Big 3 Auto Bailout?

Should taxpayers bail out the big 3 automakers as they asked for in DC this week?

  • Yes

    Votes: 44 26.2%

  • No

    Votes: 124 73.8%
  • Total voters
    168
The automotive bailout is for the politicians no one else. They do not want the UAW to have to face the consequences of a bankruptcy---that will cost the, the politicians, votes. The shareholders have been kicked to the curb. They lost all of their investment---what is GM and Ford stock worth? a couple of dollars. Cerberus, like wise has lost its investment and it is not required to put any additional money in Chrysler just like the public shareholders of GM or Ford.

A company in bankruptcy is not a bad thing----how many airlines have been in bankruptcy and continued to fly. I bet Continental has been there two or three times as has Delta. The politicians need to make a fuss about bankruptcy so every one gets scared and it forces the Companies to do what they want.

Will government loans fix the underlying problems of the legacy automobile industry. Why isn't BMW, Mercedes, Nissan, Toyota or Honda suffering from the problem. They are not burdened with heavy labor contracts. Will loans by the government change those contracts -------personally I don't so. Management changes will do little because they can not change the labor contracts and thus the cost of production. Why do the legacy automobile compete in the markets for big vehicles? Those are the only vehicles that can carry the high labor costs and do not have heavy competition from the other US auto makers.

This also allows the government to do away with all of the big pickup trucks out there because the Czar will say you don't need to pull your boats any more and oh by the way since boats are pleasure boats are big fuel burners they will have to go. Gentlemen we are approaching a slippery slope with our government . The government that got us into this mess in the first place. I don't know how we can expect them to fix it, they are not independent of it.

Mr Salt
2001 540 CPMY
Caterpillar C-12s
Cape May, NJ
 
466,666,667

Mr Salt
2001 540 CPMY
Caterpillar C-12s
Cape may, NJ
 
Four Suns said:
Well... I think the government should say NO... Private equity is an awful and ruthless business... and Cerberus should be kicked to the curb and lose all their equity for any deal to happen. They made a bad bet and have done a wonderful job making people believe it's the taxpayers and congress' fault. Unbelievable.

I got an idea... why not kick all the shareholders of GM and Chrysler to the curb, combine them, and then do an IPO to recap them? Wait... that would require a bankruptcy... nevermind... Give Cerberus their money... what the hell.
Click to expand...

What Gary said.

GM had been and still is very, very afraid of the UAW. The bailout is easy. They just have to grovel to the government for a couple of week. Bankruptcy is going to be hell. It'll be good for the companies, but now those guys are going to have to work. Manglement is going to have to get some steel in their backbones and stare down the UAW, And the ph***ing idiots in the UAW are going to have to realize that this game of chicken is either going to result in some givebacks or death. There's no swerving at the last minute.


Fetch ND said:
so they could have gave everyone a new car & even shipped a few lemons to Canada :grin:
Click to expand...

Interesting analysis. Actually, they could give every American family two cars for that kind of cash. Or fully loaded Cadillacs. I'll take a red STS V. For $14b they can paint one something other than ugly silver or black.

Best regards,
Frank
 
Fetch ND you are correct they could do that but I haven't seen to many $30,000 cars. The problem with the word "they" is that it actually "WE". every taxpayer is going to pay. GM burned $1 billion a month for the first 9 months of this year on operations, plus anothe $0.5 billion a month on new equipment. Unless they face the problem like Gary says, they will be back to US again in a few months. No one has raised the issue yet but it will come up----what impact has the stock market decline on the legacy car companies pension portfolio, someone is going to have fund that as well as operations of these companies.

Mr Salt
2001 540 CPMY
Caterpillar C-12s
Cape May NJ
 
Mr Salt said:
Unless they face the problem like Gary says, they will be back to US again in a few months. No one has raised the issue yet but it will come up----what impact has the stock market decline on the legacy car companies pension portfolio, someone is going to have fund that as well as operations of these companies.
Click to expand...

The pensions are toast. There is no way in hell that people in this country are going to agree to also bail out their lucrative pensions.

Who is bailing my retirement out? I'm not asking for any help to bail out the significant amount of money I've lost. Suck it up and get over it and move on.
 
You can buy a great car for less than 30K!

My wife's Honda was something like 27 out the door...

I've been looking at getting a Honda Fit for my oldest son and they are around 14K.

Also been looking at selling the S500 and Dodge Ram and getting a Honda pickup but waiting to see if they come out with a diesel like this year. They are less than 30K as well...
 
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Four Suns said:
You can buy a great car for less than 30K!

My wife's Honda was something like 27 out the door...

I've been looking at getting a Honda Fit for my oldest son and they are around 14K.

Also been looking at selling the S500 and Dodge Ram and getting a Honda pickup but waiting to see if they come out with a diesel like this year. They are less than 30K as well...
Click to expand...
Thank God you didn't say Impala.
 
Sorry guys screwed up the decimal point it is 467,000 cars.

Mr Salt
2001 540 CPMY
Caterpillar C-12s
Cape May, NJ
 
Mr Salt said:
466,666,667
Click to expand...

On second thought, that didn't seem right. US population is about 303,000,000 or roughly 3x10^8 and 14B is 1.4x10^10. Something's wrong here.

You must have used long scale billion, which obsolete. Short scale billion, $14,000,000,000 divided by 30,000 gives 466,667 units. Or roughly 3 cars for every 2,000 people. Or based on 2006 census bureau figures of 114,384,000 households, almost 1 car for every 250 households.

Oh never mind. You guys caught it while I was trying to find the number of US households.

Four Suns said:
You can buy a great car for less than 30K!

My wife's Honda was something like 27 out the door...

I've been looking at getting a Honda Fit for my oldest son and they are around 14K.

Also been looking at selling the S500 and Dodge Ram and getting a Honda pickup but waiting to see if they come out with a diesel like this year. They are less than 30K as well...
Click to expand...

My 90 Town Car was less than 30 grand. It was a leftover and by June of 1991, they wanted to get rid of it pretty badly. Got 25% off the sticker, which put it under 30. OK, so that was 17 years ago...

Best regards,
Frank
 
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