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Does the union have the same Time Machine that NASA had, when after being founded in 1958, NASA geniuses travelled back to 1938 to teach some Swiss guy about inventing Velcro? The union masters are even more talented, they can travel back thousands of years to create police, fire-fighting, teaching professions. Wow, I'm impressed.
"The 10% of the population that would be directly affected and who knows how many others, would be opposed to your rationalization. Did you have any input into the banking bail-out? "
The irony of course is that UAW, the alleged champion against oppressor, is trying to save the oppressor by oppressing the 90% of the population who want to be left alone.
Frankly, IMHO, UAW members are now just being used to save bond investors. GM bonds inssued in the last few years had 8-12% interest rate. That's money that should become available to the company (including workers) under chapter-11 bankruptcy protection. Unfortunately, UAW members are gullible enough to be agitated into shoot themselves into the foot again.
"What if 20 or 30 years from now, we saw this as the great awaking of the Big Three and all of America as the elite capitalist society? "
That's what reorganization under Chapter-11 bankruptcy protection is designed to do. Without the reorganization, the bond holders will just suck the company dry. The primary beneficiaries of the GM and Chrysler bailouts are the junk bond holders on Wall Street.
So, which union was responsible for Henry Ford's offer of more than doubling the prevailing wage in 1914?
Wage is ultimately decided by productivity. Competition among employers makes sure workers get their fair share. Unions get in the way of competition. There hasn't been a successful new carmaker in the US since UAW took over the industry. That's bad news for workers. Who knows how many new Henry Ford there would have been, coming up with new methods of production and able to pay his workers much much more than "prevailing wage."
Compare apples to apples, please. Municipal firefighters and police officers face no competition when they provide their services to municipalities. They are guaranteed jobs, as the municipalities are forbidden by law to obtain these services from any other organizations. The local police union doesn't have to worry that Toyota will come in and provide superior police protection for less money.
You also seemed to have missed the stories where pension benefits promised to municipal employees are driving many municipalities across the nation to near-bankruptcy.
dallasdude1: The fact that the whole banking industry was treated like royalty in Washington and the UAW was treated poorly is going to change.Was AIG grilled about the $400,000 plus spa retreat?
You do realize that many people employed in the financial sector have either lost their jobs, or have taken huge cuts in pay? Sorry, but life isn't going on as though nothing happened in the financial sector, your claims to the contrary.
dallasdude1: How about the lost tax dollars, from those who no longer work? Do you wish to make those up, by paying more? Not to mention the cost of unemployment and other related cost of social services to those (and their families) who have lost their jobs.
A red herring...unless you expect UAW members thrown out of work to remain on unemployment for the rest of their lives. Most of us, however, expect that they will eventually get other jobs. That is the way the real world works. Or do you now expect the federal government to set up a permanent Jobs Bank for unemployed UAW members?
Also note that even if GM and Chrysler do declare bankruptcy, it doesn't mean that they will disappear entirely. GM will be reorganized around its viable divisions (Chevrolet, Cadillac and maybe a combined Buick-GMC). It will still employ people in the U.S. to build those vehicles. Granted, those people will receive wages and benefits comparable to what transplant workers receive, but that beats unemployment.
Chrysler's various viable parts - the minivans, Dodge Ram and maybe the LH cars - will be picked up by another manufacturer. So Chrysler will, in a sense, still exist.
So please dispense with the gloom-and-doom scenarios. They have very little credibility. Even if GM and Chrysler declare bankruptcy, automobiles will still be manufactured in the U.S.
Workers will still receive good wages to build them.
Dealers based in the U.S. will still sell and service them.
The gloom-and-doom hysteria is just a smokescreen to hide what really worries you - that the UAW may have to make some concessions on work rules, health care benefits and the Jobs Bank.
To which most of us would say, that's life.
Only problem is, based on what I see in the employee section of public school parking lots, a fair number of teachers and administrators have already developed a taste for foreign vehicles...
With C11: Modified Auto Industry making the best products in the world.
Jobs come and go. If your willing, you work.
Any questions??
Regards,
OW
ALL well-run companies do this.
