DETROIT SUCKS! DETROIT SUCKS!

Pistons are their saving grace.

Though as a Lakers fan, I am hoping they too go the way of the Hummer.

Fucking stupid angry public. Fucking Pelosi. Dow at 7500. Start building your mad max death car now, and stockpile lots of ammo. We’re fucking doomed. Its worth $25 billion just to make this frightening issue go away, stupid fucking goons. Now everyone gets to stare at the wheezing, gasping, bleeding half-dead body of GM as it sits there on life support for a fucking month, which will be so fucking cheery and it will so buck up consumer confidence during the christmas season.

Anybody think of that, dumbfucks?

I got 200 GM dealers now, noone in the world will buy one of their cars while this is just hanging like this, they’re in fucking limbo for two weeks, might as well close up.

Ya’ll do know that a typical business can’t survive a half a month of zero revenues, especially when its coming after a year thats down 25% from the prior year?

We’re gonna be fucking fighting in the street over roadkill before the end of winter.

Detroit Car City Bidniz Pwan to Congress

1) Right Plan
2) Bribe Lobby Congress
3) Kill Michael Moore and Ralph Nader
4) ?????
5) $$$$$!!!

@Prommie:
If they actually write up a decent business plan, Congress will give them the money. But the $25 Billion question is, will they?

@Prommie:

On the upside, sales of burlap, wool caps, overcoats, used shoes and those weird gloves with the fingertips missing are poised to go through the roof as people rush to pick out their 2009 hobo wear.

@Prommie: I read that the Chinese might buy them. Why not, they have to do something with all the shaky US paper they’re holding. I’ve read that the Buick brand is very popular in China, although for the life of me I can’t understand why. I mean, there aren’t a lot of old Jews in China, right?

Barrel & Suspenders Co, Ltd (NASDAQ: BNSH) $7.24 — UP $1.26.

@problemwithcaring: Fresh commenter meat! Welcome, even if the only Piston I can name is Maravich.

@Dodgerblue:
Probably a bit of Asian overcompensation.

My now Honda driving dad used to drive big ass US American cars.

Chevy Impala. Mercury Grand Marquis. Ford LTV etc.

@Original Andrew: 12% budget cuts heading to my university system. We are so fucked. Higher education is allegedly stable in a gov’t setting but not under our GOP legislature.

@ManchuCandidate: GM: “We built and sold more cars the last year than any manufacturer on earth. Then the economy died, because of those fucking finance assholes you just rewarded with a trillion dollars, so now we are cash poor. Give us a bridge loan.”

That works for me.

Dodgerblue: Damn straight. Don’t you think that Toyota (absent completely fried credit market — thanks, subprime mortgage industry) wouldn’t relish the opportunity to buy out GM for peanuts?

Think of it this way: GM right now has a total market cap of $1.8bn. The Chicago Cubs were valued at just over $1bn, given the most recent reports on the bidding (but not taking into account the frozen credit market as of late). The Yankees or the Red Sox are, perhaps, worth that much.

GM’s value is equal to that of the (conservatively estimated) value of three baseball teams. That is fucked up.

Oh, we’ll make this electric car, too.

@nojo: Thanks. I stalk the commenters I luvs. Eventually, this will lead to me committing suicide in front of your apartment complex, but for now – nice to meet you.

@chicago bureau: The fucking toy company that makes matchbox cars has a higher market cap. Thats trippy, man.

@problemwithcaring:
Welcome (yeah, I post here, too.)

@ManchuCandidate:

They haven’t over the last thirty years so why start now, right?

Best hope for success: GM CEOs throw themselves on the floor and begin beating their fists and kicking their legs in a comical fashion while screaming “boo hoo hoo, Goldman Sachs didn’t have to write a business plan… boo hoo hoo.”

@Original Andrew:
On top of what Prommie wrote:

GM, Ford and Chrysler upper management takes a nice long swim in the Detroit River.

Golden handshakes

New management takes over.

The End

I think I would take that.

@rptrcub:

Republicans never got nuthin’ from that satanic book learnin’.

@Original Andrew: Even though they cheer on their Georgia Bulldogs and (shudder) GT Yellow Jackets. And also rely on the institutions to be economic engines in downtown Atlanta, Athens, and very rural parts of this state.

