“And BTW if all the execs got on one plane and the plane crashed I believe Detroit would be a lot closer to Federal bailout than it is now.”

Hmmm.

It’s you who completely miss the point. This is not about 25B dollars which is chicken feed compared to the the trillion $ Wall Street bailout. This is all about politics, PR, trust. This is exactly the same claim that it doesn’t matter how much Wagoner makes since his 15 million dollars doesn’t make difference to the 1-2 billion a month cash burn. In fact this is one of the few things that matter because they show that these people have a complete disregard for reality. Which is what brought them to this position and which guarantees that any money forthcoming will be wasted. In a real world you don’t pay 15 million for a failed CEO, you don’t travel on private jet while begging for a bailout. It’s not just bad PR, bad PR is paying 15 million while firing people before Christmas to increase you profit. Paying 15 million to someone who destroyed the once biggest company in the world and then go beg for a bailout shows you are living in a completely different reality than planet Earth.

And BTW if all the execs got on one plane and the plane crashed I believe Detroit would be a lot closer to Federal bailout than it is now.

The fundamental disconnect is that no one believes them when they say 3M people will be out of work if they don’t get the money.

I notice you didn’t mention any Japan execs

By doing nothing, not only Detroit, but communities through out the Mid-West and Great Lakes Region will become a national symbol like New Orleans was or still is, post Katrina.

There was a time when Americans would rise up to the challenge and try to save what little is left of our “home-based” manufacturing. Not anymore.

Just remember – it is we who have thrown in the towel .

BTW: DOA. Good video game. HORRIBLE movie.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/19/AR2008111903669.html?hpid=topnews

So what’s Toyota’s excuse, then?

No Rick, it was exacerbated by the credit crisis. You were headed down this tunnel anyway, the oncoming train just showed up ahead of schedule.

If they want a bail-out, Wagoner and his peers (at GM, that is; Mullaly is safe and Nardelli irrelevant) have to fall on their collective sword. He needs to admit that GM has serious structural, cultural and product-planning problems but still represents a significant chunk of the economy. In exchange for a bail-out to buy time for it, GM will accept a corporate brain transplant. And that includes Rick a) accepting blame and b) running somewhere that shareholder lawsuits can’t touch him.

Ok, while it makes for a good class-war sound bite I can begrudge the aircraft for the 3 CEOs, it SOP for any large corporation.

Its not just big companies that have the limit on officers on the same place. In the mid 90s my father was the CFO of a smallish food packaging manufacturer with ~100 employees and 2 plants. No more than 2 of the 3 top people could be on the same plane.

If we go a step further, should they have taken greyhound? Maybe taken the bus or subway from Dulles? Maybe they shouldn’t have worn suits or had a Starbucks this morning?

Way to miss the point. Yeah, PR wise it looks bad. They should have realized that. On the other hand, I can’t really see them all flying on Northwest or putting all these of these guys on one plane in the event of an accident.

And to hear them claim that all three of them should go, again way to make broad demands with no knowledge (as is standard procedure for the government). Nardelli and Mulally did not create this mess (Nardelli may not be loved, but he can NOT be blamed for Chrysler’s current situation). Mulally is making the right moves. Ok, Rick I’ll give you. He should go. But to just call for heads would be a boneheaded move. Excellent auto executives don’t just grow on trees. Even media darling Carlos Ghosn is getting completely owned (so much for savior of the auto universe). Tesla run by auto guys. Who else? Dieter? Yeah, he did a great job in his years at Chrysler. Ferdinand Piech? Good job nearly killing VW. Um, Jurgen Schrempf (did I spell that right?)? DCX debacle.

Come to think of it, maybe there aren’t any successful auto executives….or at least ones that would be available and willing to take over a GM/Chrysler/Ford mess. And if you want to cut executive compensation to zero, how would you attract them? Hey, we want you to come lead GM, but we’re not gonna pay you anything and you have this giant mess to get us out of. So, what do you say?

