Voter Pressure Mounts To Stop Aiding US Automakers

Is anyone (besides 1uaw and cappy) surprised by this survey's findings? Americans are tired of bailouts. And GM and Chrysler keep coming back begging for more and more taxpayer money as they continue their downward slide each quarter.

Americans have been voting with their wallets and have moved away from purchasing domestic vehicles. I have never owned an American car, but the unions and management still believe I should be subsidizing them with my hard earned money. It makes no sense.

Chapter 11 is the only hope for Chrsyler and GM.

Cappy, in response:
1) It is "you're" (you are) not "your." If you are going to call me stupid, at least use the correct words.

2) Technically, I am not a banker. I work in financial services in wealth management. And while my firm has seen far better days, I can assure you my five years in this industry isn't to blame for the current financial crisis. The unit I work in is a revenue driver. The company on the whole is another story though.

3) TARP and TALF have been severely mishandled in my opinion (and this is the general consensus of the Street). The government has propped up troubled institutions (AIG, Citi, B of A, etc.) rather than working to create a solution for the toxic assets they currently hold. A similiar situation exists for the automakers. They are giving cash to GM and Chrysler while raising CAFE standards, trying to dictate what type of cars they should be building, and discussing cap-and-trade (probably the nail in the coffin for much of American manufacturing).

First, it's "you're", not "your". I don't respect the opinions of people who can't correctly use their own language. Pitiful. Second of all, I doubt HSCenterconsole would be slumming it because of our current economic situation. People who don't know how to make and follow a proper budget and plan for uncertainties are the ones in trouble. I would be willing to bet that you're one of them, as your obvious intellectual capacity indicates you are surely raking in hundreds of thousands each year and know how to manage it properly...right.

Cappy:
When your (note the correct usage of "your") entire argument is "STFU" and you're (note the correct usage of "you're") unable to make any constructive or persuasive comments, it is pretty clear you have lost the argument.

You know the government should just GIVE GM the money and not even ask what people think. Like giving AIG $150 BILLION without even setting one shoe in front of congress. Now AIG is about to get another infusion of BILLIONS upon BILLIONS of TAX PAYERS DOLLARS and the only response, "They are to big to fail" but not to big it be IDIOT SAVANTS though. What is the difference? Can anyone with the ability to formalize a logical response, not emotional, tell me the difference?

Good question buddy, I would like to know also, If GM goes down Millions of jobs would be lost from coast 2 coast and even trickle over to the Euro's and the Japans due to part suppliers raising there prices.

So in my opinion I think GM is much to bigger to fail rather than AIG, but from a $$$ standpoint AIG would be since there income is much more than GM but GM employs twice as more people.

So when it's comes to $$$ that's who the goverment will take care of and AIG has it and GM doesn't.

I believe the point is, and as inflaming as this issue has become, people are like puppies and follow whatever seems right without thinking for themselves. We are bailing out everyone from AIG to who knows for making horrible investment moves, etc... But now GM and the American automotive industry was placed on view for the who world to see. Now those guys should have tax payers money WTF? I really don't care if this isn't a popular stance on this thread, because most realize that the point is extremely valid.

BAHAHAHAHAHA.
You have to love the UAW assembly line workers, who probably have no more than a high school education, trying to act all intellectual. Stick to the manual labor guys. It is more suited to your capabilities.

And cappy, through his limited vocabulary, poor grammar, inability to formulate a coherent argument, and use of juvenile abbreviations like STFU, proves my point about the limited intellectual capacities of the UAW line workers. Thanks buddy for making it so easy! Shouldn't you be installing door trim panels on a Chevy HHR somewhere?

1UAW, you need to spend more time trying to figure out where your next job will be rather than post on this site. "For all we know" you might be working for Toyota in three years since GM is destined to fail.

to be fair... the question asked in the survey was whether or not it was the government's responsibility to help the automakers. It did not ask whether the government should or should not help. That is a different question.

It is completely valid to have an opinion that it is NOT the governments responsibility to help, yet still want the government to help anyway.

Just to be clear, (since i will probably be deboosted for the above comment) I do not support the auto bail-out. I would, however, support a forced restructuring in a "prepackaged" bankruptcy.

I understand being deboosted for the second comment, since you may disagree with me, but everything I said in the first comment it absolutely true. If you deboosted me for that, then you need to grow up.

