big 3 auto bailout

[exlrrp]

And they certainly do have some culpability in this mess. But how about the bloated pay of Auto maker's executives?
Mulally,the CEO of ford, made $28 million last year while Ford was tanking. He and all the other CEO's flew to Washington to lobby Congress for more money on their private coporate jets!
Like Some Democratic Congressman told them:"thats like wearing a tuxedo to a soup kitchen!"

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Wa...6285739&page=1
"...All three CEOs - Rick Wagoner of GM, Alan Mulally of Ford, and Robert Nardelli of Chrysler - exercised their perks Tuesday by flying in corporate jets to DC. Wagoner flew in GM's $36 million luxury aircraft to tell members of Congress that the company is burning through cash, asking for $10-12 billion for GM alone.....
....While Wagoner testified, his G4 private jet was parked at Dulles airport. It is just one of a fleet of luxury jets owned by GM that continues to ferry executives around the world despite the company's dire financial straits....
....Ford CEO Mulally's corporate jet is a perk included for both he and his wife as part of his employment contract along with a $28 million salary last year. Mulally actually lives in Seattle, not Detroit. The company jet takes him home and back on weekends. "

---That takes a whole lot of UAW auto workers getting over paid just to equal what it costs Ford Motors to ferry Mulllally home to Seattle every weekend.

http://www.mlive.com/business/index....007_compe.html
"...DETROIT -- General Motors Corp. Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner's compensation package for last year is valued at $15.7 million.

That's 64 percent more than 2006 when the package was worth $9.57 million.

GM lost a record $38.7 billion in 2007..."


So Wagoner got a $15.7 million pay package during a year when GM lost $38 billion. How many hundreds of UAW auto workers would it take to equal THAT? And this is just the tip of the iceberg, the 2d, 3d and 4th tier 3d tier of management are just as bloated

Futhermore, the Auto workers do the job in front of them---its the CEOs and management who set policy...the policy thats led them into disaster..
So if there's going to be a whole new house cleaning, it should start at the top.

[Seascamp]

You still don’t get it, do ya. Unions are Ok, the UAW is not ok. You haven’t been around a lot and been among Unions, that is obvious. I have, some fulfill the covenant and do good things, others do not and the UAW is among the worst of worst. Destroying the enterprise for the sake of self-serving greed sets off a whole world of reaction and counter reaction. No one is clean, least of all is the UAW corrupt and greedy bastards. On the opposite pole there is the corrupt and greedy bastards in equity positions. In the middle there are workers and customers being ripped- off. Go put your digits and stats up your butt, reality is what it is.
The UAW and the big three are locked in a death dance of mutually assured destruction and have been so for decades. Lost in the flail is that people want to do a good job, be rewarded, and customers want to purchase their work product. But what we get is a horrid mish- mash where the worker and customer are worlds apart and neither wants to be so. So goes the rust belt and no one wins, period.
I have no issue with some one getting a good wage, that is right, but I do have a big issue with the UAW shop floor bullies putting caps and limits on human potential and what can be and should be. Friging tyrants are all about intimidation and nothing about employee development or enterprise success.

Scamp

[SuperScout]

The auto industry sees other industries getting government bailouts, and wonders why not? Others hear the pleas of the Big Three carmakers and wonder, why?

Democratic leaders in Congress crafted a plan to fork over $25 billion to Detroit, above and beyond the $25 billion in loans the government already committed to help the Big Three make more fuel-efficient cars.

But a majority in Congress, along with the Bush administration, balked at the idea. Critics of the bailout plan argue that the real problem for General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler is that their cost structures are bloated, their management doesn’t work, and they can’t make cars of high enough quality to attract American buyers.

Throwing money at the same people who couldn’t get it right wouldn't solve any of that. Following are 10 top reasons why a bailout is not a good idea:

1. A bailout would provide money only for short-term survival. It wouldn't alter carmakers' flawed business models. GM is running through cash at the rate of $2 billion a month. So $10 billion from the government would give it only five months’ breathing room. Can they turn over their business practices in that period? Please. The temptation would be simply to come back to taxpayers for more.

2. A government handout would allow the Big Three to avoid necessary cost cutting. Because of a strong union, the average GM employee received $70 an hour in combined pay and benefits last year. And it’s not just line workers who are making too much. GM chief executive Richard Wagoner garnered about $24 million a year in 2006 and 2007, while leading his company toward oblivion.

3. Bankruptcy isn’t all bad. It doesn’t mean liquidation. It means taking the painful steps the companies have been unwilling to contemplate to date. The real losers in such a deal are carmakers, equity shareholders and creditors. Bankruptcy would give the automakers the chance to throw out existing employee contracts with their onerous health and pension systems. The unions would be forced to temper their demands if they want the car companies to survive. In the case of GM, it could also dump some of its uncompetitive product lines such as Pontiac and Saturn. Discontinuing five of GM’s eight domestic brands would save the company $5 billion annually.

