Rolling US Economy Into The Shitbin Thread

GM SAVED BY ZERO

Maybe running a dozen car ads every commercial break on prime time network television every day for the last 20+ years is not a smart way to spend your money.

Ha, I have totally been thinking this myself lately. "They're still paying for ad time? With what, blood?"

well contracts take some time to unravel. there was an article in the times about GM cutting back on advertising and sponsorship

that bill really isnt going to pass though, don. and there's still a fair amount of disagreement about where the money is going to come from no? and if it comes from TARP that necessitates new legislation.

A good article by Joseph Stiglitz on lessons from the current crisis and how to move forward:

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/11/the-seven-deadly-deficits.html

Maybe running a dozen car ads every commercial break on prime time network television every day for the last 20+ years is not a smart way to spend your money.

And yet it seems to work for Toyota... or at least it did until they got into the fullsize pickup market...

I've got more perspective on this than I can really share in a general economy-into-the-shitbin thread, but suffice to say that yes painful rightsizing is the only longterm solution for GM and Ford. And for once rightsizing is really the right term: the enterprises are very simply way too large for their current and future market share to support.

That potentially leaves a lot of empty factories, which the UAW ain't having. Hence the stalemate of the past 20 years. This nut's going to be very hard to crack, cash isn't going to fix it, and the UAW has shown no sign of willingness to make the concessions that the US industry's long-term health would require (I'm not certain it should - that question is VERY complicated and I just haven't thought it through clearly enough to take a position.)

Chrysler, otoh, was a lost cause before Cerberus stepped. Dudes were actually hiding inventory in parking lots and recognizing it as sales!!! At least burning cash would generate light and heat.

does "job retraining" ring hollow to anyone else? to do hwat, might i ask...

to do hwat, might i ask...

Work at Wal-mart, if they're lucky. xp

RE: David Brooks column

I lol'd at his 'recessions result in lowered hemlines' thing. OH NOEZ!

which retail stores will go bankrupt after nightmarish holiday sales?

my money's on borders

I'm just surprised they haven't gone out of business already.

"which retail stores will go bankrupt after nightmarish holiday sales?"

Best Buy? Comp USA?

chinese democracy will singlehandedly save best buy

Pier 1? It looks like the stock price is already factoring in a bankruptcy.

http://finance.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NYSE:PIR

lol @ "retraining"
wasn't that promised when NAFTA was shoved thru

Pier 1 seems so stuck in the 80s that I do wonder how it's managed to survive this long.

big markup on wicker, apparently

a longish post from steve coll on how "a rescue of Detroit might help to jump-start a new national-energy strategy".

Krugman on the Chapter 11 option for automakers:

If the economy as a whole were in reasonably good shape and the credit markets were functioning, Chapter 11 would be the way to go. Under current circumstances, however, a default by GM would probably mean loss of ability to pay suppliers, which would mean liquidation — and that, in turn, would mean wiping out probably well over a million jobs at the worst possible moment.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/cars/

i like steve coll

fyi he went to a college well-known as the filming location for 'clueless' and 'dont be a menace to south central while drinking your juice in the hood"

haha he wrote something about meeting/hanging out with obama while at occidental

i hope that's what you're referring to so obliquely

max went there too and he is proud fyi

part of a long line of famous alumni including jack kemp, barack obama, KTLA entertainment reporter sam rubin, ben affleck and the dude from scissor sisters

Maybe running a dozen car ads every commercial break on prime time network television every day for the last 20+ years is not a smart way to spend your money.

Brainwashing is the only way for them to sell cars because their product is awful.

i thought obama transferred the hell outta there and is therefore not an alumnus

So can Occidental legitimately claim him as an alumnus? “By all means,” said Jim Jacobs, alumni relations director. “Who wouldn’t want to claim him as an alum?” Many colleges list anyone who has studied on campus for at least a year, he said.

I love the ads that run around Christmas...

"Jeez, if I could just figure out what to get....Eureka! That's it! I'll get my wife a 2009 Hyundai Elantra! Thank you, NBC, thank you!"

