They were dumb and suckered americans with their image marketing. Same rubbish as the american dream which “drove” everyone to buy a home because… it was the american thing to do – or the unamerican thing to NOT do.

See: the Century of the Self

It explains how we have been manipulated by marketing in ALL aspects of our lives.

So part of the fix is to deal with the fuck up. Cut the waste for starters. You need to make the operations lean and mean. No big salaries and shareholders – the “owners” of the biz are going to have to anti up and throw some of their OWN “$upport” into the biz. A radical idea? Let’s see… I know that big biz uses debt financing for almost everything, but mom and pops need to scrape together assets, mortgage their home, forgo their salary, raise the money to STAY in biz or to perhaps get some new machinery or “stuff” for their business. Corporate shareholders are in the game the same way. Their biz needs cash – THEY need to help out. it’s not a one way deal where all they do is get dividends. Consider it negative dividends.

And this doesn’t even address the core biz practices. Mr Banker… you want OUR loan, then drop YOUR interest rates to OUR people, the ones who are “giving” you the bailout. You want OUR money to get you out of the dumpster… then quit the high risk gambling practices – no CDS no bundling and trading securities, no derivitives. You stick to your core biz of lending money WITH collateral to sensible biz concepts or qualified home buyers. You make your money on the spread of interest paid and loaned. . That’s a bank. THAT is too important to fail. The trading operation is NOT banking – that division must go.

Same goes for Motown – build sensible cars, that are not fuel hogs and cash cows and unsafe and we will assist you and the people will buy your products. STOP the waste and sell of your corporate fleet. Why exactly can’t you fly commercial? How about sharing one plane for all you guys? How much flying are you doing? Let’s audit that operation.

Support is fine, but not throwing our money at irresponsible businesses who keep at doing the nasty things they have done for decades. Change you MUST… or you won’t get our help.

The demise of Kaiser-Frazer,Packard,Hudson and Nash in the 1950’s led to closing of Studebaker in 1966 and also the trickle of imports rising ever higher during late 1960’s and upward from the early 1970’s.

That was the manufacturing and market decline part of the story for American legacy automakers. What happened to City of Detroit because of social and economic change and auto manufacture decline is another part of the story.

Over at http://www.washingtonmonthly.com this past Sunday(11-23) Hilzoy had a piece on Detroit titled ‘Desolation’ which illustrated just one small part of Detroit’s steep decline since the 1970’s. There are a set of photos in that piece that show and tell of a school building and the neighborhood that surrounded it and the complete devastation that has come to it.

It is profoundly moving to see in these images of that school building the vivid fall down that has overcome Detroit. I encourage anyone with a interest in American social fabric to take time to pull up Hilzoy’s piece ‘Desolation’at http://www.washingtonmonthly.com and view this photo set and read the story of this school building and the vanished part of Detroit it now forlornly stands alone in.

What is happening today in United States in late 2008 has roots going back to what began and happened to Detroit some forty years ago regarding American automobile making,jobs and social/economic history. Take the time and check out Hilzoy’s piece on just this one piece of a now desolate and lost part of Detroit and America.

thanks, Elliott. That guy’s always good for a laugh or two.

Obviously Citi and AIG are “too big to fail” because mega bonuses for the well deserving already wealthy are at stake, whereas loss of millions of jobs from GM/Ford/Chrysler going under – serves them all right for wanting a living wage. Its the Randian ratfucker way.

The $700 billion “bailout” of the financial industry in the hands of bush/republican hacks is the republicans’ farewell-to-power-for-now parting rape of the average American and drowning of America. After 20-Jan-09 republicans go into full swing tear down Obama mode.

WJ this morning
7:30am – Greg Ip, The Economist, U.S. Economics Editor
8:00am – Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Former Sr. Policy Adviser to McCain for President Campaign
8:30am – Gene Sperling, Center for American Progress, Senior Fellow
9:00am – Newspaper Articles & Phones
9:30am – David Enrich, Wall Street Journal, Banking Reporter