GM Ford And Crysler Keep The American Dream Burning

THREE CEOs - Rick Wagoner of GM, Alan Mulally of Ford, and Robert Nardelli of Chrysler – are supporting the beleaguered trade in private jets by refusing to travel by anything else.

As ABC news reports:

THE CEOs of the big three automakers flew to the nation’s capital yesterday in private luxurious jets to make their case to Washington that the auto industry is running out of cash and needs $25 billion in taxpayer money to avoid bankruptcy. Even as their companies fail, Ford and GM CEOs continue lavish lifestyles.

Hats off to the trio for reminding the politicos wrestling with the economic crisis what it is Americans are fighting for. It’s the American dream, stoopid.

The car industry is in trouble. Larry Webster lists fives reasons for the downturn at the once mighty GM, whose cars are being sold with free shares.

Buy a car; get 100 shares of GM stock. “Join us in jump starting America,” says the sales pitch -

- GM is trading at around $2.60 a share, meaning the offer is worth as much as $260. On January 22, 1999, it would have been worth $9,075.

Anyhow, backs to those five reasons:

1. The Financial Meltdown
2. Legacy Costs (pensions etc.)
3. Sub-Par Quality and Lackluster Cars
4. Global Slowdown

And:

5. Demand Shift and Uncertain Energy Policy

And:

PM Advisory Board Member and Chairman of the Center for Automotive Research, David Cole adds:

“A big factor is our lack of an energy policy in this country. We just haven’t had one. When we do things like corn-to-ethanol that don’t have a foundation in economics or technology, you’re really kind of teeing up to a situation where you’re going to have a problem.”

The green movement is doing for cars. But why not sell cars to other countries with less strident warmists movements and a more cohesive energy policy, like China?

General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. agreed to export more North American-built vehicles and parts to China in separate agreements signed Monday in Washington. GM said it will sell and export $1 billion worth of vehicles, component kits, machinery and equipment to one of its Chinese partners, Shanghai General Motors, through 2010.

As Al Gore, leader of the Al Goreans puts it in his book accompanying An Inconvenient Truth, that documentary on global warming:

“Ironically, we cannot sell cars made in America to China because we don’t meet their environmental standards.”

And because Gore likes irony, he should enjoy this:

Chinese carmakers SAIC and Dongfeng have plans to acquire GM and Chrysler, China’s 21st Century Business Herald reports today.

That’s just terrific, and something that Barack Obama should applaud. Can those emissions from cars made by Chinese companies in the US be attributed to China?

PRESIDENT-ELECT Barack Obama has sent an explicit message to international negotiators of a new global warming treaty that, under his administration, the US will move to greatly reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by the middle of the century.

Start by selling off the car makers, then move on to the aerospace industry and cow farming. Very soon the US will be net importer of pollutants.

Greenpeace will approve. And those CEOs of big automotive producers will get the message too as they fly over the ‘Staudinger’ coal power plant of German E.ON energy company in Grosskrotzenburg, 30km (18 miles) south of Frankfurt (see image of burning sign).

Breathe in boys. That’s the smell of burning petrol. That’s the smell that made America great…

Anorak

Posted: 20th, November 2008 | In: Key Posts, Media Comments (8) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink