The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Yes, something like 270,000 jobs will be lost.
Yes, the ripple will be felt by all across the nation.
But, how many jobs will be lost even after the bailout?
There will be cut backs and restructuring.
Maybe they should fail.
Restructure from the ground up.
Use the 25 billion to compensate the employees until they are trained for a new field or relocated to another company of equal skill.

Now, let's think about this group, "the big three".
What if we just had the big 1?
Choose the company with the highest profits, or should I say lowest losses, which I believe is Ford at this time.
Let the other two fail.
Now the big 1's sales numbers would increase and so would profits.
Now we have a much stronger company and hopefully a better product.

Some of the things being said by Congress are pretty damn funny and very true. "It amazes me to see you stepping out of your private jet here in Washington holding out a tin cup". Here, just watch. The big three begging.
By the way, the private jet that the CEO for GM zips around in, Rick Wagoner, cost the company 36 million. It's one of eight in their fleet.

Bottom line, I'm not unsympathetic to the big three, because there are a lot of lives that will be effected if they fail. But I do believe that the top dogs are completely out of touch with reality.

Anyway, this is my coffee ramble of the day. Am I wrong for wanting two of the big three to fail? Should we bail them out? How can we help the hundreds of thousands that lose their jobs?

If you're wrong about not wanting to spend an hour of your day's pay towards that guy's company and his fleet of 8 jets because he and his gorged wallet have forgotten how to run a profitable business then there is something wrong with ME! (and anyone who agrees with us)

I felt this way about the banks too.

Figure out how much of your weekly pay goes to Federal Taxes (Heck, you're probably way more in tune with where your taxes go than most of us) and divide that by your hourly rate. (Well... however you figure your own pay)

Divide that by your work week and figure out how much of your work day belongs to the Feds. "For most things I don't mind" but once you start to realize that (because of these bailouts) you are pay rolling these guys and their lavish excuses for conference business trips, bonuses, and in this case a fleet of jets representing a $36,000,000 investment, you'll start to feel helpless with rage.

There are several auto makers that would LOVE to take some of that business off the three's hands. Companies that are profitable and build a quality vehicle. Yes, we want to keep American cars built in America to sell to Americans. I agree with that 100%. Less foreign dependency is important. American auto makers will lose some business to foreign auto makers for a period of time, but most of them are built here now anyway. The American automotive business is prehistoric. It wouldn't be long before a new American car company popped up building it from the ground up. The only way they'll survive is by making a vehicle that is at least as good as their foreign competition.

Billy's Little Trip wrote:There are several auto makers that would LOVE to take some of that business off the three's hands. Companies that are profitable and build a quality vehicle. Yes, we want to keep American cars built in America to sell to Americans. I agree with that 100%. Less foreign dependency is important. American auto makers will lose some business to foreign auto makers for a period of time, but most of them are built here now anyway. The American automotive business is prehistoric. It wouldn't be long before a new American car company popped up building it from the ground up. The only way they'll survive is by making a vehicle that is at least as good as their foreign competition.

I won't argue that. I still don't want to invest in that company.

Seed smart people with $25 BB to create a new line of autos and other transportation wizz-doos that are green, along with the infrastructure to support them.

Fuck you Detroit! Assholes.

WWII got us out of the great depression. Rebuilding American industry will get us out of this mess. But those guys are not part of the solution.

Well, I guess the real question isn't whether the Big Three deserve a bailout. They don't DESERVE a bailout.

The question is: Is the economic impact of 270,000 people losing their jobs great enough to merit preventing or postponing that even through government action?

If 270,000 middle class people lost their jobs within a really short period of time, how would that affect us? The ripple effect would be pretty large-- those people would not pay car loans (ironically), mortgages, they'd cut back on expenditures of every type if they didn't cut them out altogether. This would significantly expand the number of people who lost their jobs due to the bankruptcy of the Big Three, and financially affect millions more especially in areas where car manufacture is a large part of the economy. When we say Detroit are we thinking of a city of people or are we thinking of ONE GREEDY MAN who makes too much money and flies around in a jet. Make no mistake, when Mitt Romney says "let them go bankrupt" he is choosing to punish hundreds of thousands of people for the errors of a couple dozen. Whether or not they were smart, they were acting on the best information they had available to them and it turned out to be wrong.

Aside from that moral question is the fact that you have no way to know how YOU PERSONALLY will be affected by such a collapse. You can sort of figure out how much of your paycheck will be part of the $25 billion, but the effect on your pocketbook of a collapse of this magnitude can't be known. It's a little like Hurricane Katrina in scale, and I can tell you that that disaster was not good for Atlanta in any way other than that there's better jazz here now. New Orleans is still depressing, and allowing the auto industry to collapse could result in even more devastation to a place that's kind of sad already: Detroit.