Being deboosted is no big deal. The point is your viewpoint is going out and causing numb-nuts to go crazy. So I believe that every company that is looking for money from the Government should go before congress, and we the people should decide if they also deserve our money, would that also be fare as well?

right, and I was telling those numb-nuts to grow up. I would completely agree with the second part of your comment.

So since someone seems to think what I said in my original comment is wrong, why don't you pipe-up and explain why? Or do you just have a problem with the truth?

you continue to deboost me but but are afraid to debate it?

Because the true doesn't matter. Just what makes them feeeeeeeel good. Good intentions, no matter if executed to some is right. Image is good. Don't worry, it's all good.

These surveys are funny. Don't forget, over 80% of Americans thought invading Iraq was a good idea (according to the polls of course).

It'd be nice if the poll question was stated like this:

"For the Government not to help Detroit automakers, the Big3 would go into CH11. Since research and common sense dictate that no one would buy from a bankrupt automaker (regardless of some govt scheme to guarantee warranty, etc), and DIP loans worth over $100 billion would never be paid back, a loss for the taxpayers. The loss of the automobile industry would translate into the immediate loss of millions of jobs, would throw much of the MidWest into abject poverty, and would immediately reduce government tax revenues by hundreds of billions of dollars per year. In the long run, the US would experience capital outflows of hundreds of billions MORE per year, not only to the middle east and China, but also a few hundred billion per year more to Japan & Korea thanks to the loss of the domestic auto industry.

Knowing full-well that the GM (for example) has the best lineup of vehicles it has ever had that are competitive with any of their foreign competitors, on top of the massive restructuring that already was happening at GM for years, on top of the fact that this mess that Detroit is in is a direct result of Government & Wall St. incompetance/criminality, do you support the federal government giving the US automobile industry loans worth tens of billions of dollars?"

Remember, americans supported going to Iraq (b/c no one really cared to research the issue more than watching bobblehead TV) and we re-elected Bush..........

in other words, most intelligent people will see that these polls are nonsense.

I believe history will see Iraq and President Bush through different lens than we are, it always do, but I digress. NEUTRAL (nothing neutral about your political stance) said "do you support the federal government giving the US automobile industry loans worth tens of billions of dollars?" The operative word is LOAN. So why is it such and issue for most? And no one will be a man and say how stupid it is to single out the auto industry from the other dead beat companies looking of money.

Well, in this rant I pick on Bush, but I despise about 99.9% of politicians. The fact that the VAST majority of politicians (and their staffs) are career politicians with no real world experience in anything really "frosts my cookies".

How many engineers are in congress? How about businessmen? Doctors? Businessmen? Steelworkers? Teachers? Military people? Yea.. next to none.


Meanwhile, how many lawyers and lazy big-mouths are there? Well... I'm going to make up a number (just like most politicians do) and say over 95%.

Our 2 party system (the "envy" of the world)

Democrats - Bunch of whiny, social engineering, get-in-everyone-else's business, anti-money, anti-wealth, anti-personal responsibility (guns/crime), get-on-the-bandwagon, technical/business un-oriented wastes of carbon atoms.


Republicans - Angry, "religious" (see closed-minded & hypocritical), fiscally irresponsible, selfish, take-advantage-of-the-brainless, fear-mongering wastes of carbon atoms.

Sadly, the traits I've listed for either political group is often times true for the other group.

(Time to get nerdy)
You'd think that after over 230 years of existence, our political system would have worked out the transient aspects of political philosphy and we would have approached steady state conditions where logical, fair and reasonable decisions could me made. Instead, it seems as if we've embraced an instable system design whos period is approximately 8 years and whos amplitude (a measure of govt ridiculousness/waste) seems only to be growing exponentially.

Sorry for the long posts. Back to automobiles (so long as they're still legal)!

neutral, I like your though process, not agreeing on all you have to say, but your insight is "stimulating". It is so odd that the your layout for Dems and Reps are close to being what they believe but to think by not embracing this so called bailout that even the Whitehouse's own internal reviews has been quoted as not the way to go but if we didn't take the only plan on the table, then the U.S. will collapse. Now that is fearmongering. Well, WallStreet and now others are beginning to raise a voice as to if this was the right decision to make, but 2 Trillion dollars later, is a bit to late. That's $2,000,000,000,000. If you were to spend $1million a day for 2,000 years, that is what this total equals. Bush didn't see a spending bill he didn't like. But that isn't a legacy of Reps.

