Dem leaders want Bush to help ailing automakers

WASHINGTON – Democratic leaders in Congress asked the Bush administration on Saturday to provide more aid to the struggling auto industry, which is bleeding cash and jobs as sales have dropped to their lowest level in a quarter-century. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said in a letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson that the administration should consider expanding the $700 billion bailout to include car companies.

news.yahoo.com...


What a damn mess. They almost have to help them. How can they not? Can we possibly let the entire auto industry fail and put 2 1/2 million people out of work that are connected to this in one way or another? This would DESTROY Michigan...which is where i live. The government will throw more money to them....and then more....more...more. Where's the fix? When does this end? The government will now be paying the auto industries payroll.

Sigh.

That is exactly what I have been telling my husband, auto makers are responsible for the employment of many American workers.

This one is going to be a hard one to swallow as American can not afford to lose any more jobs.

reply to post by marg6043


This would be fatal blow to everyone. It's the backbone of our economy. Losing 240,000 jobs in the month of Oct is small potatoes to this. It's crazy to imagine that many people (2.5 mil) out of a job in such a short amount of time. The auto companies have brought much of this on themselves...but gas prices didn't help them much either. Such a mess.

We are paying the government to pay the salaries of autoworkers who make cars WE CAN"T AFFORD...lol.

Why doesn't the government buy us all new cars? How about that? If we have to pay the piper we might as well get something out of it instead just more debt.

I'm honestly torn on this one. This isn't the first time they have gotten a loan from the government to prop them up.

They should have just let them fail back in the 70's. So what do we do, do we let them fail and put 2 and half million people out of jobs, or do we bail them out again so the next time we have a crisis they are asking for more money. The other thing is that a lot of their factories are in other countries.

Personally I think we should let them fail, even though a lot of people will be out of jobs not everyone is going to lose their jobs. What will happen is that the companies will go bankrupt and restructure, which will force them to adapt to a new economy and think ahead.

So in this case I think the letting them fail and restructure will benefit us in the long run because they would be able to be on the forefront of new technology, which will allow them to compete with the likes of Toyota and Honda.

I don't know. Just my two cents.

The problem is that due to the failure that free trade has become to our nation but not the rest of the developing countries.

If GM or Ford bankrupt they will not open anymore assembly factories in the US, they will move oversea completely and that will mean that the lost of job will be permanently.

The only auto companies that are failing are GM and Chrysler. The reason? Unions and lack of an innovative product. Toyota, Honda etc are doing fine and continue to build plants in Canada and the US. Let them fail. The government has no right to stick their nose in private business.

reply to post by marg6043


True, True.

It is really sounding like America is screwed unless we radically change the way businesses can do business.

We need to get rid of the fed, return to sound money, and change the tax system to something like a fair tax. Give businesses a reason to want to open and compete here.

The big three really got themselves into trouble when they offered all those multi-million dollar severance packages to their ex-heads for life.

I wonder if they give them those loans if they could could change all that.

reply to post by marg6043

If GM or Ford bankrupt they will not open anymore assembly factories in the US, they will move oversea completely and that will mean that the lost of job will be permanently.

That would be a very bad thing. Factory jobs have dwindled enough as it is. I just don't know what would be best for this. As much as i've been against government bailouts...i just think this would be devastating to the rest of the economy to let them fall.

I'm torn on this one as well.....

Originally posted by Cool Hand Luke
The only auto companies that are failing are GM and Chrysler.

No so, ford is also coming forward and telling now that they also are in trouble.

Ford: Bleeding Cash, Cutting Jobs, Ford Motor Co. lost $3 billion on its operations over the past three months and burned through nearly a third of its available cash, as the automaker struggled to weather a collapse in overall auto sales on top of stiff competition from overseas competitors.

The $2.98 billion operating loss excludes one-time items, including savings on the restructuring of retiree health benefits, that helped narrow Ford's net loss to $129 million.

www.washingtonpost.com...

If one automaker goes down all american autmakers will go down also

Well there's a lot more in danger now also, my mother works for a steel mill called Beta Steel. Which be located North/West of Indiana.But, my mother company is laying off everyone. Indiana is a big steel mill place in U.S, o ya forgot to mention. My father steel mill is about to lay off also.

reply to post by Rentor


This affects me as well...actually it already is. I work for a small printing company and i'm a pressman. Approximately 25 percent of our work comes from the auto industry. That work is almost completely gone and we've also taken hits elsewhere. People just aren't buying things like they were. Everything is slowing down. So far we've had just enough work to get by but if we take another hit....um..i don't even want to think about it...lol.

I keep waiting for the day that i'm sent home for good...i hope that the day never comes. But i do worry about it...A LOT....especially now that a have a kid on the way which i just found out about a week ago. Picked an opportune time to have a kid eh?

No matter how bad it gets...i will make sure that kid gets fed..so watch out!!

reply to post by marg6043


The question you have to ask is why are these automakers failing. The answer is unions. Unions with their "good intentions" try to provide job security. That means that any new innovation like a machine taking over the job of a human is blocked and disallowed at the expense of the company. Companies don't have to pay benefits to machines and would actually lower the price of their product and make them more successful. I guess the old saying "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" is more than fitting when it comes to the subject of unions.

