Nice.

yea cause people work there and actually make things

and
hahahahahahahahha

New York state’s attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, this week issued a subpoena to Bank of America Corp , asking for details on how it allocates its bonuses, the Wall Street Journal said, citing a person familiar with the matter.

pass the popcorn

what’s the alternative? unions never want to give an inch. gm won’t build affordable hybrids.time to start over?

bank of america is now too big to fail and must therefore be broken up

I do not want megaliths like bank of america to exist

reminds me of the movie “wall street”. gut it. sell the good pieces. rebuild. quite painful, of course.

Great post Jane … and you call it exactly for what it is.

Wagoner is a nice guy but am not too impressed with his judgment. Met him socially during the runup to the 2004 election. Here he was out in public in an official capacity as a board member of a nonprofit and he’s sporting a “Bush” button.

I was appalled (not very professional by my standards). Wonder how he feels the Bush years have been working out for him and GM ? /s

really important post. i hadn’t considered the issue of the union contracts, and i bet i’m not the only one. thanks for getting the word out.

During yesterday’s House hearing some congresstwit from Alabama(?) was saying that the workers at Honda and Mercedes in Ala. were being paid $35.00 hour and the workers in Detroit were paid $75.00 hour and it was not fair for workers in Alabama to use their tax money to subsidize the workers in Detroit. Bustthe damn unions was what he was saying. Of course he did not mention that the profits from Honda and Mercedes were going out of this country. These corporate whores will stop at nothing to bust the unions.

good hearings on cspan now. finance anyone?

Surely a union contract is savvy enough for just such contingencies as this gambit appears to be. That would mean lawsuits in the right courts, I would expect. Please advise.

OT - i’m late with this (sorry!), but there’s a couple of interesting hearings that just got started: George Soros to testify before Waxman’s committee and Dodd’s banking committee is hold a hearing on oversight of the bailout bill with reps from Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo Bank and Goldman Sachs. details at oxdown.

If a business is “too big to fail” it should be owned by the taxpayer.

OT almost
the bailouting hearings are on CSPAN
Senate CSPAN 1

Banking executives discuss how they are using Treasury Dep’t. funds as part of the financial rescue. Consumer advocates also testify at this hearing of the Senate Banking Cmte., chaired by Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT).

.
House CSPAN 3

George Soros is one of several hedge fund executives testifying about the industry’s impact on recent economic instability. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) called the hearing to discuss how regulations and tax reforms can decrease risk to financial markets.

related Bloomberg article

if there is no company then there is no one to sue. it will be over. i believe it is contract law.

IANAL but I believe there have been multiple court rulings that allow companies to use bankruptcy to get out from under Union contracts.

And retirement plans

And healthcare obligations

etc

Chris Dodd sounds really angry.

The Chevy Volt’s due out in 2010. That’s the game-changer.

is it too much to ask what direct financial benefits the members of the Senate & House have in these bailouts?

just giving the public a rough idea of their net worth is not good enough.

shouldn’t be that big anyway. that is/was the problem.

false indignation from an enabler imo.

thanks elliot and crc!

they shouldn’t be too big too fail in the first place.

it’s a good start but maybe too little too late. seriously they are 10 years too late.

it breaks my heart to say it, but i have to agree. :(

I think his anger is real, about exactly what I’m not sure.

If GM goes into bankruptcy and the union contracts get voided and they plan to stay in business, just who do they think are going to build cars for them?
The UAW people?

There are many who would tell GM to pound sand.
Not just anyone has the skills to do those jobs. You can’t stick an illiterate high school drop out in one of them .

yes the uaw and at half the salary probably. it’s better than starving.

calif @ 19 and Elliot @ 22 I could not agree more but as they are “too big” they should be nationalized and then broken up.

no, thank you!

Thanks Jane.

digg

Thanks for thisn post.

Blood boiling here. Walter Reuther turning over in hisn grave.

Okay I just had an argument with someone believed the “high wages” ($74?) and benefits of auto workers and the “union” were partly to blame for the demise of the Detroit auto industry. This person is in finance and obviously listens to coworkers when they put their two cents in. So it’s all about “unions” for them.

Works for me!

We could have bought up MCI/Worldcom for a pittance back in the day, and owned the danged thing. Overhead costs would plummet as the top salaries would be 200,000 or so — which is the most a Fed can make.

always listen to your Jane !

have been too caught up in the Election Afterglow and not paying attention . . .
until late last night when I caught Tweety’s guest: Heidi Harris, a Las Vegas Winger Radio Personality:

“ultimately this bailout of the Big 3 is a bailout of the Unions, let’s be honest here…”

a-ha!

note: continuing troubles with posting comments - worried about the dreaded double post

It’s a leapfrog over what Japan’s doing — it can still use gas, but it’ll be mostly electric.

okay smart kids, what is President Elect Obama to do ? he is NOT going to throw Labor under a bus here - does he take Chimpy’s CAFTA poison pill ??

Its a big enough mess for more than 2 sides.

There are 2 wings of people who’d like to toss the corporate shell of GM into the trash - the union busters, & the management busters. I’m with the latter group. The union busters are pushing Chapter 11. For management busters, the preferred notion is to make them file Chapter 7, and then have the government step in & relaunch the businesses.

In a way, the mainstream bailout people are between these wings. I feel like they’re in a squishy center, unwilling to admit to the depth of the problem. Sort of like with AIG - where the damage under the surface was much, much bigger than anybody would admit, except with GM the total fail is in plain sight.

Hope I’m wrong.

Luking Mods:
Thanks for editing mine at 28.

No. I believe that the remaining goopers in Congress will not want to vote against the auto bailout and chimpy will have to sign it or see an even worse mess for the gooper party.

Ah, selise;

The last year has certainly revealed the ‘priorities’ of the Political Class. Hypocrisy reigns. The ‘difference’ between ‘greater’ and ‘lesser’ is, clearly, ‘negotiable’ and subject to (unannounced) whimsical change.

I would wager, based only on a SWAG, that the $35 and $75 figures are averaged Cost Accounting numbers that include the cost of full benefit packages and the actual hourly rates for both sides is much less.

makes sense - me likey

well except for the “have to sign it” part. it’s not like he gives a rat’s ass about the other rats - but you are right, they will fiercely pressure him on it.

yes, unions had their part. iirc, at last contract time gm wanted concessions claiming they were broke. unions said, no. plants started to close, and close. so, i believe your person has a point.

You’re right - the company can get out of all their obligations and still function via a chapter 11 filing. It’s likely that GM would simply require the union to take compensation cuts as happened in a few airlines.

“Unions never give an inch”

WTF? Unions take paycuts and everything else necessary for the big 3 to keep treading water, but shitty decisions from mgmt and cars no one wants to buy means the workers are screwed no matter how much ground they give.

These workers are the backbone of the middle class and if we let them fail, we fail the country. Executives need to be brought to pay for this and we need to help the workers.

I was googling for some answers to the points you raised and one of the hits was,

#
Firedoglake » Union-Busters Want GM To File Bankruptcy
Nov 13, 2008 … IANAL but I believe there have been multiple court rulings that allow companies to use bankruptcy to get out from under Union contracts. …
firedoglake.com/2008/11/13/union-busters-want-gm-to-file-bankruptcy/ - 29 minutes ago - Similar pages
#
Union

great, now all they will need is someone to build it, who has a job that can buy it and can get a loan. easy, right?

Yes though, I am reminded of a time when our CT Ex-gov. Rowland decided to lay off state workers, more as a punishment to the union, and not for any legitimate reason.

Please go on, I need more to argue with my finance “expert”.

Does anyone hear ever watch CNBC? Most of the clowns on that channel would love for GM to declare bankruptcy for exactly the reason Jane spells out. The one problem with a GM bankruptcy is that people would stop buying their cars.

Except that bankruptcy isn’t a cure-all.

Just sayin’

Money for Nothing
U.S. Car Companies Pay Hundreds of Millions of Dollars in Wages to Idled Workers

Bust it? NO! But maybe they need to look into somethings.

not from what i can see in proportion to the problem. they just don’t believe the companies. it’s a mess now. i am not anti union or humanity. it will be a huge problem to fix.

Bingo!! Thanks Michael!!

And not only benefits, but also an overhead rate per employee which would include their ’share’ of people like the personnel office, payroll personnel, etc. etc.

Charlie Rose had on Bill Ackman from the Pershing hedge fund who was pushing the bankruptcy idea pretty much across the board. He said that bankruptcy would wipe out investors but allow companies to re-organize and come out afterwards owned by their creditors. He pointedly did not identify who the investors were (retirement funds, small investors, etc) or who the creditors might be (banks, hedge funds, etc). And he only touched briefly on what re-organization (as Jane points out unionbusting) would mean.

I think it is really important that when plans about how to deal with the housing mess and the financial meltdown are put forth that we look past the wording (dislocation, re-organization, etc) to what the actual practical effects are (job losses, unionbusting, concentration of business, creation of more businesses too big to fail) and precisely who the winners (speculators) and losers (us) will be.

unions have made some enemies over the years in the quest of fairness/protection for the workers. classic struggle between rich/poor.

I am sure that, as the person who said it is a gooper, it is exaggerated bullshit, however the argument was clear that he wanted the unions busted.

does the name DELPHI ring a bell !?!?

Like, for instance, National Health Care?

The Right always waves around the bloody rag of the horrible unions - but never, ever talks about Management giving up anything. Even when Management basically takes a company down into the toilet(which we have seen time and time again), they do not pay for their stupidity. “Actions have consequences” is something that needs to be applied to Management as well as everyone else. I don’t want to see any taxpayer money going to Management of banks, brokerage houses…and not to Management of entities like GM, which basically have been behaving in a stupid, self-serving and short-sighted way for decades.

This move by the 30%ers is against unions and high paying jobs that is obvious. Unions are more expense to build cars the GOP argues because of benefits, like healthcare.
Yet Japan has national healthcare we don’t we have the highest healthcare costs on the planet.
Private insurance has failed to provide healthcare better, cheaper and for everyone if anything without government regulation the profit motive raises prices.
We can save GM long term by lowering their healthcare costs by Nationalizing and regulating healthcare on a not for profit model.
The GOP would rather that unions lose their benefits and healthcare cost remain the same.
The GOP says Japan can make cars cheaper than us. Loer healthcare costs are one reason why.

In the Japanese health care system, healthcare services, including free screening examinations for particular diseases, prenatal care, and infectious disease control, are provided by national and local governments. Payment for personal medical services is offered through a universal health care insurance system that provides relative equality of access, with fees set by a government committee. People without insurance through employers can participate in a national health insurance program administered by local governments. Since 1973, all elderly persons have been covered by government-sponsored insurance. Patients are free to select physicians or facilities of their choice.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Japan

Geebus. I am not a marxist, but sometimes I wonder what makes a CEO or a movie star earn more than the production crew? Do they work harder? I’m not so sure about that. If anything, IMHO production, auto workers etc. sustain the “money for nothing” crew.

So let’s just throw away the unions and declare management the winners in the class war? Because that’s the ultimate effect.

It’s called sub-pay, the union negotiated that employees get something like 95% of their pay along with their benefits for a period of time after being laid off. Management agreed to it, not seeing how miserably their business model would fail. So now you want to punish the union workers while allowing management their golden parachutes?

So now, california, we move from what you term the ‘classic struggle’ to blatant, open class warfare, which is what I would suggest is precisely what has been going on for decades, for forty, or more, years.

Guess who is winning?

Who is greedier? The ‘grunts’ or the ‘brass’?

Do we need to lay odds?

Oddly, within our society there are many such ‘bifurcations’, all explained and justified by myth and pereverted ‘common sense’.

shitty decisions from mgmt and cars no one wants to buy means the workers are screwed no matter how much ground they give.

I agree. Here are a few of the shitty management decisions I can think of:

Lack of flexibility in product lines (being able to go from SUVs to compacts as Japanese plants can do)

Lack of investment in and commitment to future products: hybrids, electrics, etc.

Failure to read and anticipate the market

Mediocre Design

Failure to back universal healthcare (How many time have we heard Detroit execs cite how many hundreds of dollars they have to pay per car for healthcare yet they have never used their clout to push for a single payer system which would lower their costs?)

my father was an exec and he did not sit on his ass, fwiw.

hey I like that Whitney kid, he’s goin’ places :D

Another way to save GM build cars that people want cheap fuel efficient cars.
Build cars that cost people less to maintain and cost less to fill up. That extra $10 a week or more at the gas pump spread out among millions of drivers would be an extra how many millions a week put right back into our economy.
Help the planet with the green house effect. Help others help yourself with National HealthCare. Help the economy by putting an extra $10 or more a week adding up to millions 52 weeks in a year back into our economy instead of Ossama’s pocket.
The choice is clear.

Even when Management basically takes a company down into the toilet(which we have seen time and time again), they do not pay for their stupidity.

This is so untrue. Paulson froze bonuses for AIG executives at their currents levels. /s

Well chapter 11 just about insures that the shareholders go bust and get NOTHING- pretty steep price to pay to renegotiate a union contract? Salaries, bonuses, and golden parachutes would be at risk too- so I don’t know who the evil genius would be who WANTS to go chapter 11- the beneficiary would be whoever buys up the assets for pennies on the dollar and then renegotiates the contracts

It appears that the Republican plan to destroy America and America’s economy as we know it has succeded all expectations. If the Dems can’t or won’t rebirth America’s economy via a ‘new deal’ then progressive Americans have the ‘obligation’ to do it.

Here’s a precedent in another industry,

Miners’ Benefits Vanish With Bankruptcy Ruling
By JAMES DAO

Published: October 24, 2004

…But last month, a federal bankruptcy judge in Kentucky authorized Cannelton’s owner, Horizon Natural Resources, to terminate its collective bargaining agreements with the United Mine Workers of America. And just like that, Mr. Leake’s guaranteed health insurance was gone…

…Though similar decisions left thousands of unionized steelworkers without retiree benefits during the 1990’s, the Horizon case marks the first time bankruptcy law has been used to void union contracts in the coal industry, experts said. Now, the mineworkers union is bracing for new bankruptcy filings by coal companies seeking to alter or eliminate collective bargaining agreements….

,,,Horizon, based in Ashland, Ky., had been among the nation’s largest coal producers before going deep into debt. In 2002, it sought Chapter 11 protection from its creditors. This year, it asked Judge Howard to abrogate its union contracts, asserting that the high cost of union benefits had made the properties unattractive to potential buyers.

Judge Howard agreed. In a ruling in August, he said “unrefuted evidence” showed that Horizon’s mines could not be sold as long as its expensive obligations to union retirees remained in place. He asserted that elimination of the benefits, while painful, was in the public interest because it would preserve nonunion jobs at about two dozen other mines that might have closed in a liquidation.

His decision paved the way for Horizon to release about 800 union workers and to sell two dozen mining operations, both union and nonunion, for $786 million to International Coal Group, led by the financier Wilbur T. Ross. International Coal Group then sold two of the union mines to Massey Energy Company. Mr. Ross has also led consortiums that acquired steel mills through similar bankruptcy proceedings in recent years.

But did he work for GM or Ford since the 70’s they have lost market share and their stock price has dropped yet still they are rewarded.
Also FDR did limit executive pay to get the economy going Jim Webb talked about that when he ran for Senate. I wish he gets a bill passed on that now.

and that my friend NEEDS TO OBIES forray into SINGLE PAYER UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE,ON A MEDICARE MODEL

St. Reagan, the Patron Saint of Republics, says that unions are evil.
If he hadn’t said that, Republics would be pro-union.

Paulson and pals love bargains,MITTENS too

I am not saying they sit on their asses. I am asking the question of whether or not they work harder than the lower paid staff.

St Ronnie of Alzheimer teritories

Looking over the comments here, and for a lefty blog there sure is a lot of anti-union sentiment. Seems that Raygun and his rethug buddies did their jobs well in turning a lot of people against the unions.

