De Lorenzo drops the gloves

[Camino LS6]

http://www.autoextremist.com/current/

[CARBIZ]

http://www.autoextremist.com/current/

As usual, Delorenzo is spot on. Perhaps some good will come out of this. As everyone loses their jobs, perhaps a pheonix will rise from the ashes once more. If this task force comes to realize what Japan Inc has known for decades (that is, incentives and monies for large companies that create jobs here), maybe some of this green shift tax dollars can be poured into Detroit, just like Toyota got for its Synergy Drive.

Tit for tat, I say.

[DBeaSSt]

Tell us how you really feel Mr. DeLorenzo. Well written article.

[balthazar]

>>"If this task force comes to realize what Japan Inc has known for decades (that is, incentives and monies for large companies that create jobs here), maybe some of this green shift tax dollars can be poured into Detroit, just like Toyota got for its Synergy Drive."<<

Needless to say: fat chance of this. Japan's government values it's industries and acts accordingly.

When toyota makes $7B in one quarter, the japanese Gov funds 100% of it's hybrid's R&D.

When Exxon makes $11B in one quarter, the media (and those whose thoughts are molded by it) condemn the Co, and the U.S. Gov talks seriously about 'windfall profit taxation'.

Far too many Americans hate ourselves, AND success... or at least thats what we're often told to do.... yet AT THE SAME TIME, we are somehow able to lament the 'pitiful' global performance of GM, esp compared to toyota. It's hypocritical nonsense.

[FUTURE_OF_GM]

Excellent read!

As I have said for many years here, the media is at the core of all of this because americans aren't bright enough to seperate fact from fiction.

I, however, DO NOT think we will ever recover from this. (In fact, I'm betting on it)

[Drew Dowdell]

We won't recover from this unless we institute protectionist measures.... which we'll never do.... which means we'll never recover.

I dare anyone to come at me with "globalism creates jobs and generates more wealth" bull&#036;h&#33;.

[CARBIZ]

We won't recover from this unless we institute protectionist measures.... which we'll never do.... which means we'll never recover.

I dare anyone to come at me with "globalism creates jobs and generates more wealth" bull&#036;h&#33;.

I'll bet you'll get a load of silence from the pro-globalization camp these days. Their myths and theories have blown up in their face. I am not sure protectionism is the answer, either. The free-flow of ideas and goods looks good on paper. Then again, so does Communism.

Lately, I've come to think of the economy as a pyramid scheme. The CEOs of major multi-nationals get to justify their $100M a year paycheques by the wider the base of their pyramid. But how exactly does that benefit the average Joe on the street? The pro-globalizationists will quickly point to Wal-Mart and the apparent falling of prices. Okay, but if a toaster could be had from the States for $20, that might be a bargain. If the only reason it is $20 is because it came from China and 2,000 American workers were thrown out of work who used to make the same (actually better) toaster for $40, how does that benefit the average Joe if 500 of those American workers go on Welfare, 500 lose their homes and the other 1,000 get jobs for 75% less working at Wal-Mart?

Again, the pro-globalization lobby will counter with 'more choices for the consumer' and (they would have until recently) had a strong argument that the economy was doing better, that the service sector was picking up the slack, etc. Do I really give a damn that when I walk into a Home Depot there are now 25 different types of Moon-rays for my back yard? Wouldn't 4 or 5 be enough to choose from? And I think we can now see exactly where those service sector jobs have ended up: either Bangalore or the pink slips on Wall Street - that's where. I am sure the 18 year olds working at the local cell phone store are making $60k a year, too. It's great that the products they are hocking are also made in Asia. That is where this has gotten us. Their parents might have been hocking a rotary dial phone, but at least that phone was made here and the research (Nortel, etc) was done here and the patents were controlled here.

About 3 years ago, 2 things made me sit up and take notice: 1) the so-called experts crowing about how the longest economic growth in history was being driven by the 'consumer;' and 2) the current account deficit of the United States.

It should have been apparent to any idiot a few years ago that the two are inter-related and neither could last forever. If everyone used their visa to buy toasters and cars, and if those cars and toasters were built overseas, and if those same governments we were buying toasters and cars from had to buy treasury bills to keep the Ponzi scheme flowing - well, I want to know who was asleep at the switch?

Now every government on Earth is throwing cash at the banks (who started this mess in the first place) and, frankly, the only thing preserving us from a holocaust not seen since the 1930s is that hyper-inflation has not (yet) reared its ugly head. Or, that the Asians still feel obligated to us enough that they haven't yet decided to make a run on the U.S. dollar.

