Leyland? In America there was the dizzingly stupid merger of Studebaker and Packard in the mid 50s. Two financially dilapidated companies that made ugly cars merged and went out of business in 10 years. Take a look sometime at the merged companies offering of the 1958 Packard Hawk. A Studebaker Hawk with the ugliest front end in automotive history.”

Packard was financially sound when it bought Studebaker. It made the mistake of not auditing Studebaker’s finances before the merger.

Someone asked why wouldn’t Cerberus simply raid the cash and shut down, which prompted the above sensible reply. The same question applies to GM. You don’t grab 11B in assets with 30B of liabilities and consider it a good deal.

Here the liabilities drastically outweigh the assets. Better to wait for Chryslers collapse and the fire sale to pluck an actual asset.

Absorbing Chrysler in hopes of insuring a bigger seat at the government trough just strikes me as outright insanity. GM needs to be thinking focused and lean. Absorbing Chrysler would be a meal that would kill them.

Each to his own, I suppose, but I’m not surprised that some of TTAC’s more thoughtful auto analysts have steered clear of this thread once the Obama is a communist/fascist meme took root.

I’d add that East Germany, like the rest of the Third Reich, was already socialist. Nazi means National Socialist Party; i.e., socialism (which Hitler blended with virulent militarism and genocidal racism). Extensive government involvement in economic affairs (mainly to support welfare state objectives) wasn’t at issue; it was the degree of totalitarian control of citizens by Russian Commies and their East German stooges.

The East Germans didn’t willingly transition from facism to communism. A communist government was forced on them by a conquering army, and many Germans voted with their feet by fleeing to West Germany until the Berlin Wall was constructed in 1961.

Fascism is a totalitarian and nationalist ideology. It is primarily concerned with perceived problems associated with cultural, economic, political, and social decline or decadence, and which seeks to solve such problems by achieving a millenarian national rebirth by exalting the nation, protecting the nation from what fascism deems as the excesses of the internationalist ideologies of capitalism and communism by advocating a Third Position, promoting the territorial defense or expansion of a nation through a constant state of military preparedness and promotion of militarism as well as promoting cults of unity, strength and purity.Fascist governments nationalized key industries and made massive state investments. They thought private property was to be regulated to ensure that “benefit to the community precedes benefit to the individual.” They also introduced price controls and other types of economic planning measures. Fascists promoted their ideology as a “third way” between capitalism and communism.

Reason I posted that is the buying out and taking control of a lot of the financial sector by the republican ran government scares the hell out of me, and now we’re hearing that they may take over part of the auto industry too? And the feds want to take over a lot of people’s mortgages? Whoa…just whoa. I’m not saying that the Dems will or won’t reverse course, but it’s already been put in motion and we’re now along for the ride.

And please note that Facism leads to communism – not socialism to communism as many people have been led to believe. Ask East Germany that went from fascism (nazi germany) to communism how well that worked out.

During the Ohio primary, he criss-crossed the state bashing NAFTA and free trade in general. So, yes, he has, at least, bashed the principle of free trade on the campaign trail.

He hasn’t since that primary, which tells me that he is basically another politician who will tell people what they want to hear just to get elected. Granted, he isn’t the only one guilty of this – certainly not in this campaign – but he initially sold himself as “a different kind of politician” who won’t do that sort of thing.

And just as that different kind of car company morphed into just another GM car, Obama has completed his own transformation, basically becoming the Same Old Stuff in a younger wrapper.

faster_than_rabbit: Hoover’s general plan was to let the market run amok and allow the craziness to subside on it’s own, which bears no interesting relationship to either of the candidate’s current economic worldviews.

That wasn’t Hoover’s approach to an economy that had been slowing even before the Crash of 1929.

Hoover did believe that the stock market would recover without government intervention. Speculation in stocks had been increasing since 1927, and values were definitely inflated on the eve of the Great Crash. The Crash was a necessary correction to the rampant speculation occurring in 1927-29. He was correct in his approach to the stock market.

Regarding the economy, the idea that President Hoover sat back and advocated no government action is false. He pushed public work projects, jawboned businesses into maintaining wage levels, and even started the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to prop up failing companies. None of these actions ameliorated the deepening depression, which was caused by the Federal Reserve Board’s monetary policy and the fallout from the Smoot Hawley Tarrif.

During the 1932 campaign, President Hoover and candidate Roosevelt differed little in what should be done for the economy. The main difference was that Roosevelt favored direct relief to individuals from the governmnent, and Hoover opposed this. If anything, Roosevelt criticized budget deficits and high taxes during the campaign.

Once he won, Roosevelt instituted his own policies, many of which only served to extend the Depression. By 1938, even members of his own party were revolting against his policies, and most of the New Deal’s attempts to “manage” the economy were already dead by the time the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

Now that we already down a slippery slope of at least a trillion dollars of government and Federal Reserve bailouts since March of 2008, does the government really need to bail JPM Chase to the tune of 6 billion soon to be inflated dollars?

The bottom line is that the American tax payers are already in deep shit.

Either we raise taxes to pay for all this governmental largess or devalue the dollar. I doubt that we’ll raise taxes to pay for the bailouts, so we will get to look forward to another period of skyrocketing inflation.

Firms in other countries seeking to get established in high-volume auto manufacturing started later and came up against the problem of American incumbency. They therefore turned to their governments for assistance. Often this went beyond tariff and quota protection. VW was entirely established and owned by the German State, Renault became State-owned after WW2 and Alfa Romeo and Ducati have had long periods of government ownership in the past. Not all state-run plants build Ladas.