I guess what I'd really like to gain from this little rant of mine is that you guys who tend to be flip about this sort of thing would refrain from being quite so fucking flip for once and see it as the complex issue affecting millions of good people trying to make a living that it really is, and not just a way to fuck over some millionaires out of spite.

AND FURTHERMORE

Giving $25 billion to startups will not replace 250,000 jobs right away. That kind of scale will take years to implement, and years for the $25 billion in seed money to disperse itself into the economy. It would be like trying to force a river through a straw.

Not to mention that it's incredibly difficult to tell what startups are worth supporting. So many die because their idea isn't viable-- that money's just gone. And who would choose who gets the money? Another opportunity for graft and corruption.

Again, these are just not easy issues with facile answers, and I'm going off on YOU guys because I can't walk into CNN and have the jackasses there listen.

Happy to be your punching bag. Of course I can appreciate what it means when boat loads of people are out of work and an industry collapses. My knee-jerk was about approaching this differently than simply pumping money into a sinking ship. In other words...doing exactly what has brought this situation about in the first place. Protecting the companies is a mistake (not just the executives) but it goes deeper than that. There's a huge culture of consumption and waste and mocho bullshit.

The $25bb shouldn't all go to startups, I agree. But it can fuel a creative approach and get matching moneys from people like Pickens and others who seem to want to contribute. We need innovation. That's been our differentiator in the past and we may just be desperate enough to put out again. I don't have all the answers and I haven't thought this out entirely, but I'm not happy doing the same damn thing over and over again. And I'm tired of the SUV mentality.

Bail out or not, I'd like to hear a convincing argument about how the U.S. will be able to profitably employ hundreds of thousands of people manufacturing car parts 10, 20, 30 years into the future.

Anyone?

Billy's Little Trip wrote: Yes, we want to keep American cars built in America to sell to Americans. I agree with that 100%. Less foreign dependency is important.

Why?

What's with the "us & them" stuff? Nationalism is so 20th century.

If you really must have a car, buy one made in a developing country by a local company (not a multinational). Redistributing wealth will benefit far more people than propping up inefficient industries.

Or better still - refuse to buy new cars at all. I have one that was imported 2nd hand from Japan. Almost everyone in NZ drives around in the old cars that the Japanese don't want anymore. That is the beauty of not having a car industry protected by tarriffs.

Let the dinosaurs die.

jb wrote:Well, I guess the real question isn't whether the Big Three deserve a bailout. They don't DESERVE a bailout.

The question is: Is the economic impact of 270,000 people losing their jobs great enough to merit preventing or postponing that even through government action?

[...]

I guess what I'd really like to gain from this little rant of mine is that you guys who tend to be flip about this sort of thing would refrain from being quite so fucking flip for once and see it as the complex issue affecting millions of good people trying to make a living that it really is, and not just a way to fuck over some millionaires out of spite.

I currently work for a bank that's about to get bought out. You know what I'm doing? I'm applying for other work. If you work at one of the Big Three auto makers, you're looking at other jobs. Not optional.

Yes, 270,000 people will lose their jobs, and that sucks. It would increase an already too-high unemployment rate, which won't make anything better, at first.

But what does our country have to gain by saving three companies that didn't have the leadership and foresight to save themselves? What message would it send to these companies? What message would it send to an American entrepreneur about to start up a new company?

To the big three, the message is: "You can do whatever you want, and because you employ so many people, we'll always save your asses." To a young entrepreneur, the message is: "Your performance has nothing to do with whether you will survive as a business, because the government has saved companies that fell much harder than you ever will." And as for what we have to gain? That I cannot answer.

I can't find the transcript, but on the senate floor Tuesday, Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) expressed serious reservations about an auto bailout because there is no one visionary figure who has presented a clear and plausible plan to rescue the industry. Mike Huckabee (of all people) went on NPR this evening and spoke of how awful it is that our government has become the arbitrary decider of which businesses live and which ones die, and, for once, I agree with him.

The Big Three representatives will tell us that their poor performance is due to circumstances beyond their control -- after all, nobody wants to buy a car in this slumping economy -- but look at the Los Angeles Auto Show this weekend. All of the major automotive companies are there, showing off their new products and innovations, except for the big three. So if the poor sales of American automotive companies are due to the economy and not their own mismanagement, then why are people buying Nissans, Toyotas, Hondas, BMWs, etc.?

