Mulally: Ford will survive... until 2010

Wow hopefully everything goes well for ford they are preforming the best out of the big 3.

The federal government shouldn't loan even more money to the domestic automakers (I guess that $25 billion loan wasn't enough). You can't throw $50 billion in taxpayers' money at companies who have suffered from decades of failed business plans and fat unions who are over payed. TARP was designed to prevent the credit markets from drying up, not giving handouts to Detroit.

Maybe the govt should throw money at lowering gas for everyone. Then ppl will go back to buying the big trucks they offer and help them stay afloat until things improve. This would also help the price of everything else driven by gas prices such as food, airlines etc...

0to60, if the federal and state governments wanted to lower the price of gas, they could do so by temporarily removing all of the gas taxes. A more effective way would be to remove the CAFE restrictions on the Big Three. To meet these laws, they are producing small cars they make little or no profit on.

Tax is only a small amount isnt it? They need to get rid of the analyst. To much politics involved in gas prices

0to60, your response doesn't make too much sense. Anyways, the Federal gas 18.4 cents per gallon and the state tax can be as high as 32 cents. That adds up over several fill ups.

This site breaks it down by state: http://www.gaspricewatch.com/usgastaxes.asp

HSCenterconsole screw that. I am glad there is a CAFE standard as I am tired of seeing 7 passenger vehicles with typically a woman in there with a cell phone getting 8mpg when that same tank of fuel you can go 1.5 to 2.5 times further on average. CAFE is aiding on reducing fuel consumption = less per gallon at the pump.

HSC I think only $25 Bill is going to the automakers themselves. I think the proposed 2nd loan is for the UAW.

As much as bailouts suck GM going under would hurt the economy REALLY bad ($2 million people instantly out of work!!!) I would rather we didn't bail out the financial sector, they are still taking expensive trips and huge bonuses despite losing money. The only difference is now we are footing the bill for it.

Ford should have developed the small 4.4L Diesel a few years ago for the Flex and the 2010 Lincoln MKt.
Ford shows much promise with the paddle-shift manual transmissions they are currently testing. Hopefully it will have 8-speeds.

I’d like to see a 2-speed transaxle as well for city mode and Interstate mode.

A Diesel motor with many gears can be a recipe to exceed Hybrid economy numbers. Ford needs to make the leap to Hydrogen as opposed to battery or plug-in.

We shouldn't have bailed the Banks out!
Let them fail!

Why should the Tax payers pay for Wall Street so they can have their Bonuses this year and more Golden Parachutes?

People can borrow money from Credit Unions, friends or even Loan Sharks if they had to.

Perhaps we can go back to the barter system and leave these greedy banks in the dust.

Mercuryguy, I think your appraisal of the bailout and current financial system is a little naive. As a free market capitalist, I really don't like the idea of TARP and the bailout either. Unfortunately, it was a necessary evil.

"Why should the Tax payers pay for Wall Street so they can have their Bonuses this year and more Golden Parachutes?"
I work on Wall Street. Every financial service's firm is drastically reducing bonus pools and severance pay. Simply said, it is ugly in our industry. And it will get even uglier. The bail out money is designed to keep the credit market from completely drying up. If there is no credit, no person or business (no matter how big or small, from Main Street to Wall Street) would be able to function. The economy would grind to a halt.

"People can borrow money from Credit Unions, friends or even Loan Sharks if they had to."
Borrowing from friends or loan sharks (if you think the banks are greedy, try borrowing from a loan shark) is not the way you maintain the biggest economy in the world. Are you going to start lending cash to all of your needy friends and family? People need to have faith in the financial institutions and banks need to continue to let qualified customers borrow money.

"Perhaps we can go back to the barter system and leave these greedy banks in the dust."
I really hope you are being sarcastic here. In 2007, the USA's GDP was $13,807,500,000,000. I don't think we could maintain this simply relying on bartering.

if the us government doesn't bail out GM and Ford the US economy will drop dramatically because these companies employ the most employees and are a big part of the US economy.

Look all of you are right in the fact that the US auto makers have planned badly,put forth too many poor products in the market place. Additionaly,however,up until recently when things were renegotiated with the UAW,US auto makers were paying exorbatent health and pension costs when compared to foreign competition. Had the market not collapsed from the credit crunch GM,Ford, and Chrysler would have started to really turn around.They all have responsible plains in place.But they have to be still be able to sell cars by offering loans to people. The majority of people cannot afford to pay cash to buy a 20 somthing thousand dollar car today. Further letting these 3 entities go under would immediately create a loss of over 3 million jobs right off the bat. That will have a devastating effect on other markets and state economies.It is better to give these companies some breathing room to recover. I think once the credit markets ease up these companies will improve.Chrysler though needs to continue a dramatic redevelopment of product and perhaps that only can be accomplished by being owned by another company other then GM.Both Hyundai or Nissan would be better then GM.

HSCCenterConsole:

I do see and agree with your viewpoint. I can see rescue of Financial and maybe autos, solely to save jobs for working people and thus the economy.

It just really gets under my skin when CEOs drive companies into the ground, and then look to spend other people's money to refloat their companies, then they retire and ride off into the sunset leaving everyone holding the bag.

I've worked for Fortune 500 Companies. I always got paid based upon performance. When production and/or sales were down, we, the workers suffered. When the company had lack-luster profit for the year, our income flat-lined or even trailed inflation.

It amazes me that companies can lose huge amounts of capitalizations, and the Corporate officers continue to roll in money.

I support bailouts solely for the workforces. be it Bank workers or Factory workers, Blue Collar, White collar limited to low to mid-level management. In other words, working people that were swept up in this.

I agree with that Ford and GM need to help out by the US government. The Big 3 is a huge part of the US economy and loosing GM and Ford would be a complete and utter disaster and lead to the potential fall of other main economy drivers.