Ghosn on Eurozone: ""We Don't Know If the Headwinds Are Going to Strengthen or Weaken, Go up or Down, If the Oil is Going up or Down, I Know Steel is Going up, I Don't Know If the Financial Crisis is Going to Get Better"
With The Land of The Free deep in auto-market hell, our cheese-eating surrender-monkey pals look set to follow suit. PSA (Peugeot-Citroen) has enjoyed relatively brisk metal moving thus far this year. But the automaker expects sales in its Euro-market bastion to start dropping through the rest of the year. Sales in Western Europe (where PSA gets its fattest profits) are down two percent year-to-date, and headed south– despite French-market tax incentives (where 22 percent of PSA sales originate). The Wall Street Journal reports that price increases set to go into effect this summer may help PSA's bottom line, but only at the expense of sales. At Renault, CEO Carlos Ghosn's ambitious ten percent sales growth target has been halved. "Realistically we are dealing in an environment which is very uncertain and we have to be very transparent in the fact that it can get better or worse," says Ghosn. Analysts say profitability goals are also likely to be abandoned. C'est la vie.
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Bugatti firm was created by an Italian living in [s]France[/s] Germany.
The French surrendered in 1870 to the Prussians. They surrendered in 1814 and 1815 (when Napoleon escaped and tried again) to the Grand Coalition. They surrendered in Vietnam. They surrendered in Algeria (to the Arabs -- something no Western power had done in centuries -- Charles Martel must have rolled over in his grave). They surrendered in Quebec. They surrendered in India. And I'm guessing they'll surrender to Islam once the Islamic population gets a little bigger in France. The French have a long history of surrender on the battlefield -- where they reign supreme is taking advantage of allied victories to then get something at the after war conferences. And tell the GI's who died fighting the French in the invasion of North Africa that the French have never fought the US. Of course, they surrendered fairly quickly, but that's traditional. Finally, French wine is vastly overrated (and from California vine stocks anyway).
Perhaps TTAC's editorial staff should exercise some restraint when deciding whether to "flame" an entire nation - possibly by applying the constraints you impose on posters - the "comments policy" - to yourselves. After all, there are enough places in the world where US of A is thought of as Unlimited Supply of A-holes. I can see no practical benefit for TTAC in confirming those suspicions.
As for France's 'surrender' in various places, I'd call it being realistic. The British learned here that it's very hard - almost impossible - not worth it, to sustain a colonial hold on a remote people. We surrendered (came to our senses) in Vietnam and will do so in the Middle East at some point. Looks like we might have learned from our own revolt against British rule, but no. People being dominated by a foreign power have it 'in their faces' every day, whereas for the remote dominating power, it's just 'in the news'. So the dominated have unending and powerful incentive to throw off the repression. We have no clue what the French went through in wars against Germany, and might not be so bellicose if we had. The German people cheered wildly as Hitler's troops were rampaging through Europe and Russia, but their perception changed after the bombing became heavy.