Like I was so close to buying a new boat for my kid and then I saw this car commercial and was like, oh shit dude, it's ON

fuck new cars

and I'm willing to go before Congress and testify as much.

has anyone posted about the attempted suicide on the floor of the Brazilian stock exchange?

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/articles/2008/11/18/1226770397986.html

Brazil? Shit.

Trading was halted for a few minutes after the shot was fired on Monday.

Much like the US financial crisis, this thread will soon include the rest of the world.

rogermexico sez:

That potentially leaves a lot of empty factories, which the UAW ain't having. Hence the stalemate of the past 20 years. This nut's going to be very hard to crack, cash isn't going to fix it, and the UAW has shown no sign of willingness to make the concessions that the US industry's long-term health would require (I'm not certain it should - that question is VERY complicated and I just haven't thought it through clearly enough to take a position.)

this seems like an important point -- what should the uaw do? the sorkin dealbook column dandy don linked above echoes the prevailing punditocracy cry for blood from the uaw. but it's a hell of a thing to hang the future of the industry not to say the u.s. economy on union workers being willing to just take a big fuck-you. of course there are going to have to be concessions, restructuring and, basically, big job cuts. but what really angers a lot of people about the uaw is that they're in a position to resist any of that. the people calling for Bankruptcy Now! are mostly fantasizing about being able to finally stick it to the unions: $10 an hour, take it or leave it suckers. i'm tired of reading about "gold-plated benefits" as if decent health care and retirement benefits were some kind of crazy level of excess.

it seems to me that what a well-structured "bailout" (or assisted bankruptcy, if that's what happens) would do would be, first of all, to provide some breathing room and some leverage so that as those decisions about empty factories get made, everybody affected is as protected as possible; and then after that of course all the incentives for restructuring the industry along less stupid lines.

d-mouth claims seuss as an alum and he didn't graduate

in case anyone cares

mitt romney, being persuasive.

if a bailout's such a bad idea, why are so many horrible people against it?

Considering this disadvantage, Detroit has done a remarkable job of designing and engineering its cars.

Give the devil his due: Romney is OTM about this.

Second, management as is must go. New faces should be recruited from unrelated industries — from companies widely respected for excellence in marketing, innovation, creativity and labor relations.

This, however, is a bad joke. As Chryslerberus has already amply demonstrated. (And as GM demonstrated before that during the Zarella "brand management" years.) It's easy to look excellent in e.g. labor relations when you aren't working with existing contracts that were set in cement back when the world was your industry's oyster.

the real problem here is that toyota gets to operate factories in the south w/out having to deal with unions right??

if a bailout's such a bad idea, why are so many horrible people against it?

I already answered this question, and if you don't know, you don't know.

there are some HARD CORE absolute fucking history what's that morons on this thread I started and I am about to have a break down

for the record: drunk ass tombot still makes more sense than uh some people like that knoxville guy with kids

fight me now oof ow ok fight me tomorrow you're still a pussy

standing up sucks

haha. just cuz yr drunk doesn't make u rite.

cheering on the relentless forces of history like you actually know for sure what's going to happen next april doesn't prove anything. the question isn't whether there's a shakeout/restructuring/whatever form it takes in the works, question is how do you minimize the short-term damage, spread the pain, make things not-worst-case-scenario. government can/does have a role in this. government helped set it all up in the first place. it's silly to just pretend there's some platonic ideal here where everybody can stand back and just let "the inevitable" happen. however morally satisfying it might be on some level, the splatter patterns on the pavement aren't going to be all that aesthetically pleasing.

nothing is "inevitable." there are choices to be made.

(and anything mitt romney's cheerleading for, i'm against on basic fucking principle.)

Does Mitt still strap the family mutt to the car roof?

how do you minimize the short-term damage, spread the pain, make things not-worst-case-scenAAAAARGHHH.

no. the question is how do you give the next generation a foundation that isn't built on manure. Right now, I would gladly fuck over millions of american workers if it meant that their children, your children, and my prospective offspring would grow up understanding the difference between operating a sustainable, well-run enterprise versus a huge batch of cloudy incompetence masquerading as industry.