This quote, however, is a hoot: "The company intends to 'benchmark' prevailing manufacturing wages, which would be $12.64 an hour in Kentucky -- 'less than half Toyota's $30-an-hour wage.' Raynor observes that if southern Senators can 'wipe out or weaken the UAW, [Toyota] will be free to implement their plan.'"
Newsflash to Mr. Raynor and his sympathizers - Toyota will do this regardless of whether the UAW exists. As I said before, ALL well-run companies are looking to control labor costs.
And then we get this howler: "What the economy needs now is rising wages," says Raynor. "That means stronger unions. Indeed, I believe eventually it will mean the unionization of the entire U.S. auto industry."
Yes, because being unconcerned about labor costs, and allowing them to drift out of line with competitors, has brought prosperity and success to GM, Ford and Chrysler...
These prices may be, but the fact is that for a Malibu to cost $50,000 today, as opposed to 30 years ago when it was $5000, minimum wage would have to be about $23-25/hr. It is THAT, wages keeping up with prices, that MAINTAINS a standard of living.
If all those products were made here, you would have to factor in the variables of the purchasing power of the people required to mfr. things here. That could drive up wages just because there may not be enough people to hire.
This Time Machine thing really has to stop. Supply-Side Economics emerged in the late 60's, early 70's, as an intellectual response after 30 years of Keynesian demand-side analysis. The UAW took over Detroit-3 in the mid to late 1930's. There is no chance Walter Reuther could have known Supply-Side Economics or anything like it unles he had a time machine.
BTW, Reuther spent 1933-35 in Gorky, Soviet Union, before coming back to the US to unionize the Detroit-3 (Overpass incident 1937). Perhaps he got his time machine from the soviets, too. LOL
Here is the root cause of the financial meltdown. People don't have a job to pay their mortgage! When people don't have money to pay their bills the foreclosure crisis will get even worse. The bad assets the government is buying right now as a good investment with a potential return in 5 years is going to take much longer to become profitable.
No one seems to realize the amount of burden that will be transferred to the government (i.e. pensions, health care, unemployment claims) if the Big 3 reorganize under Chapter 11. No one cares about the burden of the economy the Big 3 carry right now.
Both parties need to understand the calamity of their indecision and inaction!
If the country wants to let the Big 3 go into bankruptcy, then let it be so. I am not sure all of the jobs that are left in the US will be able to pick up what the auto industry will let fall to the ground. But we will see.
Oh and let's not forget all of the taxes that are paid by employees!
That went out the window when we were forced to pay for mortgages we neither bought or want, when the banks got their TARP monies. All bets are off now.
Not enough people to hire indeed, as many people will have to be hired by the government to set up check points on the border, sea ports and airports to prevent the smuggling of all those products. How else would that ban be enforced?
Do you grow all your own food in your backyard? Do you never shop outside your own town? Heck, do you shop at all? Why don't you pay your wife or your child higher wage to make everything you need in your life?
Specialization is what leads to high productivity and material abundance. Trade is what enables specialization. Trade is not just about two randomly chosen people aimlessly swapping goods with each other. Trade is about optimizing for efficiency on the widest scale possible, opening to all new possibilities. I'm sure banning all new technology henceforth would provide job security for all existing workers, but is that what your ideal economy is like?
"No one seems to realize the amount of burden that will be transferred to the government (i.e. pensions, health care, unemployment claims) if the Big 3 reorganize under Chapter 11. No one cares about the burden of the economy the Big 3 carry right now. "
Do you really believe that all UAW members are so unqualified that they can never find jobs for the rest of their lives?
The capitalization of the Detroit-3 are approaching zero! That means, they have nothing to pay for pensions, healthcare, or wages for that matter. Why pump tax money into them so it gets pumped out to bond holders and various claims holder? with a net loss in between to maintain the edifice?
Was Nixon in communist China prior to Watergate? The point is that if you gave/justified giving welfare to the productive sector, you would see bigger returns. As they would invest/consume in a manner which would be more profitable than the giving it all to the masses.
In the brave, new deregulated world of today, however, the story is very different. Indeed, it’s frightening to conclude that toxic products with nuclear potential were manufactured and stockpiled in every neighborhood in America.
