and to loss that ability is not in the best interest of our national security to say the least.

Maybe you are comfort with the idea that we should become completely depended on other nations for our heavy goods manufacture but I am not.

I just can see what the situation would had been in the 1940s if we did not have that foundation of manufacturing to turn to as it had been outsource to such nations as Japan!

Yes please produce 50,000 aircrafts and 40,000 tanks and………so we can fight a war with you.

BillRM, I think it makes alot more sense to figure out why an industry is unhealthy or dysfunctional, and fix the underlying problems, rather than trying to treat the symptom. The inability of American auto manufacturers to compete is a symptom of the problem, not the problem. The real problem is, or has been a combination of many factors. To list a few would include unions, over-regulation and taxation by government, and an adversarial relationship of government toward business. So instead of fixing those problems, to instead throw money down the symptom rathole strikes me as a pretty idiotic endeavor.

No, okie, those aren't the problems with GM and Chrysler. It's the management and the cars they produced that did them in. governmental regulations abroad are far more strict, and companies like Toyota and Honda prloduce cars that meet them and more--and can already meet American standards that won't go into effect for a decade. Governmental standards over the last two decades have created the most rapid period of car developments since the second world war. And you might also note that foreign car companies, which have increasingly built cars in the US, have out competed our native companies for decades. The Boston Globe did an interesting story on car sales recently. From the 60s thru the early 90s, the three top sellers every year were American cars, In the early 90s, a Toyota started takjing one of the top spots. Late in the 90s, two of the top 3 became Japanese. Since about 2003 or 4, all of the top 5 have been Japanese. Their managements (including Americans) are not ossified--like GM--they actually build cars people want EN MASSE, their production techniques are much more cost-effective, their technology is better--GM and Chrysler are still playingh catchup, and they have far far better reputations for reliability (at least until Toyota's recent accelerator blunders--a great testcase for why we need MORE gtovernment regulation). Thgey build to far higher governmental standards and they deal with American governmental standards and they outsell GM. Those are NOT the problems.

I do have to wonder, okie, why you right wingers so tenaciously defend multimillion dollar pay and bonuses for the executives and traders of the financial institutions at the same time they were losing their clients billions, while simultaneously you endlessly excoriating union workers' pay , none of whom come near making even a million dollars. Little bit of class warfare going on from the extreme right here?

I think you have mis-interpreted my opinions, MJ. I do not claim auto companies could not be managed better. My position is to allow them to fail or succeed, based upon how well they manage their businesses and the quality of their products. Bailing out GM is not consistent with the fundamental principle of allowing the competition to weed out or sort out who succeeds and who fails. Also, I do not defend multi-million dollar compensation, in fact I want execs of Fannie and Freddie to be held to account especially because they are a pseudo government invention, but Democrats have no enthusiasm for this at all, they would rather attack companies that are unconnected to the federal government.

Actually, you may not be aware of it, I have in fact endorsed the idea of raising income tax rates for higher brackets of personal income. Although this is not my first choice for reforming the tax code, it does offer some advantages over doing nothing, one advantage would be some reduction of totally ridiculous compensation packages in corporations, and for sports figures and movie stars and the like. At the same time, I also believe unions have been corrupt and have all too often driven industries into the ground or offshore, by demanding ever increasing pay and benefit packages. I will have to admit a pre-existing bias against unions because of an experience a very long time ago in the family, wherein union thugs personally threatened the life of a friend of the family during a time when the union was trying to make some jobs unionized for a government contractor. This man had done nothing except oppose the unionization, thats it. That left a bad taste in my mouth that has not and will not ever go away in regard to unions. I decided then and there that I would be my own union throughout my life. I went to college, got a degree, a good job, and if I ever did not like the job or the pay, I could quit and find another one. That worked well for my entire life, and I think it would work well enoubh for anyone that tries it, at least that has been my observation.

Unhealthy???s

We had a almost complete collapse of the economic starting with the banking system not the manufacturing sector thanks to fools who think that the government should not oversee the economic and therefore reduced the regulation and did not enforce the remaining regulations!!!!!!!

Now that the economic had begun to recover, GM is making money once more.

Sorry montereyjack but GM was making money hand over fist even if they had unwisely decided to go in the direction of the most profit as in large pick up trucks instead of competing with Toyota as well in the lower profit market of smaller passenger cars.