4. Taxpayer money won’t change the fact that many foreign cars are made better than their US counterparts. Kelley Blue Book announced its top 10 brands for resale value this week, and not one of the Big Three was on the list. Chryslers, for example, keep only 24.2 percent of their sticker price on average after five years. By contrast, Hondas retain 44.5 percent of their value.

5. Bailout funds would help automakers continue their outsourcing of auto jobs to foreign countries, where costs are lower. All of the Big Three have increased the percentage of manufacturing and assembly done overseas in the past year, especially in China and Mexico. In May, Ford agreed to build $3 billion auto plant in suburban Mexico City and upgrade two other Mexican plants, the largest foreign investment in Mexican history.

6. Big Three bankruptcies wouldn’t mean the end of auto industry in the United States. Foreign companies, which already have plants here, could pick up the slack and open new factories. Some 78,000 Americans already work for foreign carmakers, a number likely to rise in the wake of any US automaker demise. The depressed South could benefit particularly from increased production of foreign auto companies.

7. Other industries have survived bankruptcy just fine. Most of the major airlines have spent time in bankruptcy, including United, Continental, Delta, Northwest, and US Airways. Their predicament looked particularly dire after 9/11. But the major carriers made it through. And to the extent that they suffered, low-fare competitors such as Southwest and JetBlue picked up the slack, often offering superior service in addition to cheaper prices.

8. Bailing out the auto industry would only encourage other sectors to beg for government handouts. Remember that the $750 Billion Troubled Assets Relief Program was designed only to assist banks, but now insurance companies and even credit card giant American Express are trying to get in on the action. Homebuilders, who arguably are as strapped as the automakers, could lobby for some of the action.

9. Stockholders deserve no mercy. Some argue that they should be compensated for the fact that GM and Ford’s share prices have hit their lowest levels in decades. But in a free market, stock prices go down as well as up. The automakers’ problems have been clear for years, so investors had plenty of time to get out. As for Chrysler, it’s owned by private equity firm Cerberus, no innocent victim itself.

10. Bailouts have been tried in the auto industry, and they don’t work. In the 1970s, Britain’s Leyland hit the skids, hurt by slipping quality in its vehicles and imports from Germany and Japan. Sound familiar? Leyland, which made MGs, Jaguars and mass-market cars, accounted for 36 percent of the UK market. So the government sunk in $16.5 billion to keep it afloat. The result? Unless you’re a car buff, you’ve probably never heard of Leyland, because it no longer exists.

[exlrrp]

To whom it may concern:
I've had considerable experience in unions, I went through an aprenticeship as a welder for PGE, worked in that trade for 9 years in 2 unions (Boilermakers, steam fitters) and I was a union journeyman carpenter for 7 years. Ive also been briefly in the Longshoreman's union and the IBEW. I also just allowed my CA coontractors license to expire, being retired (27 years and not one complaint!)
That enough union experience? From both sides? I have seen union corruption and Ive seen union's successes. I believe in unions but ANYTHING can be corrupted (see: Ted Stevens!) and frequently is.

What I'm saying is that there's plenty of blame to go around here but lets start at the top. Thats where the HUGE hole is---leadership getting paid up to 4,000 times what a union worker makes whle the decisions they make bankrupt the company.
I'm not against some kind of managed bankruptcy where everything is torn up and started over But evidently youve given little or no thought about the consequences to the country.
You've already seen your pension funds and 401k's cut in half in less than 4 months---wanna see them cut in half again in less than a week? Wanna see millions more Americans out of work?
Its amazing that the bUsh administration wanted to bail out the financial industries but not the manufacturing side---I thought you guys were supplysiders

If the auto makers go, that will be the last of America's big manufacturing industries, all the rest are gone. And then what? As usual, the repuglicans have no plan at all---whats your solution----cut corporate taxes again? Oh that will put people to work right away for sure!

I wish you'd tell the guy you voted for in '00 and '04 to run away from America's problems even faster than he already is so we can get to fixing them sooner. this is the worst presidential hand off situatuation since Hoover, another repuglican, handed thr Great Depression off to Roosevelt.

And Colonel Taxhater!! I see you dropped your extremely racist "Obama= half honkey Line!!" Good for you!! Now this website looks more American again and I can stop confronting your racism every time I see it!!