While unions may be at fault is not all their fault, the way our system works lack of regulations has created a new class in American call the CEOs with inflated salaries bonuses and privilege over the workers.

This people are due billions of dollars in bonuses and actually what the financial now are doing with their tax payer bail out is actually putting most of it into back bonuses for the same CEOs that got us in the financial mess we are.

Read this,

Bailout Banks To Pay Executives $40 Billion in Pensions and Bonuses But overlooked in these efforts is the total size of debts that financial firms receiving taxpayer assistance previously incurred to their executives, which at some firms exceed what they owe in pensions to their entire work forces.
...

The practice of incurring corporate IOUs for executives' pensions and past pay is perfectly legal and is common in big business, not limited to financial firms. But liabilities grew especially high in the financial industry, with its tradition of lavish pay.
...

The liabilities are an essentially hidden obligation. Even when the debts to their executives total in the billions, most companies lump them into "other liabilities"; only a few then identify amounts attributable to deferred pay.

While this fat rats are complaining about money and cutting jobs left and rights they are making sure that the big CEOs still can live their dream life at the expenses no only of the tax payer but also the hard worker tax payer.

Is that fair? well I got my own opinion on that one.

www.wealth-bulletin.com...

Beside if automakers wants to cut expenses they can always move to China where they can manufacture cars for a lot less.

And then bring them to America to make profits, after all China is looking into the automaker business anyway

I want to see the big three stay in business, but it seems the customer base has been lost due to CEOs in other companies sending jobs to China.

No customer base = no big three.

The big three will contain to hemmorhage money until the last million has been mis-appropriated.

I think extending loans to companies will only lengthen the time until failure.


What needs to be done is to have the gov't show they're serious - fat chance - about straightening the financial mess out and sending some of the crooked CEOs to prison and stripping them of the money they stole.

Taking millions if not billions out of any company no matter how big pretty much sends it onto the road to ruin.

Quick question(s)/observation.


If GM, Chrysler, and maybe even Ford, fail as corporations and are completely dissolved; who then "owns" all those Patents for things like the "100 MPG Carburator" and the "Water-fueled Car", etc. that these companies were supposed to have "locked away"?


If these technologies ever truly existed, wouldn't the auto industry be rushing to bring them out from "under wraps" and into the mainstream in order to save themselves?

Can any of you really see any of the heads of these mega-corporations, actually close his "cash cow" corporation just to keep a revelutionary new technology, a technology that could save his company and secure his cash flow, from reaching the public?



Or, perhaps these wonderous inventions Never Actually Existed In the First Place?



Allowing the Big 3 to die could resolve one of the greatest Conspiracy Theories of the industrial age.




Would it be worth it?

Interesting conspiracy, I guess if the big three go bankrupt their inventions of more efficient cars will be produced in the nations that will be taking them in, like china.

Well, Obama says he would give the company who figured out the super battery for a car tons of money. But aren't they already working on that? Or uh, the Ford Volt? Or is it Chevy Volt? But it's a long way off and probably really expensive. As for why not bring out the technology, Big Oil any one? And Saudi Arabia owning the Bush Family... Big Oil like Exxon and the Saudis can't allow a water powered car or cars that get like 200mpg. But Obama isn't Bandar Bush or a former Oil Man. Maybe he will allow the car companies to buch the Big Oil and Saudis that have controlled America for 8 years.

Originally posted by GamerGal
Well, Obama says he would give the company who figured out the super battery for a car tons of money. But aren't they already working on that? Or uh, the Ford Volt? Or is it Chevy Volt? But it's a long way off and probably really expensive. As for why not bring out the technology, Big Oil any one? And Saudi Arabia owning the Bush Family... Big Oil like Exxon and the Saudis can't allow a water powered car or cars that get like 200mpg. But Obama isn't Bandar Bush or a former Oil Man. Maybe he will allow the car companies to buch the Big Oil and Saudis that have controlled America for 8 years.

Chevy Volt - due out in 2010. Only goes 40 miles on a charge and needs to be plugged in. Oh, and Chevy said that instead of the $20k they originally planned to charge, it's now in the range of $40k. Yeah, you can see where that car is going all right.

[edit on 10-11-2008 by sos37]

Instead of bailing the big three out, what I don't understand is why Washington hasn't told them that if they want bailout money they need to all merge into one big company.

Let's face it - Chrysler makes crap. Everything they've produced lately consistently ranks at the bottom of Car and Driver and Consumer Reports reliability rankings charts.

Ford's reliability is better, but they only just now seem to have gotten with the program on gas mileage, and only with one vehicle - the Focus.

And Chevy? I don't think THEY even know what direction they are headed.

Think about this also - if we bail out the big three, where does it stop? What industry will be next - IT? Can we expect to see Dell and IBM asking for bailout money next?


[edit on 10-11-2008 by sos37]

If these companies would only start building quality cars, they could easily get back in the game. This has been going on for the longest. While the Japs and Germans were busy concentrating on quality and customer preference, Detroit was dishing out what they wanted you to buy. Loans OK...Bailout...hell no....

Sink or swim time.