Stop the Stinkin' Bailouts!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Djackman you just described my dream car. A flat black paint job is all you forgot, but a must have for a rat rod.

Wait until China gets in the act. They are already making a big impact on automotive parts.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL33317.pdf

If we bail-out the big 3 they will have little motive to change and when China comes out with a good $5000.00 car they will get caught with their pants down again.And we will pay again with yet another bail-out.

I don't think any bail-out is the answer for any buiness.Chapter 11 yes bail-out no.How can you take money from a successful buiness and give it to a failing buiness and expect it to make a robust economy ?
DON

Today I heard on the news, they are talking about $25 billion in loans to the companies, and another $25 billion to cover the health care costs of Detroit's retirees. I have to struggle to cover my OWN health care costs, and I have fairly decent insurance. But if I lose my job, there goes my insurance, too, and there's no safety net for me. So now I have to pay taxes to provide the safety net for retired auto workers?

Providing this care was a contractual obligation of the auto companies, and well-run companies could still be providing it. There are a lot of auto execs who should be in jail for malfeasance, IMHO.

In The Know: Should The Government Stop Dumping Money Into A Giant Hole?

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/i ... dded_video

SHEEEIT Fellas, stop worrein, Obama gonna be in da white house soon and everthing gonna be alright. you just wait and see.

bk

BIG BEAM wrote:If we bail-out the big 3 they will have little motive to change and when China comes out with a good $5000.00 car they will get caught with their pants down again.And we will pay again with yet another bail-out.

I don't think any bail-out is the answer for any buiness.Chapter 11 yes bail-out no.How can you take money from a successful buiness and give it to a failing buiness and expect it to make a robust economy ?
DON

I agree, with a couple of exceptions: one being banking and the other being crucial defense industries. Banking is half government and half private anyway and essential to all commerce. It is crucial that defense industries not be intertwined with our enemies and always healthy.

While I hate to see the big 3 fail, it's not like they haven't seen this coming for almost 40 years.

My opinion on this issue is let them fail, file for chap 11, reorg (hopefully get rid of the unions) some people may loose there jobs but in the end the company should come out of it far better then if the goverment steps in and leaves them status quo. And if what they do in the reorg works then they'll be able to be competive and hire back in a few months/years.

Mike,the auto industry could also be considered a qusi defense industry.If a defense contractor ever needed a huge volume of something lets say jet engines I'm sure some of the big 3 would be called upon to take up the slack.So then under that theory should we have bailed-out the steel industry also years ago?I think the defense industry has a huge cushion built into their pricing structure and shouldn't ever need a bail-out.Most of the banks that are in trouble are investment banks and I feel if they had poor enough insight to lend money to companys that didn't read the market well they and only they should suffer.I don't like the banking system the way it is set up now.It looks like to me that the investment bankers were taken and for that they should fail.And if they weren't taken and just lent money because of the good ole boy network jail should be an option.

It has usually worked out(in the free market system)that when an industry fails something better will replace it,and if it doesn't it was doomed to failure anyway.
DON

1. Detroit dug the hole it's in all by itself (OK, with assists from the Administration, Congress, the oil industry and a completely unschooled public). Oil was always artificially cheap here and, even w/o CAFE pressure, the rest of the world was using far better sense in the design/mktg of new models than Detroit was -- and don't forget: some of those foreign mfrs are/were owned/controlled by the Big 3 (Opel, Volvo, come to mind). In fact, the "new" Malibu is actually an Opel Vectra, a design that's been around at least since 2006, when we rented one in Germany.)

So, whether in a last-ditch attempt to cover their "non-discretionary costs" or simply by the kind of blindly stupid, max it for the next quarter greed which cannot completely be dismissed, Detroit made obscene profits for years by forsaking what the rest of the industry quaintly calls "strategic planning" and "engineering" and simply enclosing and putting leather seats, trick sound systems and climate control inside pickup trucks to create overweight, underperforming SUV's and now, the only marginally more sensible "crossovers."

These people should be taken out and ... made to own SmartCars and Priuses.

2. Antitrust ain't that complicated, really. "Too big to fail" is just two words too long.

The big 3 got lazy because of cheap gas and the American love afair with SUV's and trucks. The gas crunch and then the credit crunch knocked the air out of the big 3. They knew that the middle east is unstable and that there are a limited amount of refineries so they had to know that this would happen one day. I also think that the labor contracts are hurting their business. They need to retool and start putting out cars that are every bit as reliable as the asian car companies and get innovative to start stealing away market share. But they had 30 years to do that and look where they are at. I remember when the Saturn came out. No haggeling and an emphasis on quality and customer satisfaction. Saturn is doing OK but it's known for selling cheap compact cars that are not the most reliable. I hate to admit this but I have never owned an American car. My parents only bought American and I remember all the problems they had with their new cars.

spc wrote:Wait until China gets in the act. They are already making a big impact on automotive parts.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL33317.pdf

A "big impact", like an elephant taking a dump?

As a more than part time mechanic it's scary how good Chinese copies are becoming and how poor the quality is. Tuneup parts, radiators, lights etc are one thing but brake calipers that blow the seals after a few stops, or tie rod ends that pop apart after 500 miles, are a different story.

I've lost jobs over insistence to use only OEM parts in some apps, due to cost. I'd rather let a job slide to the cheapos up the street than get hit with the lawsuit when they take out a bunch of kids walking to school.

I read the article on China cars. When those cars come here there is a huge tarrif tax to help keep things even , somewhat. China right now is building a huge auto plant in Mexico. Thanks to NAFTA there will be no tarrif tax. I wonder how thats going to play out?

China's auto tariff is lopsided. 25% on imports to China vs 2.5% on imports to the US. Other countries, including the US are fighting it now in the World Trade Organization but it doesn't look very good for the US and Europe. Bad enough US workers have to compete with people making 100.00 a month the Chinese government imposes a 25% tax on autos going into their country. They're laughing at us all the way to the bank and our politicians sit around trying to figure out why we're getting our heads handed to us. Must be those dam lazy American workers, yeah that's it.

WASHINGTON, Nov 13 (Reuters) - A senior Democratic senator raised doubts on Thursday that an attempt to bail out U.S. automakers had enough support to clear Congress this year.

Story link: http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idINN1339368420081114?rpc=44