Teh Ricer Civic!

6.1% is an annualized rate. Not the rate for the 1st quarter alone. But bigger numbers get bigger ratings :AH-HA_wink:

Mmm well 20% stake in Chrysler may not be enough to convince them to sell ALL of their products in the US. However outright ownership of Saab could.

Yep, and car quality would be god awful, mechanics would be doing good business, and cars would be very heavy with somewhat less efficient engines. IN ADDITION, car costs would be more because there would be less competition. Overall net effect on Americans: lower income people are less able to have a car due to the increased maintenance costs. Older cars would likely be less reliable so that is not a viable alternative for them. Time and frustration on broken down cars for all Americans. More employment in auto manufacturing and service, but less employment elsewhere in the economy as time, effort, and money put into servicing cars drains investments elsewhere. So your plan would hurt the lower income people and overall not really help anyone else. ...Although i suppose if one of the American automakers did actually pick up on the old American JIT and continuous quality improvement then things may have turned out somewhat the same. Your guy's proposition equates to this: Your a baseball team full of good, but not great players. You go up against a team who is somewhat better than you and you cannot win against them (you come close through). So, your solution is to ban that team from playing so that you can come out on top. Now the reasonable thing to do in that instance is to practice more, watch how they play, and try to one up them and win. Its harder but it can be done.

Because as a creditor, what would you rather have? A ton of ownership in a company so that you can either liquidate (or perhaps try to rejuvenate and sell off a company) or being forced to take a much smaller percentage ownership than usual and a huge gamble of whether it will actually return to profitability and possibly being able to recoup the loans? $15 million NOW may be worth more than 30 million in 5 years... As to Haypops, your right, but with junk bonds and massive leveraging of companies that occurred during the easy money periods of the 90s and the 2000s, its the same effect. Equity is always the largest risk, because if a company defaults they either 1) risk losing a TON of their equity portion to the creditors, or 2) are forced to liquidate and receive nothing.

Naw, Globalism will eventually put us right back at square one, with manufacturing and everything back at home because it doesnt really make sense to offshore it to a place where the costs are the same.

The entire point of bond holders is that they know they are taking a huge risk. If a company defaults on its loans, the way it can have them forgiven is by losing MASSIVE amounts of equity in their company. That is how it works... especially with start up firms. By removing that aspect, it does remove some incentive to invest in the more risky junk bonds... after all, whats the point if the government is just going to screw you in the end? Saying that bondholders didn't play ball and wanted what they would regularly get and then punish them in the name of "fairness" would definitely constitute a war on capital. The additional fact that Obama said that Wall Street will play a smaller role in the future is just further proof of the claim.

Hmm, this would make VW and FIAT the largest competitors in Europe... i could see FIAT leveraging their new found scales of economies + Saab dealer networks to start selling in the US again... interesting...

The irony is that by the time the global economy equalizes, we will all be no better off than when the world was agricultural based, relatively speaking (of course we will have neat gizmos though). The only difference is we will rely on others for food instead of ourselves.

Well Mexico and Canada's trade balance is a bit better lookin that US-Japan is. So it is still more beneficial to buy a car made in Mexico and Canada. PLUS there is the added bonus that buying cars made in Mexico pumps more money into the coffers of Mexicans, and more affulent Mexicans might make Mexico a nicer country that is not so corrupt & create a larger market for US goods & create a productive neighbor. So, yes, there are benefits to buying 'American' still.

Perhaps a Camaro, or maybe a WRX, or a Fiesta... hell i might even consider one of them Euro focuses when they make it stateside, or a Cruze if it has a sporty trim. Kinda depends on the state of the companies when i finally get around to buying a car.