I wish people would stop and think, even if for just a few seconds. Focusing on jets and calling for heads sounds great, but just a bit under the surface you can see why certain things do or don’t make sense.

Oh, as an aside, how did the bank executives get to DC? I didn’t hear any complaining about them. Did they fly? If not, did they take the train? If they took Acela, why didn’t they take regular Amtrak and save some money? Or did they drive down from NYC in their Kias?

Its ridiculous. All show and fluff. No real substance or decisions. Just sound bites to tell your idiot constitutients you were doing something in Washington.

Second, they all couldn’t get on one jet. The risk is just too great in case of an accident. In fact, most big corporations aren’t allowed to have all four or five of their top executives travel on the same plane. (Many years ago, a corporate jet crashed on approach into White Plains killing the top eight execs.) In the US, the President and Vice President cannot travel together on the same plane either.

Third, would you take Northwest from Detroit to Washington if you didn’t have to?

It just staggers the imagination that they could take private jets to the hearings. We are talking about the stupidity and hubris that used to be reserved for the Dubya administration. Just unfucking believable. It’s like something you would find in a satire.

I caught the part of the hearings yesterday where the CEOs were asked about cutting their salaries to $1. The questioner stressed how important it was that no AIG-like extravagances occur. It was not until today that I found out that those morons sitting before him had already pulled a boner just getting to the hearings.

This private jet thing has the feeling of something that could have long term resonance in the public imagination.

Rick is going to stay the course, restructuring my a$$, this isn’t going to be a wake up call for anything. If that was going to ever happen to this guy it would have happened months or years ago. He is going to do what he has to do to hold out for Obama if they can make it, which I think is going to be very close. They will probably stop development on the Volt. Idle just about anything that isn’t selling, which is just about everything. The Camaro will get pushed back if not temporarily shelved, fall of ‘09 will probably be the new release date if they don’t totally collapse. Development on everything will stop. They will start shorting suppliers on materials even more than they do now. I wonder if there is anything left to sell.

This guy simply does not know how to save this company and will not make those hard choices(it’s too late for them anyway) they will just continue to make the same stupid decisions that do way more damage than good. Expect the Red Tag sale to get some added “please give us some money any money for our cars” incentives on the hoods. Maybe an extra $2000 off on any model for the month of December on top of all the other stuff and the Red Tag sale.

An interview with Michael Burt, senior economist with the Conference Board of Canada, on BNN last night shows a clear lack of concern.

He downplays the significance of the auto industry and job losses and supports this with stats;

Only 1.6% of Canada economy is from vehicle and parts manufacturing, 150,000 jobs are at risk, “much less than other sectors of the workforce”.

He also speculates the the job losses resulting from a collapse of the auto industry would be replaced by other markets. ie. service jobs making up the most, followed by technology and aerospace, and natural resources as in oil and gas (fewer jobs because of the large capital expense to create few jobs)

The conclusion is that at best there is a mixed response from government over GM, Ford, and Chrysler’s plea for monetary help.

And I quote the poet Chris, of Cornell:

“A new damage comes
It’s a faceless poison
A new world order
It’s new damage done

The wreck is going down
Get out before you drown
The wreck is going down
Get out before you drown

A new damage comes
It’s a new word for plague
A new world order
A new word for hate

The wreck is going down
Get out before you drown
The wreck is going down
Get out before you drown

Get out, yeah, before you drown
Get out, get out, oh yeah

New damage comes
It’s a new word for plague
A new world order
A new word for hate

The wreck is going down
Get out before you drown
The wreck is going down
Get out before you drown

Get out, get out, get out
Before you drown, before you drown
Get out, get out, get out, get out
Get out, get out, get out

Before you drown, get out
Get out before you drown
Before you drown
Before, before you drown”

“All you who have flown commercial today, raise your hands.”

“Let the record show no hands were raised.”

Rick Wagoner is a scumbag piece of sh*t cleptocrat. To watch him say “GM is a different company now” made me want for vomit. This from a man who paid himself $14.4 million last year.

Any federal funds should be predicated on Wagoner’s resignation.