@Dodgerblue: In answer to your China/Buick question – this was read on Car Talk:

It looks as if General Motors’ marketers failed to reach China in time to brief at least one Beijing-based reporter on core brand characteristics.

The paper had this to say about GM’s premium brand: “Cadillac is a name that is synonymous with quality and luxury for most people. For others it’s a name synonymous with arrogance, greed and tiny genitalia.”

BTW: Prommie ain’t kidding:

Mattel: $4.1bn market cap.

GM: $1.8bn market cap.

blogenfreude: Tom and Ray must be having a field day with this.

@problemwithcaring: Make it bloody, and give me a minute to make sure my iPhone’s charged. I’m not above a Snuff Post if it draws traffic.

@blogenfreude: Smug Alert!

@chicago bureau: Now check Avon.

@chicago bureau: And Apple has $25 billion cash on hand.

Alternate take: “Hello, this is OnStar. You’re on your own, schmuck.”

Hold on…

Why not make it a $27 billion bailout, buy GM, and flip it in five years?

nojo: WIN

@nojo: this is the awesome kind of thinking that made Wall Street great.

@blogenfreude: No, it’s the Dodge Viper and tiny genitalia. Not that I wouldn’t want to blast one around the block a couple of times. But in general I’d rather have my genitalia in a woman than in a car.

@problemwithcaring: Hi. Lefty will take care of the orientation later. In the meantime, please enjoy the free wi-fi and chips and salsa at the bar and the Amazon-subsidized well drinks and beers. Any one of us could be slinging free drinks and TMI after 10 pm Eastern. The West Coast crowd stays up until sunrise Eastern time some nights. Our worldwide reach almost guarantees 24/7 stinquage.

You know what they call it when VW gets bailed? A Beetle Bailout!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Kill me now.

@nojo: Step away from the keyboard. Put down the mouse. Step away from the keyboard.

I don’t get it. Lee Iacocca licked DC’s ‘nads for a loan to pull Chrysler together and he’s a hero. Writes a book and launches a line of dairy spreads. Now, everything’s impossible. I think the species is getting tired of living and really hungers for apocalypse.

@FlyingChainSaw: And he paid it off early. I am perplexed, the same people who support unions, despise globalization, and believe in government support of vital industries (rail and air would bee a good start) suddenly turn into Gordon Gecko free marketers when it comes to the automakers. Pelosi and Reid, no thanks to anything they accomplished with their majorities, and empowered by the gift of coattails that Obama gave them (funny, in the press this election I think I never saw the word “Coattails,” whats the matter, can’t a black man have coattails?) and keep doing what they were doing, waffling and obviously polling and refusing to call for decisive action.

In an economis crisis which is at least 25% a crisis of confidence (the ripple effect is all from the collapse in consumer confidence), bold action has a positive effect even if its the wrong action.

Its worth $25 billion just to get the words “Will the US automakers turn belly up and put an army of unemployed workers on the streets” off the fucking headlines for 2 or 3 months. Seriously. They acting like they are afraidd of fear itself. And way to thank the UAW for its support.

@Promnight: Waiting for the Big 3 to come up with a plan is bogus. I’d write up my own, give it to them, and say we have half a day to negotiate this and don’t fly in here on your fucking private jets ever again.

@Dodgerblue: The private jet thing is a fucking shallow canard. It disgusts me. Did anyone ask Paulson or the fucking kleptomaniacs from Wall Street how they got there?

Within 3 weeks of the election, a historic repudiation of the republican agenda, they have managed to find and exploit a division among democrats, they have the enviros now working against labor, and voila, our economy is gonna suffer mightily and the republicans will win their biggest victory ever over labor, while PC democrats kneejerk with “fuck them, they made SUVs and flew in on corporate jets. And the corporate jet industry will soon die. Yay! We won this one; or did we get played?

@Promnight: I’m involved in litigation right now with the Fed Maritime Commission where the FMC’s real goal, so far as I can tell, is to fuck over the Teamsters. I view the Repubs’ “let them file BK” line as an attempt to fuck over the UAW. I was hoping that, after the election, the Demos would finally step up to the plate and start defending the working class. Ain’t seen it yet.