In any event, in times like these, we (the USA) have to protect our most strategic industries. GM, Ford, Boeing, Intel, Exxon, HP, GE, etc. Sure, things aren't going to go as desired but the long term losses of any of these strategic US assets will be devastating.

Don't forget, at the end of the day, the above mentioned companies do something.. they produce things. The engineer things and create wealth/power. The financial firms come and go, they're just financiers (not to downplay their importance but still).

We should look to history to see how the soviet union defeated Germany. They moved their engineers, designers and workers east of the Ural mountains. In other words, when the s**t hits the fan, it's entities like GM/GE/Intel/Microsoft that are important.

Editors note- Cappy bit the dust for his abusive comments

Nice 009. One down, several more to go hopefully.

I warned Cappy it was going to happen sooner or later, he had no respect for others here.

He is like a Cylon, He will just try an resurrect somewhere.

Well to me the issue stems from the current economic climate and overall lack of consumer confidence. The reality is that people are NOT buying cars. Period. It seems to me that the cycle of American consumer lust for new vehicles has been satiated for the time being. Consumers are putting their cash under their mattresses and not buying anything. More cash to GM & Chrysler, hey why not? But it will not make people buy cars right now. What it will do however, is maintain jobs. If these guys fail the unemployment rate, impact on dealers & communities overall will surely push us further into this recession. I pay my taxes and would honestly rather see them provided to those industries that have provided employment and driven a sense of patriotism in this country rather than pour ANOTHER $50B into AIG who have already been 'given' $150B in funding. There have been no Government regulators, corporate restructuring guidance -- anything of the hoops the manufacturers have had to jump through. What is up with that? With Global news trickling in that other OEM's are seeking assistance from their respective Governments, should the whole industry fail? I don't know, but I love cars and could care less about an insurance company that has mismanaged its trillions of investments -- I would put my money in manufacturing (tangible assets). I want to see where the money is (vehicles) and goes (employees).

Agreed. Thank You TheScooter, your logical insight & thoughts are good to hear.

Yes, workers will be laid off and factories will under-utilized for a while. The main thing that has to be concerned is to keep these companies functioning (designers & engineers) while using the downtime to cut out waste and streamline operations. Then the economy picks up (hopefully sometime in the next billion years) and the whole industry will be poised for big profits.

Great!! "crappy, I mean cappy" is gone......Now if we could dump "UAW1 & Michael Taylor" we may have a good blog going on.

Here is what I don't understand.The big 3 problems at this point largely stem from a global downturn in the auto market,not their lack of a competative product(Chrysler,however does have problems which could be solved if the government approves the Alliance with Fiat).For many years it was the product.The problems that the big 3 are having now is that people can't get loans to buy cars. And of course the cause of this are banks. Of course this was brought on by the mortgage crises. Now it seems to me that until the government gets to the root of the problem(getting banks to lend money again to businesses and individuals)the entire auto industry is going to tank. It is quite obvious that Toyota,Nissan,Mazda,Honda,Mitsubishi are hurting quite badly as well. No it is true they are not in the same dire straits as the big 3. However,I can safely predict that if there is not an up take in auto sales during 2009 then it is not inconcievable that some of these other auto makers will fail as well.So the issue is what is the lessor of 2 evils,finance a chapter 11 bankruptsy for GM that could cost the US government over 100 billion dollars(just for GM) or keep proping them up until banks start lending money again. The other point is that if GM goes down don't you think Ford and Chrysler will follow simply because the parts suppliers will then tank. This would end up being a domino scenario.Then once the big 3 tank you are going to see all the Japanese auto makers fold up shop in the US as well. So my point is when 65% of the people say let the big 3 fail are they looking at the big picture here?The other question is if money was easy flowing and people with a 620 credit scores could buy cars would the big 3 be in the mess? My guess is no they would not.Conservatives may be up in arms regarding the amount of money the government is spending aiding the banks and the big 3. Their approach is just cut taxes and things will work out.Sorry but I don't agree.These are not normal times,this is not a normal recession and this needs to be treated differently. If the money can't flow how can ANY business survive in the long run.

Here is another thing the government could do to encourage people tobuy a car. Do what Germany is doing. Offer a $3000 scrap incentive for trading in any vehicle that is 9 yrs or older if they buy a GM,Ford or Chrysler product.It worked in Germany it can work here. True German car makers are also offering their own incentive as well. So what! The US has been doing that for yrs!The combination might be enough to spur car buying in the US again.