As for credit default swaps, only in a deregulated world could a “product” of such massive destructive power be allowed to proliferate into a $60 trillion market, impact virtually any company it targets for destruction and not be subject to even a single rule or regulation. In the absence of any regulation, credit default swaps have become a financial plague.
Even in an appropriately regulated marketplace, sound products are subject to changing market conditions. In a properly regulated product market, regulated ratings agencies would provide transparent, researched and documented analyses of the products they rate, and would also adjust their ratings in a timely manner to reflect changing conditions. One of the reasons we are here in this mess is that the debt-rating agencies were not regulated.
But these toxic products were then distributed by co-conspirators in the age-old game of “heads I win, tails you lose.” The existing, self-serving, self-policing regulatory regime that oversees financial professionals is a very unfunny joke.
"Buyer beware” might be acceptable advice when shopping in a regulated financial market. But, in the current deregulated market, it is a prescription for suicide.
The buyers all ended up in the same corner holding the same lottery tickets for a dance with the school prom queen. When everyone realized that the queen had already been spoken for and or was a trans-sexual. Then the mass exodus to cash in their lottery tickets created the great de-leveraging and the sell-off that swept through all the world’s markets.
So the UAW is as much a victim of all of Wall Streets hybird paper. The folks on Wall Street have been seen howling at the moon as of late.
So the reason all the non union folks get higher pay has nothing to do with fear of the union? Henry was pissing his pants if fear of the UAW.
Please help me understand what this has to do with the American auto industry, which has been stumbling, fumbling & missing opportunities since the 1973 OPEC oil embargo.
Your argument seems to be this: because credit default swaps were permitted, it somehow follows that taxpayers must bail out the auto industry. You might as well say that because my socks are blue, I must pay for your lunch. The premise does not support the conclusion.
Thats all they can afford on the pay. Used junk. I see many of the kids driving better autos.
This would certainly get the UAW in there. Just do it!
Obviously, I shop. Anything I grow in my garden is for that special treat, like tomatoes and cucumbers. But I buy much more at the grocery store.
My point is the term "standard of living" is very general, yet we try to back things up using real dollar figures, which skews the message.
Obviously, it would be pure oversimplification to say everything should be made here. Oil is probably exhibit # 1 as to why we need other countries.
The question I have is how do we strike a FAIR balance between utilizing other countries products and services without undermining our own standard of living, ESPECIALLY when some countries (like Mexico, China, and India) have significant gaps between their standard and ours???
While I have no answer to that question, I feel that there are people out there who will lobby Congress to use that gap in SOL to benefit them. That being the case, is it so bad for me to ask MY union (IBEW in my case) or for autoworkers to ask the UAW to lobby Congress on MY behalf???
Write one of your Senators on an issue that is near and dear to you, and is relevant to your state, and you'll probably get a form letter from a staffer.
Let a paid lobbyist write YOUR senator on an issue that has nothing to do with you or your state, and they'll get a luncheon.
Is that right???
The decision by Pacific Investment Management Co., known as PIMCO, raises questions about whether the Obama administration will have to recast the goals of the loan agreement and increases the chances some analysts have forecast that the automaker might have to ask a bankruptcy court for help in cutting its debts.
As part of its federal loan deal, GM has to outline a strategy by Feb. 17 for reducing about $27.5 billion in debt by two-thirds. To accomplish that, GM had been negotiating with a committee of bondholders and the UAW, which must consider taking half of the money it's due for retiree health care costs as GM stock.
Without bankruptcy, GM must rely on bondholders and the UAW to voluntarily take cuts.
Voluntary cuts are mutually exclusive with UAW.
"Without a competitive labor structure and a reduction in near-term cash payments to fund future retire health care costs, GM is only postponing an inevitable bankruptcy down the road," Penniman said.
Lets' get ready to file! I'm excited!
Regards,
OW
Come out and tell these fine folks that they are in upside down on their homes. Tell them they need not try to sell their homes unless they want to put up a 50% equity and walk away with nothing. The new buyer is their salvation and bail out.
Do you really believe that all UAW members are so unqualified that they can never find jobs for the rest of their lives?
I'm talking a living wage within the next year. Rest of their lives is not the issue. Just tell us where these jobs are at.