THEORETICALLY one could say that people buying Toyota/Honda in the past has increased wealth here in the US of A because they did not have to spend money repairing their vehicles and thus could use it to invest in new companies for the US economy. anyways mercantilism is kinda dead, and considering we have a fiat currency system, buying foreign actually DAMPENS inflation here in the US, and it is rather irrelevant if we buy imports or not because we will just print up new cash anyways. Provided other countries do not tinker with their currencies (which they do) then when a country has a lot of sales to the US, they should have more US dollars which will weaken the dollar against their currency. Theoretically it would reach a point where exporting to the US would not make sense because Americans would not be able to afford/willing to pay for the exports, which would force them to build plants in the US of A to avoid currency fluctuations. Of course none of this actually happens in the real world because people do not play by the rules. And since China's current idea of economic growth is print a crapload of money each year and grow by inflation, i don't think we will be seeing a difference in trade imbalances with them any time soon.

Heh, i guess i never realized that it was kinda weird to have a dodge person as an admin on a GM website, but i don't see any harm. Whats the difference between him being an admin or not? Its not like he abuses his admin powers to further pro-chrysler aims.

Hmm Liberal huge money spending government with low interest rates that led to the massive inflation that dominated the 70s and early 80s. yes lets compare the guy that set up the stage for the awful economy to Reagan who managed to tame the inflation. Of course you get ludicrous growth rates when the government greatly expands its spending / eases restrictions on money. You also get long term problems when its easy to get money. Besides, the real power behind everything is the Federal Reserve. They have the power to expand or contract the money supply and THAT is what largely determines most growth... they had a loose monetary policy under JFK/LBJ and a VERY TIGHT one under Reagan as they tried to reign in inflation... of course the growth rate is going to be less under Reagan. In addition. If everyone in this country made 1% of what they currently make. Then you know what? stuff would be 99% cheaper and EVERYONE WOULD HAVE THE SAME STANDARD OF LIVING AS BEFORE. Wages are relative, constant attempts to push them up leads to inflation which is detrimental to most people (although advantageous to debtors). Times of good economic expansion have been dominated by low inflation, easy money, and fiscally balanced budgets. The President and their administration have somewhat control over the last one (if they can convince congress of it), but the other 2 are largely out of their hands. It should also be noted that the economy boomed back in the 20s. There was not very equal pay then but we still prospered, until the fed went and wrought the great depression. Coming out of the bad recession following WW1, Harding cut government spending by 50% and lowered taxes by a large amount. The result? The recession lasted about 2 years and the economy boomed for a decade.

Wait... Cerberus is structured like a venture capital fund? Hmm... i wonder why they havent been looking for additional investors then?

Hmm, we have somewhat free markets. We use a modified form of capitalism/socialism. We have a ton of regulations + underground regulations. So... your arguing that because those 3 things dont work (which we dont have currently) we should move further in the direction that is already not working???? How about we get rid of the Federal reserve, fractional reserve banking, and bring back gold/silver backed currency? As to Cerebus... i don't know what is going through their minds, it may be possible that they find it to be a better investment for them to just sell it off than to invest in it. Its kinda pointless to invest in an industry that you do not understand.

Hmm i would be somewhat concerned with the Creditors wanting to dissolve and liquidate GM if they do not function well enough... HOWEVER... there will be a lot of competing interests in this so it may work out. I am in far more support of this than .gov taking control.

Well now that the Union owns over half of Chrysler... they will be bargaining against themselves for labor rates.

Hmm i thought it had to be a turbodiesel 4 cyl?

So? The French make weaponry, it doesn't mean they are any good (actually French rifles are neat, plus they are in pristine condition because they have never been fired, and usually only have a dent from when it was dropped) I'm simply saying that GM would be in a better bargaining position WITHOUT government help, not that it is impossible to do so with it.

How is that nerdy? I would probably have given myself 327 if i were in the same position.

I still maintain that it is harder to demand concessions when the government is pumping money into you. What was previously an ordeal is turning into a fiasco.

Well screw 'em anyways, who thought it was a good idea to convert China/Russia/everyone else to capitalism and allow them to become a viable threat to the US anyways? Perhaps history will repeat itself here, China will become isolationist again and the rest of the world will surpass it.

time to test out the new toys? ... although they may just steal the design... so... YIPPEE!! lol

Why cant we just claim Mexico as a manufacturing colony? lol