Oh crap, well at least their wives will be able to shop at Barneys this X-mas?

Including union members who vote Republic.

Well that is one thing I hated about taking management classes. Precisely that anti-union sentiment. It’s always the horror stories that get recounted, and not say the bigger picture of American workers from 1890-2000 plus.

There’s one aspect of Ackman’s bankruptcy idea that I would like if properly implemented. Why not count union employees as preferred creditors? And transfer the company to them.

Many movie stars are incredibly talented people…Hanks, Cusak, Streep, etc. People like Schwartzenager, not so much. The crew are workers. If they were Spielbergs, they’d be doing what he does.
There is a difference.

As a big union supporter I am wondering what the best way of saving their jobs will be. Obviously GM, and for that matter Ford, cannot continue as they are.

As of August 2008, General Motors Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Rick Wagoner was quoted saying that the price of the Volt in the U.S. market would likely be in “the mid to high 30’s”. Initially, the GM vice president wanted it at about US $30,000.

Bob Lutz, Manager of North American Development said on Sixty Minutes that the price is really up into the $40’s now. This is the same Bob Lutz that is on record as a global warming skeptic, on one occasion calling global warming “a total crock of shit”.

And writers too? I’ve met talented special effects types. And I am *not* a big Spielberg fan.

Don’t get me started! My old Local had a whole lot of Rs in the bargaining unit. I recall trying to tell some of them that they were voting against their own economic self-interest. The response: “That stuff’s not important.” WTF?

Again I say National Health Care.

I lost my Sixty Minutes Link. So here it is. Lutz talks about the Volt.

Wait a minute, demi. With all due respect. Workers v. “a Spielberg.” C’mon. How much input goes into genius? How much editing from production goes into a “genius” novelist. Or even ghostwriting. I am more inclined that this is 99% hegemonistic.

anyone have a way to get jane’s post to stiglitz? from tuesday’s news (pbs’ newshour, i just listened to the podcast last night):

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, what is so clear that, in the case of the financial sector, we made some fundamental flaws in this movement to deregulation, that we allowed the banks to put money in risky places. We didn’t supervise in the way that we should have.

And we’re bearing some of the consequences of that major failure in deregulation that began under President Reagan.

Now, in the case of the automobile industry, it’s another separate set of issues. My own feeling is, again, we ought to use the bankruptcy code. These companies ought to go bankrupt, be reorganized.

That doesn’t mean the company ceases to exist. What it means is you restructure the finances. Once you wipe out some of bad debt — yes, the government will have to assume some protection for pension funds. It won’t be costless, but it will allow them to get a fresh start — it’s the reason we have a bankruptcy code — and begin the process of restructuring America’s manufacturing sector with some degree of accountability.

The problem is that the CEOs in the financial sector and these motor vehicle companies have not done a good job, and they should be held accountable.

In the automobile industry, they bet on low oil prices. They ignored the risks of global warming. And the result of that is they designed cars that were not appropriate for the world as we have it today.

In the automobile industry, they bet on low oil prices. They ignored the risks of global warming. And the result of that is they designed cars that were not appropriate for the world as we have it today.
—————-
its worse thn that….they didnt give a crap
they make MUCH MORE money on SUVs that run on truck chasis,it was PURE GREED from management

Nationalize the industry.

shitty decisions from mgmt and cars no one wants to buy means the workers are screwed no matter how much ground they give.

jared diamond discusses this dynamic in his book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. when the elite don’t have to live with the results of their choices - but the rest of society does - that is a recipe for failure.

Somebody ought to write a history of the SUV. I always wondered how it became a “must have.” Like I know people who feel they “must have” an SUV, e.g. it saves trips to the stores; you can bring all the kinds, blah blah blah.

Gotta agree! A huge looming question is: would these companies be profitable if they weren’t paying for employees’ health care? Another question I would like to have an answer to if I had any time for research: Do any of the big three actually pay any taxes other than payroll taxes for their employees? Many companies find loopholes and deduction that zero out their tax bills. Many companies was about 60% last I heard!