No, but would it be fair to say that because they were permitted, the banks got themselves in such a jam that they couldn't help the automakers by helping them refinance their debt???
And that's not to say that the D3 is faultless either. This seems to be a "perfect storm" of bungles on all sides of the equation that lands us where we are today.
Would it be fair to say had the banks been more prudent in their lending practices 5-8 years ago, auto sales may have been only 12-13 million units back then, and that may have hurt the industry then, but the banks wouldn't have put themselves in this predicament, and maybe they could lend the money to allow 12-13 million cars to be sold THIS year, instead of 8.5-10.5 million.
as my friend here very well put it,
Nixon was visting China as an agent of the United States, the head of state, to be exact. Walter Reuther, however, was in Gorky, Soviet Union, as an admirer of the USSR. Not sure why he never had his party membership card stamped. Then again, Stalin was known for not officially giving communist party membership to agents that he would like to use overseas.
"The point is that if you gave/justified giving welfare to the productive sector, you would see bigger returns. "
That's called Central Planning, a process known to fail miserably everywhere it's been tried. The reason is very simple: the consumers can decide what is productive much better than the government officials can . . . something to do with specialization and local knowledge being superior to central planners guessing from afar.
"Indeed, it’s frightening to conclude that toxic products with nuclear potential were manufactured and stockpiled in every neighborhood in America. "
Like what? The smoke detector? (cesium isotope emitting minute radiation, the blockage/diffraction of which sets off the alarm)
"As for credit default swaps, only in a deregulated world could a product of such massive destructive power be allowed . . . "
The government pioneered securitization. What do you think Fannie is? A securitization agency since the day FDR administration gave birth to it.
The idea that government officials would be able to regulate everything is quite laughable. There are very strict regulations regarding insurance underwritings. The same strict regulatory words gave room to the proverbial camel that passes through the loop hole; e.g. swaps were designed to disqualify themselves as insurance policies. It's not possible to regulate things that do not yet exist; regulations are alwasy a step behind new creations. That's why regulators usually can only close the barn door after the horse has left.
Silly inventions usually would be stopped in a free market place by unprofitability. The unsustainable new financial inventions are so profitable every 10 years precisely because of the possibility of government bailout: heads the gambler wins, tail the rest of the society loses.
"In a properly regulated product market, regulated ratings agencies would provide transparent, researched and documented analyses of the products they rate, and would also adjust their ratings in a timely manner to reflect changing conditions. One of the reasons we are here in this mess is that the debt-rating agencies were not regulated. "
That's entirely counter-factual. The debt rating agencies are regulated and government licensed. That's why there are only three of them, colluding with each other and colluding with debt underwriters. In a free market, the threat of new rating agencies with credibility would have put an end to the cozy relationship among debt rating agencies.
""Buyer beware” might be acceptable advice when shopping in a regulated financial market. But, in the current deregulated market, it is a prescription for suicide. "
Where did you get the idea that the financial market is unregulated? Even Madoff was under regulation. The regulator simply married his niece. You can't exactly ban marriage. SEC never found anything wrong with Madoff. The investor who hired private fund review agency to do a study on Madoff noticed the problem years ago, and wrote to SEC officials about it. The regulators simply did not do anything about it. Where do you think regulators come from? Where do you think the regulators will go after their stint at the regulatory agency? Industry insiders! You can't exactly have people who are clueless about the industry to do the regulating.
Is that right???
Thats the American way my friend.
It's not prudent to refinance a debtor that has no income, but only losses as far as the eye can see.
In the last decade, GMAC, the big mortgage lender, generated all the profit and then some during all the years that GM happened to be profitable. Domestic carmaking has been money losers for the Big-3 for more than a decade. Without lax credit standards, they would have come to this pass nearly a decade ago.
Ironicly, the companies, and the workers too, would be better off now, if the companies went into bankruptcy re-organization a decade ago.
After the re-org, they'd be strong companies now.
As we can see clearly now, government reflation to paper over the stock market losses a decade ago was a terrible idea. It only put off the problem, and made it worse. If we do this again, it will only get even worse.
