Rolling US Economy Into The Shitbin Thread

Loans are not free. They are money, they affect our monetary system, etc. Tombot OTM. There's no sense in having one bailout program there to set up another. That was my original point about lighting money on fire.

xpst

I'm not sure about the wisdom of allowing such a big shock to the system at this moment, when the economy is already reeling. I think it might be worth the side-effects to try and spread out the timing a bit.

That's for Bush to try to fuck up and Obama to try to fix.

It's okay if a few million people lose their jobs and their homes, it's flyover country anyway.

let's wait until the economy has been stagnant for five more years, then it's okay to let horrendous leadership out to pasture. Right now though we need people who haven't a fucking clue how to run a goddamn casino in charge of a big chunk of our GDP.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/business/economy/18sorkin.html?_r=1

G.M is using money so quickly that a $10 billion infusion made today would disappear by February. That is why taxpayers shouldn’t fork over a cent, at least until shareholders are wiped out, management is tossed out and the industry is completely reorganized.

this is an interesting bailout alternative.

ive been thinking about this a lot and i still think, at the very least for market stabilization reasons that a "bailout" of some kind is necessary.

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.

oh, and then there's the bailout bill itself. Parsed nicely here.
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/parsing-the-auto-bailout-bill/

^^^^^^^xp

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.