The people have voted with their dollars, and their vote is for American Auto companies to use their own resources to reform (which they can't do now, though they might have last year), or get out of the way for new competition.

melvin wrote:Bail out or not, I'd like to hear a convincing argument about how the U.S. will be able to profitably employ hundreds of thousands of people manufacturing car parts 10, 20, 30 years into the future.

Anyone?

Simple, just charge up the ass for parts, which is what they are doing. Automotive parts manufactures are thriving. People won't stop buying cars if GM closes it's doors and they will continue to need those cars repaired.

I had to get a smog check on my truck to get my registration tags. No problem, I took it to an official smog station and everything passed. No bad emissions coming from my truck and California has the toughest smog laws in the country. But, the computer picked up an 02 sensor giving off an error code. So I paid them their 48 bux and left without a smog certificate. My manufacturers warranty ended earlier this year, and it's an easy part to replace. The little sensor looks like a 3 dollar part but I paid 78 bux plus tax. THEN I had to take it to a certified GM repair shop to have them hook up their GM hand held gizmo that only works on a GM car, and pay them another 48 bux. Then pay to have a second smog check for 30 bux.

The GM patented 02 sensor I bought is made by Bosch, a German company. GM made a percentage of my purchase.

Billy's Little Trip wrote: No bad emissions coming from my truck

Yes there are. Listen to scientists. Not lawyers.

OK, yes, it is "possibly" aiding in warming our globe. But it meets legal requirements in place at this point and time and my trucks are needed to save the world....
....from swimming pool problems in a section of the O.C. measuring approximately a 20 mile radius in California, U.S of A.

I think it is important to mention that this bailout is actually a loan. I kind of wish they wouldn't call it a bailout because it sounds so unrecoverable. But there are many in Congress that feel this "loan" will get pissed away and never seen again.

When pinned down as to how much money is actually needed to keep the big three afloat, the answer is 5 billion a month. So, the 25 billion will help them for 5 months? Then what?

Honestly, I think they will survive even if they don't get one cent of bailout money. Just like any company, there are parts of the company that are profitable and parts that aren't. One of the biggest mistakes companies make is letting the profitable parts carry the weak parts. I'm not referring to administrative or research and development, etc. Those departments are part of the cost of doing business.

For instance, Ford owns Lincoln, Mercury, Mazda, Volvo, Land Rover, Jaguar and Aston Martin. Within those groups they are into more than just cars. For instance, Ford/Mercury are huge in the marine industry with boat motors, etc. Am I to believe that every one of these groups are losing money world wide?

Generic wrote:

jb wrote:Well, I guess the real question isn't whether the Big Three deserve a bailout. They don't DESERVE a bailout.

The question is: Is the economic impact of 270,000 people losing their jobs great enough to merit preventing or postponing that even through government action?

[...]

I guess what I'd really like to gain from this little rant of mine is that you guys who tend to be flip about this sort of thing would refrain from being quite so fucking flip for once and see it as the complex issue affecting millions of good people trying to make a living that it really is, and not just a way to fuck over some millionaires out of spite.

I currently work for a bank that's about to get bought out. You know what I'm doing? I'm applying for other work. If you work at one of the Big Three auto makers, you're looking at other jobs. Not optional.

Yes, 270,000 people will lose their jobs, and that sucks. It would increase an already too-high unemployment rate, which won't make anything better, at first.

To the big three, the message is: "You can do whatever you want, and because you employ so many people, we'll always save your asses." To a young entrepreneur, the message is: "Your performance has nothing to do with whether you will survive as a business, because the government has saved companies that fell much harder than you ever will." And as for what we have to gain? That I cannot answer.

I can't find the transcript, but on the senate floor Tuesday, Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) expressed serious reservations about an auto bailout because there is no one visionary figure who has presented a clear and plausible plan to rescue the industry. Mike Huckabee (of all people) went on NPR this evening and spoke of how awful it is that our government has become the arbitrary decider of which businesses live and which ones die, and, for once, I agree with him.

The Big Three representatives will tell us that their poor performance is due to circumstances beyond their control...

Why is it whenever somebody says something short on a long long subject they assume that due to the lack of information about the whole opinion that it's just out of spite or ignorance. We just don't always have time to paint it out every time the subject comes up. To me its pretty obvious that a couple of lines about my money involved in saving their company is only part of my whole opinion.

Generic's explanation is close to my opinion. They should already be looking for other jobs. Jump off of the ship before it completely sinks. Now of course that's even more complicated. There might not be ENOUGH jobs and the like. Ok, put that $25 towards infrastructure and put them to work there. The country benefits while people are still working waiting for other parts of the economy to get better so they can find even better jobs.