Regards,
OW
When the house is worth only 50% of mortgage value, it's the bank's problem, not a problem for the "homeowner." Either the bank has to write down the debt substantially, or the "homeowner" should walk! It makes no sense to keep paying into a black hole unless the monthly payment is less than renting a comparable home. It is renting when there is no equity buildup whatsoever with each monthly check. It's no analogous to lease residual being much much higher than market price at lease end: time to walk unless the lender is willing to reduce the numbers to market price level.
"I'm talking a living wage within the next year. Rest of their lives is not the issue. "
UAW has less than 500,000 members over all, many of whom do not work for GM or Chrysler. $25billion is enough money to pay 500,000 people $50,000 each! If less than half of UAW members work for GM and Chrysler, that would be $100,000 each!
"Just tell us where these jobs are at. "
Where did the horse cab drivers find their jobs? automobiles required less cab drivers at the time because cars ran faster than horses. The overall productivity increase in the society thanks to the change provided for new job opportunities.
Interesting point, but my view is that the domestic industry's problems go back much further & have far more to do with product mix & high fixed costs. If those had been addressed when times were better, the D3 could ride out these hard times.
Anyway, you seem to be suggesting that taxpayers should ride to the rescue of any industry whose current woes can be blamed on the banks. My pockets aren't deep enough for that.
Was it suppose to be a secret?
Asset Securitization - The Last Tango:
“Innovation has brought about a multitude of new products, such as subprime loans and niche credit programs for immigrants.
The mortgage-backed security helped create a national and even an international market for mortgages, and market support for a wider variety of home mortgage loan products became commonplace .
financial instruments of a bygone era, common stocks and debt obligations, have been augmented by a vast array of complex hybrid financial products, which allow risks to be isolated, but which, in many cases, seemingly challenge human understanding.”
twenty-first century financial regulation is going to increasingly have to rely on private counterparty surveillance to achieve safety
is no credible way to envision most government financial regulation being other than oversight of process. As the complexity of financial intermediation on a worldwide scale continues to increase, the conventional regulatory examination process will become progressively obsolescent--at least for the more complex banking systems .
Deregulation, TBTF and Gigantomania among banks
to create new forms of mortgage finance that promote homeownership. As for the Federal Reserve, we are striving to assist you by providing a stable platform for business generally and for housing and mortgage activity.
the unbundling of the various aspects of the mortgage process
In the process, mortgage-backed securities outstanding have grown to a staggering $2.4 trillion , automated underwriting software is being increasingly employed to process a rapidly rising share of mortgage applications .
benefit of the new technology has been an increased ability to manage risk
the increased use of automated underwriting and credit scoring creates the potential for low-cost, customized mortgages with risk-adjusted pricing
The entire securitization revolution allowed banks to move assets off their books into unregulated opaque vehicles. They sold the mortgages at a discount to underwriters such as Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, Citigroup, and similar financial securitizers. They then in turn sold the mortgage collateral to their own separate Special Investment Vehicle or SIV as they were known. The attraction of a stand-alone SIV was that they and their potential losses were theoretically at least, isolated from the main underwriting bank. Should things ever, God forbid, run amok with the various Asset Backed Securities held by the SIV, only the SIV would suffer, not Citigroup or Merrill Lynch.
The dubious revenue streams from sub-prime mortgages and similar low quality loans, once bundled into the new Collateralized Mortgage Obligations or similar securities, then often got an injection of Monoline insurance, a kind of financial Viagra for junk quality mortgages such as the NINA (No Income, No Assets) or “Liars' Loans,” or so-called stated-income loans, that were commonplace during the colossal Greenspan Real Estate economy up until July 2007.
According to the Mortgage Brokers' Association for Responsible Lending, a consumer protection group, by 2006 Liars' Loans were a staggering 62% of all USA mortgage originations. In one independent sampling audit of stated-income mortgage loans in Virginia in 2006, the auditors found, based on IRS records that almost 60% of the stated-income loans were exaggerated by more than 50%. Those stated-income chickens are now coming home to roost or far worse. The default rates on those Liars' Loans, which is now sweeping across the entire US real estate market, makes the waste problems of Tyson Foods factory chicken farms look like a wonderland.
