Comments on: Tales From the Bailout

By: SanFranLefty

SanFranLefty — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 03:56:52 +0000

@Jamie Sommers: Thoughts on this essay about how Gov. Nappy will have a hard time getting confirmed? Besides the fact that I think it's complete horseshit (GOP will be more than happy to gain the Gov seat & eliminate a challenger to McCain), it's hard for me to take this dude seriously since he's completely unable to use commas when needed. My inner copy editor wept when reading it, and it was difficult to move on to the substance of his argument.

By: SanFranLefty

SanFranLefty — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 02:35:55 +0000

@Promnight: The auto makers are suffering from unfortunate timing – had they been the first in line for the bailout, okay, but at this point all of U.S. ‘Merikah is suffering from Bailout Fatigue ™ and is wondering “When the fuck is this going to stop? Where is my beautiful bailout? Will my grandchildren’s grandchildren be the generation that finally pays this off?”

By: Promnight

Promnight — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 02:13:45 +0000

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: You are horrified at $25 billion for an industry that actually makes something, and one in which the benefits of its activities remain here (employs US workers, their paychecks remain in the US economy) but you are not horrified by $3 trillion for the Wall Street firms that make nothing?

By: Promnight

Promnight — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 02:11:29 +0000

@JNOV: It never needed to be killed, JNOV, its a simple matter of physics that they have not yet solved. There has never been, and still isn't, a safe, long-lasting battery that is able to store enough energy. Thats what they are still working on, the batteries, electric cars are easy to make, right now, all, ALL, trains are electric, they use those diesel motors to run generators to produce the electricity for the electric motors. Electric cars are simple, its making an extension cord long enough that is the problem. GM has a hydrogen fuel cell test program going on right now in New York, hundreds of people are using hdyrogen fuel cell cars in NY, they cost a million a piece, and even that technology does not give a long enough time between hydrogen refills to be practical. This bailout presents an opportunity, tie it to development of electric cars (of course that does not solve the problem of pollution by the power plants that will make the electricity. Use the bailout to fix the industry, don't throw away the only industrial base left in america.

By: Tommmcatt Yet Again

Tommmcatt Yet Again — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 02:09:38 +0000

@Promnight: Nobody wants these things to fail, Prom, it's just that we are horrified to the point of shitting ourselves at the amount of money all this is going to cost, and by god, somebody is going to be responsible for it. I still think we should nationalize them and use them to turn out massive public transit projects. Much better than just handing them a blank check....

By: Promnight

Promnight — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 02:04:09 +0000

@Dave H: Ah, yes, the Who Killed Roger Rabbit conspiracy. Its true, the GM of the 30s and 40s did do that. Before GM did that, I could have gotten on a streetcar in Point Pleasant, NJ, and travelled by streetcar to New York. But that was the GM of the 30s and 40s. Go ahead, kill it, cut off your nose to spite your face.

By: JNOV

JNOV — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 01:21:57 +0000

@Dave H: Who Killed the Electric Car? ::ducks and runs::

By: Dave H

Dave H — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 01:09:42 +0000

@Prommie: I have to respectfully disagree. GM is the company that demolished efficient public transportation in the US. Now the changing circumstances are demolishing GM, which does not have some divine right to stay in business. Someone or something else will fill the void. Let's not even get into GM's handling of the EV1 program.

By: Prommie

Prommie — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 20:31:19 +0000

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: Artificially cheap gas for many years of a booming economy, which allowed people to love them their big expensive SUVs, followed by a rapid rise in the price of gas, causing people to suddenly hate their SUVs, followed by a credit crunch, and that credit crunch preceded, we now learn, by a recession we now recognize has been going on for a year.

Like I said before, no business operating on a “just in time” leveraged modern fashion can survive an instantaneous 30% drop in sales. This was the month over month drop from September to October. YTD sales through August were only down 10%, the cliff was hit in October.

The sales slump is affecting all the imports to nearly the same degree.

So why are the big three failing? Oh, I don’t know, I guess they chose to have older, less efficient plants, as opposed to all the brand new plants built by honda and toyota recently. I suppose they chose to have an older work force, with a greater percentage of workers having retired. They chose to stay where they were and pay the UAW, instead of relocating amongst the pigfucking union-haters of Alabama, where they could have cut wages in half, don’t forget to damn those idiots for that dumb move, geeze, arbitraging regional wage variations is the new black, didn’t you know?

Its largely structural. Otherwise, why is GM, which builds many fantastic small, efficient, reliable cars, closer to death than Ford, which just 3 months ago was veiwed as the industry’s basket case, because it doesn’t have shit for product. Maybe GM actually just spent a boatload of money on new models of efficient small cars, and are cash-strapped? Maybe they have been spending boatloads of money on developing the Volt?

Oh, no, its that they are idiots, that must be it.

By: rptrcub

rptrcub — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 20:26:51 +0000

@Dodgerblue: Personally, I say we have mass deployment of rickshaws towed by obese children. We can take care of several problems at once.