Hmm, I wonder what Obama will have to promise to keep them from doing that.

[FUTURE_OF_GM]

As always... GOLDEN!

[regfootball]

i understand peter's frustration, but he really at this point is preaching to the choir and his writing has gone to the place that none of the people he is trying to wake up will get it. people still are in the 'consumer reports says toyota makes the best cars', 'my uncle has a 17 year old camry that he has never changed the oil and it has 876,000 miles on it and we just put a new clutch in it last week', etc. yada.

and i still believe at the root of this anti detroit and anti American sentiment.....basic racial profiling. those smart asians like to hole up in an office and spend 80 hours a week engineering their way out of a concrete vault with really great math because you know those asians go to school a lot and they get good grades and so they do a really good job making nice reliable cars for us American consumers. Just for us! Anything they build is so much better. Much better than the inefficient people who work at GM and Ford, you know, all the high priced middle managers that work their and get overpaid and all the union people who sit on their asses or don't show up for work and make 264 dollars an hour. I shouldn't have to pay for their health care or salary and dammit they should work 12 hours a day for free with no breaks and no heat just because its my car they are building because dammit, my job sucks too and i only make 120,000 a year working from home writing reports...or making multi colored pie graphs on powerpoint........well ok i do facebook all day with my other at home coworkers but that's besides the point, i have to go to a work meeting at the Florida resort this weekend.

And those Germans, they really design all the fashionable cars, they are EUROPEAN you know. Everything from Europe is cool. It doesn't matter that my German car is in the shop a lot, German cars are better because they are so chic and they drive them at 120 miles per hour on the autobahn and all those people over there have such cool accents.

Honestly, though, if the govt wants to help GM, the best thing they could do is ante up some dough to redo all the interiors on a lot of their cars and give them grade A++ plastic and knockout designs at any cost. and a few six speed trannies and some new engines. Honestly that would be the quickest way to chip away at all the negativity. I still believe interiors is right up at the top in terms of what makes someone's opinion of a brand. If GM for example put VW level or better interiors in their chevys, then that might finally start to get people turned around.

Edited March 15, 2009 by regfootball

[FUTURE_OF_GM]

i understand peter's frustration, but he really at this point is preaching to the choir and his writing has gone to the place that none of the people he is trying to wake up will get it. people still are in the 'consumer reports says toyota makes the best cars', 'my uncle has a 17 year old camry that he has never changed the oil and it has 876,000 miles on it and we just put a new clutch in it last week', etc. yada.

and i still believe at the root of this anti detroit and anti American sentiment.....basic racial profiling. those smart asians like to hole up in an office and spend 80 hours a week engineering their way out of a concrete vault with really great math because you know those asians go to school a lot and they get good grades and so they do a really good job making nice reliable cars for us American consumers. Just for us! Anything they build is so much better. Much better than the inefficient people who work at GM and Ford, you know, all the high priced middle managers that work their and get overpaid and all the union people who sit on their asses or don't show up for work and make 264 dollars an hour. I shouldn't have to pay for their health care or salary and dammit they should work 12 hours a day for free with no breaks and no heat just because its my car they are building because dammit, my job sucks too and i only make 120,000 a year working from home writing reports...or making multi colored pie graphs on powerpoint........well ok i do facebook all day with my other at home coworkers but that's besides the point, i have to go to a work meeting at the Florida resort this weekend.

And those Germans, they really design all the fashionable cars, they are EUROPEAN you know. Everything from Europe is cool. It doesn't matter that my German car is in the shop a lot, German cars are better because they are so chic and they drive them at 120 miles per hour on the autobahn and all those people over there have such cool accents.

Honestly, though, if the govt wants to help GM, the best thing they could do is ante up some dough to redo all the interiors on a lot of their cars and give them grade A++ plastic and knockout designs at any cost. and a few six speed trannies and some new engines. Honestly that would be the quickest way to chip away at all the negativity. I still believe interiors is right up at the top in terms of what makes someone's opinion of a brand. If GM for example put VW level or better interiors in their chevys, then that might finally start to get people turned around.

I agree.

[balthazar]

At some point even the free-marketers will HAVE to admit that the THEORY of open markets is getting trampled by the ACTUALITY of open markets.... won't they ?????

When does national self-preservation rank over economic theory for them...or is it never so ???

[regfootball]

we won't see that until we start to see the intellectual class needing to get laid off from their consultant, professor and 'industry expert' jobs.

[enzl]

Economics are cyclical, folks. The shenanigans in the financial realm have amplified this downturn, but you must have bad times to have good ones, relatively speaking.

