The European Central Bank has come out with some harsh criticism of programs that pay consumers for scrapping old cars. The Wall Street Journal calls the report “an official slap on the wrist to European governments.”  In its monthly bulletin for…

Regular readers will recall that we predicted this: With the “cash for clunkers” incentives now history, car sales are falling back to the abysmally low levels they reached early this year. The Associated Press reports that General Motors’ September sales were…

Janet Reuther-Schopp was angry last May when she found out that her family’s business, Reuther Chrysler Jeep Dodge, was on the list of dealerships rejected by bankrupt Chrysler Corp. She’s still angry, and she has…

If you weren’t swayed by my economic arguments against the “cash for clunkers” program, you may want to read Christopher Knittel’s analysis of the program’s supposed environmental benefits. Knittel, an economist at the University of California-Davis, calculated how much carbon…

Unanimity is rare in surveys of business people, but the St. Louis Fed found it among area car dealers. The Fed’s latest Burgundy Book survey says that all the dealers it talked to expect lower sales this year.  Other retailers…

Automakers, it turns out, really can go bankrupt. It’s just happened in Sweden to Saab, a subsidiary of General Motors. A company statement says the move will allow Saab to “continue business as usual” and create a “truly independent entity…