I know the mayor of Fenton favors the buyout, but I always consider that city when I think of automakers. Chrysler has cried and cried for concessions and Fenton has abliged. Within two years of the last blackmail move by Chrysler, they are bailing on Fenton and moving jobs to Canada.

I have no confidence that American automakers will do what they say. If somehow they do stumble upon a better car, it will be built outside the United States. The American automakers are very similar to the airline industry. A successful business model is staring them in the face and they continue to ignore it.

Liars and thieves.

I think that potentially, yes we could. I know this sounds like sacrilege to free marketers out there, but consider the unique way our market is broken.

Thanks to the unprecedented corporate payouts for the top executives, and the new creative ways we can bet on stock, the market no longer rewards a “long term” approach. The long view is old fashioned – the new darling of Wall Street is short term gain. If you are daring enough (read take enough risk), you can bubble the market and cash out before a crash. Personal fortunes equivalent to the GDP of small nations have been made this way in the past few decades, while companies that have been around for over a hundred years have shut their doors. Some say that the big three are victims of their own bad decisions – many millionaires disagree with you. They knew that SUVs were doomed – a short term blip (bubble?) in the long view. But by focusing on those products, they drove profits higher, and reaped fortunes doing it. So what if the companies are in the toilet now – they are all RICH!

Faced with a market like this, sometimes it takes true leadership – a vision if you will – to guide the troubled companies “out of the wilderness”. The government can see the vital need our country has to ween itself from foreign oil, and if they bail out the big three we can guide them (as in the bailouts before) to make cars for the Long View. We have gone to the moon – but it took the Government to do it. We can break our addiction to oil, but it may take a similar national push – a focus on the benefit of our country instead of the profit for a few.

Besides, as Kurt pointed out in the top of this post - we’ve always gotten our money back before. Faced with the economy we have now, this may be the best investment we could make!

…..Mr. Greenbaum I would certainly hope that in return for Federal help the American Automakers would be required to improve their fleet fuel performance. Sounds like a good idea.

But let me ask you and the other readers this, what are you asking of the Wall Street Bankers in return for the ten times larger amount of money they received?

Seems to me the white collar businesses gets a free pass from the press and the blue collar ones don’t.

My question is if we give them a bail out will they bring the price of their cars down so people of medium pay can afford to buy them

no bailouts, loans , or concessions until they close the plants in Canada and Mexico and reopen Fenton and the rest of the plants that have been idled or closed in the United States.

No.1-How is this bailout going to make you and your product more efficient? Why have you not been doing so before? No.2-I would imagine you would/should ask the Oil Companies for a loan, for you seem to be more in tuned with their demands than us little taxpayers!

Big time groveling.

“More fuel efficiency”

All three currently make and sell for foreign markets models that are MUCH more efficient than what they can sell here. One of the reasons? Government mandates. Go to Europe and most of their car sales are diesel powered. Medium and large size vehicles with diesel engines would sell here as well if they would (or could) sell them.

Oh, forgot something.

If the government is involved, you can bet your bottom dollar that we will get crap for cars. Everything the government touches, they screw up. Hell, these clowns cant run a cafeteria for themselves, much less a car company.

…………..I forgot something too. How are we going to pay for these bailouts?

The Detroit bailout is a lot of money no argument about that, but its chump change when compared to the 800 pound gorilla WALL STREET BAILOUT.

Is the government going to expropriate our 401k type retirement plans to pay this off?….I would not rule that out, where else is there enough cash to finance this?

This country is owned by a big club…and you and I aren’t in the big club….George Carlin

there wont be better cars, it is all about making money for the big man. Gee i wish i could be well off too be able to except a dollar a year salary. So lets give them money so they can spend it the way they should of in the first place and not just put it in their pockets. BULL####!!!

Are diesels that much more efficient, mileage wise, to compensate for the higher fuel prices?

Nope.
Not unless the bailout came with strings, such as CAFE standards, guaranteed warantees, and price controls. (Not that the govt. would set the prices, but that the prices on 3 or 4 models would be set so that person of average means could buy a new car and pay it off in 3-4 years.)

I had reason to look at an ad for a Ford F450. MSRP is $57,000 for a pickup truck. The ad was touting the fact that the vehicle used(with 14,000 miles, probably a repo) was a mere $42,000. And it was being advertised as a classy work truck, not a mallmobile.

If a person were really working, one would not want a “classy” truck as much as one with stamina. But a working person could never afford one of these, which cost new more than my house did.

“Are diesels that much more efficient, mileage wise, to compensate for the higher fuel prices?
— slamfist ”

About 40% more efficient than equally sized gas engines. Add in that most modern diesels can run on true bio fuels (not wasting food for fuel like E85) without the huge mileage drop offered in gas/ethanol. There is a reason Europe is running on diesel.

I am not in favor of giving these automakers nothing. Those corporate executives make millions of dollars in bonuses and knows nothing about how to manage a companies money. If these corporations would stop being so greedy, they could sell their cars and make a profit. These fat cats have been making money for the last eight years under that lame duck president with no regulations to prevent problems like we are having. This is nothing more than corporate welfare. Where are all you folks who complained in the past about giving somebody some food stamps off your tax dollars? Where are you?

Now that certain middle class people are losing their jobs, we have all the sympathy in the world for them. But some poor person who justs want a little food stamps until times get better, people tell them to go and find a job. Well now I hope all these laid off workers can go and find them a job, because I don’t want none of my tax dollars going anymore to those irresponsible, self-motivated, greedy devils.

I appreciate all the comments and concerns about the costs and how we taxpayers are going to get our money back. But I think what we really need to focus on is what “crashtest” raised in his second post: that is, what do we taxpayers get back for the $700 BILLION DOLLARS we are paying to bailout Wall Street and the mortgage industry? The Big 3 asked for $34 Billion dollars and have been dragged through broken glass, on tv for weeks. I don’t recall anyone from Wall Street having to do much to get any of the $700 Billion. Citibank alone is getting about 35% of that $700 BILLION and I haven’t seen their chairman on the news getting his backside roasted…

So when we ask if we get better cars if the government bails out the Big 3, we should also ask if we get to refinance our homes at a much better interest rate, or get our kids 1st time mortgages at fair rates, for having given the banks their bailout. No one remembers now how the banks all got in trouble: The Bush administration allowed unbridled deregulation which led to some pretty kinky lending which got the US economy into the soup it’s in today. And isn’t convenient that we get to pay for it?

You will not get better cars unless you FORCE then to do so. They ignored energy efficient technologies available NOW. The whole history of this industry has been wrong-minded and selfish. What makes you think a bailout would change that? Drunk autoworkers have actually sabotaged cars to make their silly little points and for fun and games. That immature behavior is coming back to bite them as other countries build better cars at cheaper prices. Middle management flab ruined the auto industry in this country. Now we want to make eight dollar an hour folks support thirty dollar an hour workers. Socialist? Methinks communistic before long. And you thought eminent domain abuse was the worst of forced wealth distribution!

Chrysler and GM are going to have to join forces.There can’t be three auto makers.

My guess is they’ll burn through this $$$ in two or three months and very little will change in that period of time. I don’t think they can turn their “Queen Mary’s” around in their own length, and that’s what they’d have to do to make much of a difference. How long does it take them to bring a new vehicle to market? Usually, several years.