I mean the brady bunch had 6 kids and they drove a station wagon, which I supppose is another story.

Union busting or not, we can’t employ people to make products that are not selling. They’d just be adding to the inventory and further adding to the losses. The company has to pay for unsodd inventory, and for the employees who keep making it.

lose-lose.

he did not. but he also didn’t work with a golden parachute on his back or excessive compensation. He earned his taxed-at-90% salary with his hard work and his contributions to the company doing things the ordinary worker was not capable of doing.

I don’t want to come off defending the crooks of today, he’d have no patience for the crap going on in many corporations and would be appalled at the bailout giveaway,
but a good executive contributes what the ordinary worker cannot, with leadership, diligence, a slew of responsibilities, intelligence, and a 24/7/365 commitment(Fulltime is not 40 hours a week). And this includes taking responsibility for the welfare of every worker under him/her.

Bob Lutz may be a putz about global warming, but don’t discount what he says about the 40K he cites.

They could price it as a loss leader, in order to get better positioned for profit on subsequent models.

I also know of a well-positioned exec inside the auto industry who says that the Volt is vaporware, but has been unwilling to go on record. I suspect that at the time they gave this opinion, they were worried about their own job and about the impact on stock value. Well, I think those issues are now off the table. Let’s hope the truth comes out soon.

This is pretty old, but I’m sure if they didn’t pay under Clinton they don’t now:

Most companies paid no taxes during the boom

You need to look more closely at why products aren’t selling; GM sold about 17 million vehicles last year, had projected a smaller number at 15 million this year. That number is now in the tank primarily because of the financial and credit crisis, not because 15 million people don’t want a GM vehicle.

The problem is how to right-size GM to be a 15 million vehicle a year producer, while they have legacy costs appropriate to a company that sold twice that many a year. The people who are most at risk aren’t just current blue- and white-collar workers, but retirees.

The large inventory of non SUV vehicles that they at the moment cold be sold to Americans at large discount allowing the companies some liquidity and sparking the economy. The SUVs can be scrapped and railroad tracks can be made from them!!

Years ago I read a book, The Rape of the Taxpayer, and it opened my eyes. At that time, I was a steelworker, and I discovered that none of the big five steel companies paid any income tax at all, either. Same went for many other industries. And many very wealthy people who avoided taxes by investing in ways that were devoid of tax bills, like city or state bonds, etc.

I realized the other day that I am seeing fewer and fewer SUVs on the road. For awhile it seemed they were everywhere but are now disappearing - thank goodness, I hate them.

Yes, it’s class warfare and we lost. As Warren Buffett said, he pays an effective tax rate of 17%, less than his secretary.

GM makes fuel efficient cars for the rest of the world- lots of economical Opels for example..they need only begin importing them

And those cars are manufactured in countries where they have strong unions ….go figure

Call it what you want, but he’s right.

This is exactly what Chapter 11 is supposed to be fore. Debt re-organization. A bailout is not going to do anything fundamentally productive here.

These companies aren’t suddenly going to become solvent, start producing profitable product lines, and trimming expenses just because the government infuses them with liquidity. Further the UAW isn’t going to be equally forced to the table to negotiate employment terms moving forward which in any way reflect the reality of their situation unless it’s through arbitration in Chapter 11.

I’m very pro-labor (well I’m pro-understanding the symbiotic relationship between management and labor), but a bailout here isn’t going to be anymore fundamentally sound or productive for the auto-industry than Paulson’s TARP designs were for the commercial credit industry.

we can’t employ people to make products that are not selling. They’d just be adding to the inventory and further adding to the losses.

This is the kind of thinking that made the Great Depression Great. You fire people because products aren’t selling thereby reducing your market further meaning you need to fire even more people because even more of your products aren’t selling and the market for them is now even smaller. It’s a feed forward mechanism. Pursuing this strategy doesn’t solve your problem it makes it worse. It’s why Keynes said you had to spend your way to recovery. Doing it the other way produces deflation, unemployment, and depression.