@Dodgerblue: I haven’t seen it in my lifetime. Its why we lost the poor white vote. We say “why do they vote for republicans, its against their interests?” It might work better if we ever did anything for their interests. We are just as willing to screw over the working class in favor of the tree frog and the multinationals as the republicans are willing to screw them over in favor fundie whackjobs and multinationals.

I is a Roosevelt democrat; you know, a socialist. I kinda think that anything you do to raise up and empower the workers, raises up and empowers white, black, brown, male, and female workers, so it might be something to look into instead of dividing the agenda up into the white, black, brown, male, and female agenda. And enviros gotta stop taking a knee jerk NO position to anything and everything, green can make jobs, and benefit those workers, white, black, brown, male, and female, but stopping wind farms and rail lines isn’t helpful. Some of those green jobs gonna have enviro impact, gotta do some balancing instead of this fight to the last tadpole thing, when its stopping a green project that overall is beneficial to the environment.

@Promnight: I think in an odd way this is the Dems attempt to show spine they didn’t have against the initial bailout. Agree they are holding labor by the nuts, but I think they’re gambling that Detroit blinks first.

BTW, anyone watching the Stillers whpmpng the woeful Bungles? Detroit needs to do what Pittsburgh did in the 70s; steel is a romantic theater backdrop in the Three Rivers.

@Promnight: My group, NRDC, brings a more reasonable approach to the (bogus) jobs vs. environment issue. We often are allied with the Steelworkers, IBEW and Teamsters, sometimes with the dockworkers, seldom with the building construction trades, who would pave over Yosemite if they could get the work. If an environmental program isn’t sustainable in the sense of making economic sense for actual people, it’s not going to work. That’s the basis of our work at the ports of LA and Long Beach, fighting the feds all the way.

@Promnight: It kills me that everyone is acting like letting the Big 3 go belly up will really stick it to the rich CEOs, conveniently forgetting all the “collateral damage” in the form of workers, retirees, dealers, their employees, suppliers, and on and on. Getting huffy about a private jet when thousands of pensions and health benefits hang in the balance is shameful political posturing.

@nabisco: After working with the Japanese in finance and software, I would not be opposed to having them buy out Detroit automotive manufacturing. They have a sense of right and wrong and appreciation of craftsmanship that has somehow has been bred out of the managing classes that have completely fucked over the US automotive industry and now want the US taxpayer to bail out. Paulson and his Wall Street geeks also need to be thrown from airplanes over the mid Atlantic but that’s another story.

@Mistress Cynica: Oh, yeah, they’re all vested in Euros and Sterling and will retire to the Maldives with harems and armies of servants and will go to their graves enjoying cannibal barbeques of local virgins.

@Mistress Cynica: Thank you, I love you.

@FlyingChainSaw: Ya know half the reason lots of guys love their guns is because guns are one of the last products made with real craftmanship. The good ones are machined, not stamped, and have a heft and solidity and precision to the way they fit and operate that is viscerally satisfying. Its kinda like art, precision machine work gives an esthetic satisfaction. Maybe what we need is to move toward artisanal industry, make good stuff, using highly paid crafstmen, more expensive, but it will give satisfaction and last a lifetime.

@FlyingChainSaw: I think Michael Keaton handled the Japanese takeover of steel with grit and aplomb. And the promise of Shibiya girls in Flint? Priceless.

@Promnight: The Amish are doing really fuckin well right now, and laughing their asses off at we English.