Also, he's right. How does an up'n'comer even compete when its competition is given huge loans like this. AND yeah, its a loan but if they STILL go out of business it instantly turns into a BAILOUT. A failed one, but if the money isn't paid back, its not a loan. Why does the government arbitrarily get to decide what businesses get to live past their expiration date with MY money?

Whether or not they were working on the information they had at the time they obviously screwed the pooch with expenditures they STILL refuse to liquidate to save their own companies. That's blatantly irresponsible!

I'm not heartless... I don't want people to be out of work...I'm not ignoring these things, but they CAN BE addressed. Maybe those unions should start looking at their company's expenditures and write up formal complaints.

There's tremendous resistance to re-train people and re-tool industries. It's the same with tobacco. I understand that, but it has to start. I respect people who have been in it for generations, but I don't respect the "I farm tobacco, my dad farmed tobacco, my dad's dad farmed tobacco, therefore preserve the future so my sons can farm tobacco."

Sorry, no deal. I don't know how long it takes, but these are industries that need to be re-tooled to produce USEFUL (or more efficient) products. Farm grains and fiber to produce clothing, paper, fuel that is sustainable and renewable. It takes initiative to get these things started. North Carolina doesn't want to get things started. Tobacco industry needs to go away and renewable resources need to be developed. To ignore this has been our habit, and that perpetuates the problems.

roymond wrote:To ignore this has been our habit, and that perpetuates the problems.

This is exactly why I don't feel they should be bailed out. As I said, I think they can manage it on there own. But maybe if an American icon and one of the largest corps in America did close their doors, it would send a message and wake people up.
Yes, I care about the people that will lose their jobs and there are many that are probably months away from pensions, etc. If the government stepped in and liquidated the failed company, plus kicked in what ever extra was needed, they could compensate, retrain and find job placement in properly run companies in this country. Just one of those private jets could pay off 100's of retirement pensions.

Keep in mind, I love GM vehicles. I own several. I'm excited by the new Camaro. I'm also excited about their Volt and the hydrogen-powered Equinox. I do believe they are way overdue, but this kind of development has to happen. Can you imagine if the 25 billion went to strictly fund the development of American hybrids? It's an entirely new direction for new fields and businesses to start.

Billy's Little Trip wrote:

roymond wrote:To ignore this has been our habit, and that perpetuates the problems.

This is exactly why I don't feel they should be bailed out. As I said, I think they can manage it on there own. But maybe if an American icon and one of the largest corps in America did close their doors, it would send a message and wake people up.
.

Just one of those private jets could pay off 100's of retirement pensions.

Exactly.

Another thing. It costs 20k round trip for those private jets to fly from Detroit to Washington. All three took off from Detroit Metro airport at the same time and arrived back at the same time. Couldn't they have at least jet pooled?
...yes, I get my news from The Daily Show, but jet pooled is all mine. lol.

But that started making me think even deeper into this as I watched one of the private jets pulling into the private hanger in Detroit. Just the storage and maintenance on those jets is probably very expensive too.

GM CEO Rick Wagoner's annual salary is 16 million a year plus an undisclosed amount for bonuses, etc that exceed his annual salary. He will receive his full bonus package this year. How the fuck does a guy get a bonus on a company that is in the red and sinking? Is he bonused on losses?

edit: hmm, apparently "bonused" isn't a word. So let it be made official, it is now.

Billy's Little Trip wrote: Use the 25 billion to compensate the employees until they are trained for a new field or relocated to another company of equal skill.

roymond wrote: Seed smart people with $25 BB to create a new line of autos and other transportation wizz-doos that are green, along with the infrastructure to support them.

The answer would lie somewhere in a combination of these approaches.


And sorry jb - but it is an easy issue with a facile answer.

It isn't rocket science to recognise, greed, waste and inefficiency. Perpetuating it is simply dumb.

Implementing a solution will obviously be tricky - but there is no point trying to pretend there is some sort of mystery behind the cause.

By the way. Am I the only one that feels that if the big three take a shit, one of the three are going to say, fuck you guys, I'm not going down with your punk asses!? I'm sure all three are thinking how much of the others business they can get if two are gone. GM and Ford are public companies, Chrysler is not. Chrysler Holding LLC is primarily owned by Daimler in Germany, which include Chrysler, Mercedes Benz, Plymouth, and Dodge. The company also owns major stakes in aerospace group EADS, high-technology and parent company of the Vodafone, McLaren, Mercedes racing team, McLaren Group, Mitsubishi and Fuso Truck and Bus Corporation. I knew they had their fingers in a lot of pies, but I had to look those up.
My point is, Daimler can bailout Chrysler and then some. If they don't, then it is because they are not going to let the strong parts carry the weak any longer. That should be a clear message to us because Daimler is one of the 13th largest Corps in the world.