[SuperScout]

Obviously, your inability to read properly and thoroughly is still one of your obvious faults, many as they are. If the Big 3 all file for bankrupcy, which I hope they do, it will NOT ipso facto cause millions more Americans to be out of work. Your understanding of what constitutes a bankrupcy and the follow-on steps is minimal or nonexistent. And your understanding of supply-side economics is equivalent to my knowledge of ancient embalming techniques: zip, zilch, zero, and nada. How will cutting taxes put more people out of work? If your belief that higher taxes results in higher employment, why not just advocate 100% taxes, then you could have 100% employment. Yup, right down the communist party line. And you bet your sorry ass that I'm a tax hater; anybody that has an IQ only slightly higher than an onion feels the same way.

And stop the whining about the earlier bailout - most of your liberal/socialist reps and senators also supported it. The cause of bailout can be laid at the feet of your Fudge-Packing buddy, Barney Frank, a (gasp!!) Democrat.

If you think that FDR's solution to the Great Depression was good, you need to read some recent academic publications on the matter; what your Socialist president did in fact prolonged and exacerbated the Depression, and it was only the onset of WWII that caused the ultimate end of it. One of those wonderful albatrosses FDR gave us is the Social Security system, a Ponzi scheme of the highest order, about to implode on America because it is actuarially unsound. Other examples are commodity subsidies etc. etc., bureaucracies that should have died decades ago, but still function for some unknown purpose, etc. etc.

And although I removed part of my signature - certainly not in any response to you - that Barack Hussein Obama is a half-honkey, he's still a bastard.

[Seascamp]

If you were a Union member, then I’d say you learned nothing at all. Unions are a business like any other business. The good ones tend to the membership in a ethical, honest, and fair way plus support the enterprise with an added value mind -set. My heart hurts for those forced into Union membership and have to put up with the shop floor tyrants ; AKA Stewarts, day after day after day. That is a mind bending and brain dumb down experience to say the least. I have done projects in Detroit and have first hand knowledge of the UAW shop floor bullies and seen the results, firsthand, like right in my face. When human beings emote apathy and indifference in the work place that is a sure sign that bad ju ju is happening. Those UAW shop stewards could give a fig less about the people or the enterprise or the customers, their squirt is about human control, nothing more and nothing less.

And I totally reject the leftist concept that the Unions are the put upon , oh poor us, entity and then go about racing about the village with torch, stake and hammer in hand and screeching ‘Kill the monster , kill the monster”, no, I don’t buy in. There are fine and good folks on both sides of the issue and the UAW anointed monsters may not be monsters at all, maybe they are customers. And maybe the UAW Pres. insults the intelligence of the least able. Propaganda and distortion is the fall back position for the cowardly caught with hand stuck in the candy jar.

Scamp (AKA: To it may concern)

Bottom line, I dont buy into your hate and insult trips, my family and exteded family have never done harm to you or yours, ever. You put down the Gauntlet, and it has been picked up.You fuc with me or mine, then watch out.

[darrels joy]

GM to spend $1billion of the bailout money… in Brazil

Another brilliant idea from the automotive folks who flew their private jets to go begging:

Via The Baron, General Motors to Invest $1 Billion in Brazil Operations — Money to Come from U.S. Rescue Program

General Motors plans to invest $1 billion in Brazil to avoid the kind of problems the U.S. automaker is facing in its home market, said the beleaguered car maker.
According to the president of GM Brazil-Mercosur, Jaime Ardila, the funding will come from the package of financial aid that the manufacturer will receive from the U.S. government and will be used to “complete the renovation of the line of products up to 2012.”
“It wouldn’t be logical to withdraw the investment from where we’re growing, and our goal is to protect investments in emerging markets,” he said in a statement published by the business daily Gazeta Mercantil.
Meanwhile, he cut the company’s revenue forecast for this year by 14% to $9.5 billion from $11 billion, as the economic crisis began to cause rapid slowdowns in sales.
GM already announced three programs of paid leave, and Ardila added that GM Brazil “is going to wait and see how the market behaves in order to know what decision to take” with regard to possible layoffs.

Outsourcing your tax dollars overseas.
“Buy American”.
http://faustasblog.com/?p=7946

[SuperScout]

Lemme see: guess the UAW union doesn't operate very well in Brazil, so the GM folks decided to increase business down there. But if indeed GM was allowed to spend any of our tax dollars outside the US, shame on them, and the legislators that allowed it to happen.

All this bailout/sellout is yet another reason why we need a complete revolution in this country, by getting back to the US Constitution. If the Constitution doesn't specifically require the federal government to do it, then by definition, it shold not be allowed.

[Seascamp]

It would be the pure kiss of death if the UAW sets up shop in Brazil. They have a sufficient supply of corrupt punks and thugs, so no need to add another layer of corruption, human despoliation and intimidation. Jeez, talk about the life expectancy of a fruit fly, the UAW would be ground to a pulp and pitched into the binjo ditch, right pronto.

Scamp

[phuloi]

I don`t know if I`d worry too much about the UAW. They`d certainly have their own squad of bone-breaking goons alongside.
Organized labor=Organized crime.