None of that would have been possible without securitization, without the full backing of the Greenspan Fed, without the repeal of Glass-Steagall, without monoline insurance, without the collusion of the major rating agencies, and the selling on of that risk by the mortgage-originating banks to underwriters who bundled them, rated and insured them as all AAA.
In fact the Greenspan New Finance revolution literally opened the floodgates to fraud on every level from home mortgage brokers to lending agencies to Wall Street and London securitization banks to the credit rating agencies. Leaving oversight of the new securitized assets, hundreds of billions of dollars worth of them, to private “self-regulation” between issuing banks like Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch or Citigroup and their rating agencies, was tantamount to pouring water on a drowning man. In Part V we discuss the consequences of the grand design in New Finance.
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article3652.html
No one, well maybe an unethical person, would tempt an alcoholic by putting one in charge of a liquor store and neither would anyone put a fox in charge of a henhouse. So why are greedy bankers being allowed to rewrite banking regulations to enrich themselves while leveraging taxpayers, destroying trillions of dollars of hard-earned savings, sinking us into a potential depression, and destroying the UAW (an institution we hold near and dear)?
Very good question. The answer goes something like this: importing goods from other countries does not undermine our own standard of living. Standard of living is determined by how much goods and service we have here, not how many people are working their rear ends off :-) That's why productive new technology is a good thing. There is fundamentally no difference between the black box churning out new goodies, with new machinery inside the black box vs. if the black box is filled with untiring Indians and Chinese.
In the world economy before fiat money, trade imbalance results in specie money flow from the deficit nation to the surplus nation, then the specie money wage levels in the two countries adjust accordingly. In our fiat money system, so long as the trade surplus nations continue to buy US bonds, the trade deficit is sustained as the government issues more and more bonds. The result is the destruction of manufacturing industries in favor of industries run by the friends of government officials. It is this transfer of wealth from the average people to the connected elite that's the big problem caused by our fiat money system. The living standard decline that would normally result from such a looting has been moderated by the inexpensive imports. Things can get ugly when the foreigners stop buying our bonds.
Who else would be writing banking regulations? Someone who has no clue how banking works? Who do you think pay for the propaganda that you hear everyday about banking?
That's why regulation is a dead end. Only the special interests would be interested enough to pay up and write the regulations.
That time machine again. UAW did not exist in 1914. Like I explained before, Henry Ford paid up in order to keep workers. His factory had 317% turn-over rate prior to the wage increase. After he paid up more than double the prevailing wage, the turn over rate dropped to 6%. Competition from other employers are the worker's best insurance in getting a fair share of the productivity. Ford's production line was more productive, but also more repetitive and "souless," so he paid up. That was two decades before UAW was founded. So Henry wasn't peeing in his Time Machine.
If you don't believe me, try refusing to accept payment in dollars, and see what happens to you. Notice, it's the same dollar that the government regulators create out of thin air and give it to their friends.
There is an alphabetic soup of financial regulatory agencies in the US. They all do the same thing: making sure that their friends' in the fiancial industry do well; then rejoin the industry when their stint in the government is up. That's government regulation in action.
Where else would you find regulators except for from the industry that it regulates? What's the alternative? Someone completely clueless about the industry?
Does that mean the baseball bats are coming out now?
I think that you intended to reply to someone else's post. This doesn't seem to have anything to do with mine.
So why are greedy bankers being allowed to rewrite banking regulations to enrich themselves while leveraging taxpayers, destroying trillions of dollars of hard-earned savings, sinking us into a potential depression, and destroying the UAW (an institution we hold near and dear)?
So why should taxpayers bail out the domestic auto industry?
If the UAW ever manages to unionize the entire US auto industry(including the transplants) then that will be the final nail in the coffin for US auto manufacturing. If you want the US to descend from the #1 position then this would be a fast way.
The sooner we can file the sooner we can have a top quality US(owned) auto industry!
Where's the party?!
If we don't adopt that productive new technology then we will be left behind by our foreign competitors. The key is adopting the technology first so that we have a competitive advantage.
That's why a 2200 page contract of work rules is so counterproductive and destroys the US.