That decision would had harm them but not had driven them to the wall if the damn banking sector had not gone belly up at the same time as the large pick up truck market tank thanks to eight years of mismanagement by the GOP.

putting firms that should be dead on life support has costs too...the cost in money to bail them out, the cost to the economy to have weak firms with bad management trying to compete with stronger firms with competent management internationally, and because of moral hazard....once we institutionalize the credo that profits are private and losses are public (picked up by the taxpayer) we are fucked, because managements will take huge risks and make bad bets because losses don't effect them.

GM and Chrysler dying would have hurt, a lot. They should have been allowed to die.

Bad management?

Well they both did not have perfect management however they both would had survive without any government help if the government had done it damn job and kept the banking sector in line and working.

Second perhaps you do not think that losing a large percent of our ability to manufacture goods in this country would not had hurt all that must but I tend to disagree.

The proof of the fact that they are hardly dying firms is that GM is already on the road to recovery and unlike the banking bail out we are very likely to end up with the auto companies bail out with a profit and at worst it will likely be a very close wash.

Okie can only be what he is . . . he refuses to join society.

You are completely wrong. After Ford introduced the Falcon, which in 1967 was one the best performing cars the company ever made, was considered highly desirable by consumers for its fuel economy, Ford down graded the Falcon line then discontinued.

The Big Three consistently failed to give consumers what they want.

How is that bridge working out for you?

Wow! MJ used different words to say exactly what I said to okie!

Could you try to write a little more clearly and address the criticism that Monterey made of your post and not go off on some tangent that has nothing to do what Monterey said?

Hey, I would think someone as far right as you would love the government putting useless firms on life support!

Someone was buying those big pickup trucks and SUV by the tens of millions!!!!!!!!!

But they did nothing in re: fuel economy.

The demand was not for fuel economy during the period that gas prices was fairly low and therefore the big three gave the customers what they desire IE large SUVs and pick up trucks.

Sadly they did not place the kind of funds they should had done on small fuel efficient cars and abandon that low margin market to others.

Of course when gas prices once more headed north they was not therefore in a good position to change their mixed away from large vehicles overnight but they was surely giving the public what they desire at the time.

Yes they should had been far better prepare for the day when gas prices once more climbs however they could had survive that change over if for the banking/economic meltdown had not happen at the same time.

The managements of the big three were far from perfect but that was not what drove them to the wall.

Not exactly right. I have nice midsize Ford passenger car that gets 30 or more on the highway and 20 plus in town, not bad. And a Ford pickup truck that will do close to 20 on the highway, again not bad for a vehicle that can haul, tow, and be an allaround work vehicle. I would also like to point out that mpg is not the only game in town to consider, there are many other factors, such as distance from work, driving habits, and overall miles driven. I know of people that drive Priuses, but live dozens of miles from work and generally end up with higher costs and have a more wasteful lifestyle overall. I should mention too that my house is modest size, well insulated, and my utility bills are lower than almost anyone I know.

Okie most of their attention and marketing was aim to drive large vehicles sales as the profit margin was many many times greater then that on small cars.

That did not mean that they did not have small cars it just was not their focus at the time of low gas prices.

They had poor management to the degree that anyone could predict that periods of sharply raising fuel prices would be somewhere in the near future and they should had taken that more into account.

Still no one could had predicted that a meltdown of the whole economic was likely and you can not blame the big three for not planning on that event.

BillRM, I can't disagree greatly about your assessment of auto company management. I have also felt that the Big 3 did not emphazize more economical cars enough, which I think they could have emphasized more without also losing out on taking advantage of larger SUV and truck sales. But no corporate management is perfect, and they do not have crystal balls that see the future perfectly.

It is my opinion also that another industry that has not adjusted with the times is the RV industry. There is a great deal more that could be done to re-design RVs to be much more aerodynamic than they are now. They are beginning to catch onto the problem and work on it, but they could have done alot more previous to this date. The RV industry is but one example of how much more we can do to save fuel at the lower end of the spectrum than at the upper end, for example, you save far more fuel by upping the mpg from 10 to 15, or even from 10 to 12 mpg with a truck, alone or towing something, than you do with a car increasing from 30 to 35 mpg, I would invite anyone to do the math.

I still think however that ultimately the most efficient driver of change is consumer demand, and it is up to us, the consumer, to demand more efficient cars, trucks, RVs, etc. So we could blame the auto manufacturers for not foreseeing the rise in fuel prices, but I think it would be more appropriate to blame ourselves, the consumer, for not fully anticipating the changes and making the changes in our own lifestyles ahead of time, by economizing on our lifestyles, vehicles, and home efficiencies.

There were a great many people on the ground in Michigan looking for fuel economy despite the low price of fuel.