@Promnight: I have a pair of Sears boxer shorts from the 1960s I inherited from an older brother that I still wear with tailored suits because they let the slacks drape just right. They are beautifully constructed and the design is incredibly well considered. It was here. We had all of what you described. Then Wall Street walked in and figured they could game the retail market by flogging companies for insane rates of return and forcing them to use slave labor in China. I look around the office and, gosh, a good deal of the stereo equipment is ancient Japanese or eastern states US 1970s technology. The PC I hand crafted from parts because Dell and Gateway had driven the small quality-centric manufacturers out of business. The machine on my desk would cost $2800 delivered from a specialty fabricator but I acted as general contractor and worked with two local shops to put it together – $1100 total cost, plus my time. Fifteen years ago, I could draw up specifications, call five outfits within a 10 mile drive and get quotes from all of them – plus advice on parts availability, alternatives, etc. – inside of a day. The world has never been in a better position for a revolution in high quality, precision fabrication for local needs. In my witness, I’ve seen brass instrument companies come from out of nowhere with incredibly high quality instruments and repair services – driven by computerized, precision equipment. You look at the instance of the axial valves used in trombones, some of which fairly recently came out of patent protection. Simple but very specific pieces of technology that are expensive to license and hell to fabricate to a usable standard of quality. Advanced and increasingly affordable computer controlled CNC lathe technology has allowed new artisans to beat the living fuck out of Bach (Steinway), UMI, Yamaha, Schilke, etc. in terms of quality. Boeing, at the other end of the industrial spectrum, has increasingly sent out work to mom and pop lathing operations over the decades for cost control – and for quality. Why? The mom and pops could invest in and amortize the latest technology in ways that was much more intelligent and granular than Boeing because their livelihoods really do revolve around mastery of the latest technology for competitive advantage. The automotive industry in the US may well follow the aeronautics industry. The Big 3 meltdown may be an opportunity as much as a disaster. But I doubt it.

@nabisco: I thought he was an actor. When did he get into steel?

@FlyingChainSaw: You are a renaissance man, aren’t you? I stand in awe, sometimes. I am a jerkoff of all trades, I know just a little about too much. You know a fucking lot about so much surprising shit.

We need to be more like france, but take it beyond artisanal foods, protect and encourage small scale artisanal technological and industrial industries.

Stuff is way cheap these days, compared to when I was young, and I mean everything. I am into optics, amatuer astronomy, telescopes these days are amazingly cheap, for 5 grand you could have what would have been a professional observatory 30 years ago, but you know what? Old 60s sears telescopes are in great demand, because to get that quality these days, would cost you out the ass. Old soviet stuff, too. Much better quality than the chinese stuff now so cheap.

Anyway, thats all history. We need to establish our subsistence commune, and quick, because this is the end, the sky is fucking falling, the economy has never ground to such a fucking standstill since 1932, and its gonna be ugly. Yes, when the giants fall, opportunities will be opened for the little guys, maybe, unless the fall was orchestrated by the big multinational players for the purpose of consolidating control.

@Promnight: Not at all. I get to pay attention to a lot of different industrial sectors in my day gig and it’s interesting to note common movements or opportunities that they express or realize respectively. The crapification of everything gives me the heaves. Oh, wow, where did all this black mold come from? Time to call the lawyers, right! No one says, hey, you should not be making houses out of mold-feed board and plastic mold-incubator sheeting. Laptops give out in six months. (Even a Fujitsu I custom ordered built in Osaka.) Software kinda works. Furniture is made out of pine. Clothes tear after a year. When I went to replace a simple stereo receiver I prized for 20 years for keeping my ears busy while at work, I was driven to despair, realizing the depths to which this consumer sector had fallen. I ended up buying old equipment and locating an old (literally, guy worked at HH Scott) technician to bring it up to factory specifications and replace aging components. All the camera equipment is 70s and 80s vintage, yes, still emulsion-based. I have one digital camera, the Fuji E900 which I prize for color trueness for daylight photography but the build quality is egregious. I would not spend serious money on a digital SLR until I lift something that had a feel of permanence like an old Leica or Nikon. Again, I think a big part of it is the world being told what to do by Wall Street – which always redounds to throwing artisans into the street and shipping the work off to slave labor camps in China so the bullied company can book their 15% increase in revenues per quarter to satisfy the fuckwitted analysts.

@problemwithcaring: @redmanlaw: Lefty will take care of the orientation later.

Shit! I’ve been falling down on the job! I’ve been busy working on a biz-ness trip to a tropical isle and just had the most amazing, orgasmic meal of my life tonight. I may have to do a special guest appearance on Prommy’s Food Porn blog later this week describing it.

Welcome, problemwithcaring! Thanks for unlurking! I’ll bring by the welcome wagon of ice-chilled vodka, yummy mimosas, Humboldt County’s finest exports, and my Tex-Mex spinach turkey enchiladas for you later when I get home to my oven in California.

xoxo
SF Lefty