If the UAW was really concerned about the working man, why would they destroy our future competitiveness in the world? :confuse: :confuse:
By the 1950's, both the union and the management were so full of themselves that they actually believed consumers would buy whatever they cared to turn out. The makers of Soviet Lada's probably had similar thoughts going through their heads before their demise. That's why by the late 80's, Lada factory was turning out brand new cars of 1950's design, worth literally less than the steel and leather going into them. Comes to think of it, if the Detroit-3 have been losing money for a decade on domestic carmaking (before "profit" from the credit division papering over the hole), they have come quite close to the Lada standards. LOL.
Within the C11, the best workers will be retained and the fastest restructuring can evolve where a smaller more efficient industry can proliferate the tech we need at home...otherwise, NO ONE prospers...UAW, management, customers, suppliers or stockholders...they all become losers under the weight of Gov't (read inexperienced) mandates.
If I were on the GM board, I would be PLEADING for a vote for a controlled C11 supported by the funds from gov't over a specific time frame. Sounds like the current plan but actually very different. No one wins until the new companies are born with a new strategic plan. The slate is cleaned. A new industry is born. If not now, when??
For GM, that is Chevy and Caddy alone with all brands changing in that structure to support strong competition for each nameplate. Without a viable nameplate plan, it goes away.
For Chrysler, that is combining with F or GM...if you want to keep it in the U.S., that is.
Tough choices. Too bad. Time for action. Current management can't do this WITHOUT C11. I dare the C.E.O.'s and the Boards to take this needed step to transformation.
Let's get started. No more UAW...just dedicated service techs that are whole-heartedly focused on success without compromise No more losers. You fight together. You succeed together. That is the challenge. Take it or die with the weight of waste.
Any questions?
Regards,
OW
Are you serious? So would you also share any profits with the bank if it was worth more? Whatabout if you had other assets and they might prevail in the courts?
In order to keep up with the increasing demand for those newfangled contraptions, horseless carriages, Ransom E. Olds created the assembly line in 1901. The new approach to putting together automobiles enabled him to more than quadruple his factory’s output, from 425 cars in 1901 to 2,500 in 1902.
Olds should have become known as "The father of automotive assembly line," although many people think that it was Henry Ford who invented the assembly line. What Ford did do was to improve upon Olds’s idea by installing conveyor belts. That cut the time of manufacturing a Model T from a day and a half to a mere ninety minutes. Henry Ford should been called "The father of automotive mass production."
It's mind-boggling how one can even begin to argue union is good for workers, when set against such obvious historical fact to the contrary.
Back to the time machine.
How did EDS do as an investment? Ross Perot seem to think it was worth millions. The how well did they do in the satellite business?
GM bought EDS in 1984 from Mr. Perot for $2.5 billion and used it to help standardizing the automaker's diverse computer systems, which had 200,000 outlets within the company alone. Roger Smith, then GM's chairman, called the purchase a foothold in the electronic future for a mature auto company.
On paper GM's taxes could come to several billion dollars, because the 438 million Class E shares now are worth about $21 billion. But the auto company hopes to persuade the Internal Revenue Service that the split will serve a legitimate business purpose and therefore qualify for an exemption.
In a deal certain to draw scrutiny from regulators, General Motors agreed last night to sell Hughes Electronics, the owner of DirecTV, to EchoStar Communications for about $26 billion in cash and stock.
You get a question, I get a question.
Why is an income tax evader being made secretary of the Treasury, and head over the IRS?
Both questions have about as much to do with the UAW running the Domestic auto industry into bankruptcy. Face it the greed of the UAW has killed the golden goose. Just as dead as the ones that flew into the engines of that US Air jet liner last week. Only thing left to do is bury the carcasses.
Until the last 12-18 months, GM management had been plugging the UAW liability hole with GMAC/ResCap home mortgage lending. That operation imploded in 2007-2008. There's nothing left to cover the UAW liability hole.
GM did great with those ventures. They did not have the UAW to drag them into the mud. EDS did even better once they got loose from the poor management at GM. They have about 136k employees World wide and was just purchased by HP. They are worth more than GM is worth. You would not find a company to pay $13.9 Billion for GM as HP just paid for EDS.