The failure of British Leyland had many causes other than government ownership; a failure to rationalise brands and production facilities, a failure to get on top of trade unions and a failure to get to grips with quality.

The US industry will need government support to survive, but if this is provided without an insistence on the needed reforms, taxpayers will be wasting their money.

The problem of government intervention in the Anglo-Saxon economies is that we are not very good at industry policy; European and Asian countries are much better at it than we are.

The last time I checked, a President can only propose ideas such as taxes, socialized medicine, etc. He can’t actually enact any of it. Congress does. The real scary part is that the Dems that control the House & Senate are farther left than anything that Obama proposes. Right now the only thing that has kept them in check is the Bush veto. When that goes away we are going to see the fastest Capitalist-to-Socialist transition in history. Obama won’t veto any of it, you can bet on that. We will have Hillary’s Health Plan passed by the end of February. And that’s just the beginning. There’s a reason she’s been so quiet…

I hope you all like what’s been going on in England recently because America will be nearly identical by the end of Obama’s first term.

we’ve got a future socialist leader essentially stealing the election with Acorn (actually he’s also fascist*, as are the other side; two sides of the same coin);

* fascism = persecution of others due to their race/religion; socialism = persecution of others due to their social strata/income

ACORN isn’t an instrument through which it’s possible to steal an election. ACORN registers voters and sends the registrations to the Secretary of State, which verifies the registration. Successful ‘voter registration fraud’ would require collusion with the state government, at which point you’re in tinfoil-hatland.

Your definitions of facism and socialism are quaint hyperbole. That aside, why do you think Obama intends to persecute non-Christian religions? That’s not part of his standard stump speech. Does this have something to do with the hard-right-wing fantasy that he’s a closet Muslim and intends to put a mosque on every corner and replace the Pledge of Allegiance with a terrorist fist jab salute to a star and crescent? Heavy-Duty Reynolds Wrap for everybody!

I know about Smoot-Hawley, and it has no relevance to the current situation. Obama has said nothing about imposing import tariffs, and neither have his advisors or surrogates, nor is it consistent with his economic ideas. Hoover’s general plan was to let the market run amok and allow the craziness to subside on it’s own, which bears no interesting relationship to either of the candidate’s current economic worldviews.

If Chrysler comes thru Ch 11 & it looks healthy, more products move across brand lines & then GM files.

‘Seems “safer” to move the companies thru one-at-a-time rather than one gigantic filing. ‘Just a thought…

Its absolutely crazy how people think US Govt Debt is a *safe* investment.

I wonder how many people may actually die because of all this insanity.

No, seriously; could it happen? Massive layoffs. People losing homes. Bad schools generating young adults with little understanding of how their own government works, or how to even think for themselves. Taxes going through the roof. America’s loss of financial standing in the world. Maybe a forthcoming depression, or maybe a new president’s “health care for everybody,” where it takes 12 months to get an MRI, like it already does in some countries?

Could all this result in a war? Increased terrorist attacks? A nuclear strike against a weakened America? Maybe just people going nuts and killing each other over water, gas, or food?

Could people actually die in large numbers, due to our politicians’ greed, school system incompetence (hence voter incompetence), our manufacturing base’s tendencies to make shoddy products and merge themselves whenever they feel like it?

And another question: Assuming that it’s okay for two badly managed companies to merge into one large badly managed company, then why not countries?

Maybe the US should start merger talks with Canada and Mexico after all. And then maybe some South American countries after that, and a couple of European nations just to “spread the wealth” around.

‘Take a look sometime at the merged companies offering of the 1958 Packard Hawk. A Studebaker Hawk with the ugliest front end in automotive history.’

Good Lord! You weren’t exaggerating. Looks like a catfish with wheels.”

Yeah, but it had those zany padded arm rests outside the door windows.

Can you buy a TV that is made in America? Only because the foreign owned automakers have factories here will the same not exactly be true. But the situation will be the same. The Asians own the electronic industry? The same may well be true of the auto industry.

The Camaro won’t save GM(the price sucks) and the Volt is too far away and will be too expensive to sell at any volume to change anything if it’s ever gets here. Do they have anything else?

The Camaro also is potentially a fun car and an extra. Not a staple commuting vehicle when times are hard and money is tight. When the stock market is in the 5,000 range, I don’t see many splurging on extra vehicles.

Why does this matter to the auto industry? Because it tends to be good for business when folks can trust the long arm of the law to operate with nonpartisan professionalism.

GM kept the AC-Delco trademarks and still sells aftermarket parts under those brands, but the parts are generally bought from third parties.

we’ve got a future socialist leader essentially stealing the election with Acorn (actually he’s also fascist*, as are the other side; two sides of the same coin);

* fascism = persecution of others due to their race/religion; socialism = persecution of others due to their social strata/income

we’ve got GM and Chrysler probably merging with $25 billion coming their (and Ford’s) way PLUS the possibility of more government bail-out monies for GMAC etc. AND possibly part-ownership of GMC (GMChrysler);

we’ve got a nearly full scale economic melt-down which is like a house-fire (and the exact same people who caused all of the problems are doing the same things they did to cause the problem as the “solution” – analagous to pouring gasoline on a burning house instead of water);

we’ve got said economic melt-down gone world-wide;

we’ve got a socialist/fascist future prez who plans to do the same thing done in the 1930’s which prolonged the agony of the great depression (look up Smoot-Hawley);

we can see a foretaste of what is to come in the microcosm of watching Iceland self-destruct;

Any other good news?

“Take a look sometime at the merged companies offering of the 1958 Packard Hawk. A Studebaker Hawk with the ugliest front end in automotive history.”

Good Lord!

You weren’t exaggerating. Looks like a catfish with wheels.