The assault on our manufacturing base started decades ago....and protectionist polices merely prolongs the agony & cost of true investments in said base.

The solution for the current crisis has its basis in both effective (which is vastly different than 'more') oversight of our financial system (both nationally and worldwide) and a change in the negative mindset that dominates the current picture.

Putting up walls only makes other dig under them...decisions made while in the midst of a panic are, generally speaking, not the wisest.

Believe it or not, this too shall pass. It may suck for a while, but the reason that our system works (for the most part) is that its flexible....

[FUTURE_OF_GM]

Economics are cyclical, folks. The shenanigans in the financial realm have amplified this downturn, but you must have bad times to have good ones, relatively speaking.

The assault on our manufacturing base started decades ago....and protectionist polices merely prolongs the agony & cost of true investments in said base.

The solution for the current crisis has its basis in both effective (which is vastly different than 'more') oversight of our financial system (both nationally and worldwide) and a change in the negative mindset that dominates the current picture.

Putting up walls only makes other dig under them...decisions made while in the midst of a panic are, generally speaking, not the wisest.

Believe it or not, this too shall pass. It may suck for a while, but the reason that our system works (for the most part) is that its flexible....

Protectionist policies sure have worked for Japan... (From a manufacturing standpoint -- which is all I care about at this point)

[CARBIZ]

At some point even the free-marketers will HAVE to admit that the THEORY of open markets is getting trampled by the ACTUALITY of open markets.... won't they ?????

When does national self-preservation rank over economic theory for them...or is it never so ???

Try and have this discussion with a social liberal: they will haughtily declare that we should be concerned about the welfare of worker's in Asia and Central Asia, that those jobs are just as important as our own. Of course, this would be coming from a liberal-arts graduated, unionized government-tenured person who has a job.

All of these theories look great on PAPER, until those theories hit the true reality of human avarice, incompetence and sloth. With the amount of ingenuity and wealth in this world, there is no intellectual reason that every person on this planet should not enjoy the same standard of living as, say, the Swedes. However, once you try and enact the labor, corporate, technical and social policies to get to that goal, everything bogs down into AIS, as I said.

The elephant in the room is that even if Europe and North America outsourced every single job it had to Asia and South Asia, the sheer number of babies coming online every day will ensure that labor prices will still be a nickel an hour in those countries, thus perpetuating the eternal poverty and ability to undercut any labor rate an average European or N American could afford to work for. And don't even get me started on the sheer amount of new natural resources the world would have to cough up if Asia or South Asia even approached HALF of our standard of living.

As ugly as this downturn appears to be, the next will be much worse unless the West is willing to take a long term view of where all this is going.

China may not be quite so conciliatory next time, either. Not when it is the largest military power and economy. I wonder who Japan will cozy up to then?

[Drew Dowdell]

If GM for example put VW level or better interiors in their chevys, then that might finally start to get people turned around and head back to the dealer because the cup holder/power mirror switch/airbag cover fell off* or the instrument panel/stereo/wiper control/heated seats began malfunctioning*

fixed that up there for ya.

The day GM starts putting VW quality interiors into GMs is the day I stop buying GM. I've lived through that nightmare once already.

Oh sure, the airbag cover is soft enough to wipe your hemorrhoids on, but that doesn't mean it'll stay attached to the car.

*All actual issues on my ex's Passat between 62k miles and ~85k miles.

[Cory Wolfe]

fixed that up there for ya.

The day GM starts putting VW quality interiors into GMs is the day I stop buying GM. I've lived through that nightmare once already.

Oh sure, the airbag cover is soft enough to wipe your hemorrhoids on, but that doesn't mean it'll stay attached to the car.

*All actual issues on my ex's Passat between 62k miles and ~85k miles.

My Jetta's interior was rock solid in the time I owned it and after having to disassemble the entire thing, I can tell you that those parts are not easy to remove, they are well put together and of higher quality. I can't say the same for any GM vehicle of similar vintage. After one VW, I'm ready for another.

[MyerShift]

My Jetta's interior was rock solid in the time I owned it and after having to disassemble the entire thing, I can tell you that those parts are not easy to remove, they are well put together and of higher quality. I can't say the same for any GM vehicle of similar vintage. After one VW, I'm ready for another.

Not me. Rattles, buzzes, and breaking pieces have been the order ever larger for my car.

However, I'm hooked on how it drives, so I might be stupid and try one more time.

[Cory Wolfe]

Not me. Rattles, buzzes, and breaking pieces have been the order ever larger for my car.

However, I'm hooked on how it drives, so I might be stupid and try one more time.

Maybe you should've gone old school and bought an MK3.