…………Bankruptcy may not be too bad of a thing for those automotive-companies. It would give them an opportunity to make some real changes that could give them a long term future, instead of keeping on with the same old thing while on government life-support.

I wish the government would have had the nerve to tell Banks and Wall Street the same thing, instead of us giving them amounts of money that make the automotive-bailouts look like peanuts.

Couldn’t agree more with crashtest. Doesn’t the Government or the American citizens realize the Failure of one of the “Big 3″ automakers would be just as detrimental to our economy as the failure of some of the financial institutions that got bailout funds? Our Government gave so much so easily to the financial institutions, without requiring much of anything in return. They kept telling the American public, “we cannot allow these institutions to fail”. Well, we cannot allow GM or Chrysler to fail either. I don’t think I can offer much advice to the auto companies except to say, the Officer’s of these companies need to lose their ego’s and get with the reality that they need to change their ways immediately or they won’t have a company to run.

Fire the CEO’s and all their useless toadies; hire some Japanese CEO’s and machine gun the board of director whose only function up to now has been staying awake during salary increase approval meetings before retiring to their country club for back-patting sessions.

While going back in time doesn’t help, I have little sympathy for the automobile industry - were they more stupid several years ago and didn’t know how to develop cars that got better mileage - only the foreign car designers knew how? Secondly, they promote buying a new car every 3 years like money grows on trees. Third, you could get a better deal by wearing a short skirt, knowing someone, and never really knew the real price of the car because there was so much stupid wheeling and dealing going on. They gave way too much in benefits to the autoworkers, while they should have insurance, they didn’t need to have too many of the other perks. Shouldn’t have taken the huge salaries and bonuses for ripping people off. Now they want sympathy and financial help. I think not.

Shut all the plants for a month. Make it two. Whatever it takes to force marginal dealers - and there are a lot of marginal dealers - out of business.

Even if GM has to pay furloughed workers, what’s that against the $1 billion that the Oldsmobile dealers shook down GM for?

As the new-vehicle pipeline dries up, weaker dealers will be motivated to sell their inventory to stronger dealers, wind down their business and surrender their franchises.

More than other constituency, dealers are responsible for the bloat in Detroit’s product line and the death-spiral diffusion of brand identity. Pontiac is the “performance” line? No way. Not since the dealers mau-mau’d GM into building the Ventura, T-1000, and Montana simply for the sake of having a “full line” to sell.

Obama’s firing of Wagoner reeks of socialism. Are all you liberals okay with the government taking over companies and firing whoever they want? Okay, you can say Wagoner resigned but we all know he was forced to. There are many companies out there that are going to refuse a government bailout..the problem is, they may have no choice under this administration.

I remember buying my first car, a Bronco II, in the 1980s. It was a lousy experience due to the game I had to play to negotiate the price. It got easier to dicker with the sales people when the internet developed but even my last experience with Saturn was not enjoyable. During this time, I had relatives that were making a boatload of money working on the line and loving their boats and their fancy vacations. They loved being laid off for awhile as they were still collecting their paycheck. It never seemed fair. Now, the rules have gotten tighter…but I’ll never have sympathy for the autoworkers. They screwed their companies for years and now we have to bail them out. Fire the CEO? How about the union bosses that still fly private jets to their private clubs?

I saw this news story on television this morning and it showed an autoworker in athletic shorts and a t-shirt..ambling along with his hammer doing some light hammering. What a joke.

JOM: Interesting concept, the death penalty simply for being bad at your job. I think this government demand is a reaction to the AIG thing. The politicos got egg on their face over that one, and have decided it’s not going to happen again. Which is a good thing. If you’re going to bail somebody out you SHOULD be dictating the terms. As for TheTruth and his belief that we can’t allow an American automaker to fail, when’s the last time you saw an AMC Javelin? American car companies do fail. And the world didn’t end when Chrysler bought AMC. Yes, there are jobs involved, and if the goverment doesn’t save them, it’ll be paying in some other way to retrain or support those workers. Since it’s our money, I suppose we should look at it as those of us who aren’t in danger helping out our fellow Americans who are. But the executives who ran these companies into the ground should lose everything. Houses, cars, boats, everything.

If the president showed up at a presser in a red tie, that would “reek of socialism” to the self-appointed socialism-watchers, God love ‘em.

So Obama, The Great Job Creator/Saver, will have to add one more to the millions he alleges to create/save.

Logic, in everyone’s furor and rage about AIG bonuses, the govt is quietly doing what you think. They are enacting Socialism. Soon any company that’s gets govt money will be under the controls of govt. So sad that people don’t realize the precedence being set here.

I’m tired of all these prima-donna autoworkers crying about how special they are because they mostly do jobs in which properly trained monkeys could do.Lots of people work way harder jobs than the Big 3 autoworkers do with way less pay and benefits.Let the crybabies either ship up to the new way to save their jobs,or ship out!