What's Wrong With This Picture: Last Man Standing Edition

I feel that Ford is in the best position right now. With the exception of the tragic Focus, their vehicles are great and the upcoming vehicles look promising. And their public image is very good because they didn't take TARP funds. GM is salvageable but will take more effort. Although I'm not so sure that they know exactly what to do, they have some great products. And I think they will be a smaller leaner company focused on making great cars and not just a company that exists simply to provide benefits to people who would be otherwise earning substantially less. Chrysler doesn't appear to have the products, quality or design that they need to survive.

Let me clarify my point, leaving out extraneous (and probably erroneous) details. The real issue is that this graph portrays a bad thing (decline in sales) as a good thing (showing all three companies appearing to improve). The only real improvement is that they're not getting worse as fast. It's hard for me to believe that whoever put this thing together didn't do it with malice aforethought. That is, it's not only misleading, it's deliberately misleading. On the other hand, we've seen this kind of commentary on the broader economy as well--e.g., because unemployment is not getting worse as fast as it was a month or two earlier things are looking up.

I geuss one bit of info on this graph is that Ford is increasing market share compared to GM and Chrysler. Toyota and Honda were down more than Ford's June drop...........

Ford's in worse shape now, and their condition will continue to worsen. The fact they didn't take government largesse will really come back to haunt them. Their sales are still declining, and they're still losing money. And mos fundamentally, the economy is getting far worse by the month.