I’m very pro-labor (well I’m pro-understanding the symbiotic relationship between management and labor), but a bailout here isn’t going to be anymore fundamentally sound or productive for the auto-industry than Paulson’s TARP designs were for the commercial credit industry.

Not precisely analogous since Paulson and Bernanke are spending trillions to save the paper economy whereas GM is part of the real economy and its bailout would cost about what Paulson spent on a single bank.

Top management of GM has been driving the company in the ground for the last 30 years. Poor managment decisions, only concerned about profits over the next quarter and never having a vision of what the future may have in store. The Republicons and the corporate media wants to blame the unions. The unions should fight back with everything they have. The U.S. is entering into a pre-revolutionary period.

imo typical bankruptcy and reorganization is designed for the situation where a company is failing - not when the economy is failing.

The collapse of GM, Ford and Chrysler will result in the loss of 3-5 million jobs overnight. There will be riots the likes of which haven’t been seen since Russia circa 1917.

Oh hey, as long as people are only doing lipservice questioning hegemony, I don’t have much hope. It seems almost in every industry there are valued workers and non-valued workers with a lot of lot of false criteria for what makes either. (The criteria is not always false, but sometimes I belive it is). We live in a society where “inventors” (and also “leaders”) claim genius, when essentially most inventions are derivative, built on other inventions, other people’s ideas. To snatch those ideas and “make it happen” is called “genius” when often it includes having connections, chutzpah and the stomach to make it off the sweat of other people’s backs, and the stomach to call something your own when its not.(Disclaimer: I am not a Marxist. I am not that studious, even in lit crit. But I would like to play devil’s advocate.)

There was a time and a place when it was considered an honor to pay homage to one’s predecessors, in say literature, e.g. classic chinese poetry and also art I think.

At least Michael Whitney has a clue about what he is talking about. Most of the posts I read in these blogs just parrot the talking points of the financial channels and the MSM. Take it from someone who spent forty years in the Automobile business with GM and Ford, if the Unions get busted you can watch every other wage scale go down, I knew that as part of management my wage scale was directly affected by the union wage scale. These corporations are not benevolent societies, they are in the business to make profits and as such will cut every corner to do so. I hear people castigating the big three for not building the cars that are in vogue now, I ask them how would GM, Ford and Chrysler know that speculators would drive the price of oil to the level of almost $150 a barrel, they were building the cars and trucks that the market wanted and were doing rather well with profits until Bush/Cheney secret energy program went into effect. The big three can be criticised for many things, but not for building the wrong units. Having been involved in launching new models and plants over the forty years the so called experts don’t have a clue what they are talking about. I could go on for forty more pages, but this should suffice.

Not precisely analogous since Paulson and Bernanke are spending trillions to save the paper economy whereas GM is part of the real economy and its bailout would cost about what Paulson spent on a single bank.

I hold to my original statement. When I say effective or productive, I mean that it’s not going to do anything more than buy a little leverage against inevitability; which is precisely analogous to the ad-hoc financial sector bailouts.

that would be if you wish to adopt the neg view. personally i hope for another outcome.

Finally, a truly informed voice here - thank you brandane for saying what I was about to. Got delayed here - had to pick up daughter from early out at school. After reading some of the comments here, I had to check to make sure I didn’t get forwarded to some right wing blog. People, American car companies have been building a range of cars including some that get decent gas mileage. As well, foreign car companies have been building SUV’s. And guess what? The American public has been buying the shit outta gas guzzlers made by ALL the manufacturers! Funny how Ford and GM are doing so badly. Hmmmm, maybe they have an agenda here. Either get a bailout or a bankruptcy. In Chrysler’s case, Cerberus is offering buyouts to laid off employees. You know why? Because when the market recovers, they get to replace those workers with $14/hr new hires. Too bad they don’t do the same thing with the ceo and upper staff folks that get paid millions. Meanwhile, all the support jobs get a pay cut as well. Folk, this is a concerted efort to further reduce the income levels of the middle class. Wake up!

exactly, we have to move to OPEN warfair to get it solved. it will not be pretty.

Oh and one more thing - autoworkers (union) get paid $25 to $35 per hour, depending on skill level, NOT $75 per hour. Upper management on the other hand gets a bunch more. I’ve been both with Chrysler. Californirealitycheck and others here need to get a clue.

No war but class war … now!

Democracy and the future hang (precariously) in the balance.

This ‘war’ which, of necessity MUST be non-violent on our ’side’, however extreme the actions and reactions of the ‘other’, will, someday, be termed a ‘good’ war, and, with any luck, it may well end all major war-making as ‘policy’ or as a money-making ‘proposition’ …

Excessive speculation in the oil market began in 2004 when year over year prices went up by a third. The housing bubble would have been visible to financial analysts of which I’m assuming GM had a few from 2004 onwards as well. Its bursting together with knock on effects on credit and general economic activity would have been predictable from early 2006 and certainly by the time of the collapse of the two Bear Stearns in June 2007 or those of Paribas in August 2007. That was more than a year ago. And we have seen the most recent spike and fall in oil prices since then as well as the economic meltdown in September of this year following the Lehman failure. But GM had or shoulf have had plenty of warning about all these things.

Add into this how internal combustion engines figure into peak oil which is already upon us or the tight window we have to address global warming and yes, I would say that if GM execs didn’t have their heads so deeply up their butts so they could lick their tonsils they could have foreseen and reacted infinitely better than they did.

Re ImperialFlow, government economic policy like tax policy is about social engineering. Would I rather see $25 billion paid to autoworkers to keep them hired at good wages, increasing both the country’s economic and social stability, maybe retooling to build more fuel efficient eco-freindly cars in the face of peak energy and global warming as opposed to giving it away to JP Morgan? You bet.

Unfortunately, modern capitalism focuses exclusively on share-holder value (if it must) and the executives’ bonuses (if it can). Other stakeholders’ interests receive short shrift. This narrow self-interested focus has contributed mightily to the debacle in which we find now find ourselves ensnared.

Everybody who invested money in these dinosaur without holding the hired management accountable should be penalized by losing everything. The bondholders knew what the legacy costs were for any of the the Big 3, it wasn’t a secret. They just figured they’d bail out before the firm had to actually pay off on those implicit debts sometime in the future. The shareholders could have pushed their hired management to make better, long-range decisions, but the short term profits were just too sweet. Both categories, who had some ability to influence corporate decision making in a friendly way, failed.

Hell, when corporate management had a chance 15 years ago to actively support national health care, which might have assisted in lifting this burden off their backs, they ultimately screwed the Clinton Administration by first backing Hillary’s health care initiative and they finally coming out against it. The big corporations are reaping the whirlwind they’ve been sowing for the last thirty years. Let them burn.

Jane you are so right!!
The Rethuglian Talking heads have always wanted to bust unions because then the workers have no voice in their employment and the owners can ride rough shod over their employees! The shrill come back of “you can always get another job” is so empty in its rhetoric that it has become their rallying cry to the workers plight!
Unions have been the reason there is a middle class in this country! Regan started the real union busting and the rethuglians have ever since tried to minimize the place in the work place. I have had nothing but pure contempt for Regan after he broke the Air Traffic Controller’s Union. He was a pure Milty Friedman believer and he tried to put those “Theories” into policy and ever since his party has been doing the same thing at the cost of the Middle Class. And those same “Theories” of no regulations for the Market is the very reason we are in the pickle we are in now. It all comes down to pure pornographic GREED by the rich and well positioned Corporatist! Dam PIGS!!

As I said, the oil speculation started with Bush/Cheney, they took office in Jan 2001 and they had their infamous secret energy meeting shortly after, enuff said. You obviously think GM or any car manufacturer can turn out a new model within months, when in fact they are lucky if they can do it in a couple of years.

ding ding ding!

GM shoud file bankruptcy while the fuckers who caused the economic mess get to rape what’s left of tax payer money. Sounds about right.

Union-busting? Come on, Jane, GM is in trouble, and they may have no choice to file chapter 11. Of course, if that happens, then it could be likely that the government nationalizes GM, and with the development of the seventh-generation Corvette on hold, that worries me…