Comments for Chrysler to file for bankruptcy »
Posted By pagey 7 months, 4 weeks ago in Business & FinanceThe filing comes after some of the company's smaller lenders refused a Treasury Department demand to reduce the amount of money the troubled automaker owed them.
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engineer7 months, 4 weeks ago
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BB647 months, 4 weeks ago
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Hold on. I think it's time to look at the big picture. Toyoda, Honda, and BMW have plants here and are doing well. Sure market is down but you don't see the massive layoffs and bankruptcy. Why? You don't have unions making unreasonable demands. Labor, management and the stockholders need to sit down and work things out. Government also needs to keep their noses out of the private sector. I've seen too many times where Uncle Sam's people automatically side with the unions. It's time for reasonable wages or you are correct, none of you will be working here.
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Also, I'm tire of every moron here whining about American manufacturing yet how many of you own American made cars? How many wear American made cloths? How many of you have American made computers? How about something simple like your shoes? Everything I own is made in the USA. My car is made by Ford. My Laptop is by General Dynamics. My suits, pants and shirts are made in Chicago. My shoes right in Wisconsin. So how many of you patriotic folks who like to take shots at conservatives can tell me that?-
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Ciera-Marie7 months, 4 weeks ago
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Ford may be American owned but you're full of crap that it's made in America. Most of the Ford Cars are made overseas. The majority of foreign car companies own manufacturing plants right here in the Good 'ole USA.
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You're right about General Dynamics. However are you totally sure your shoes are made in WI? As for your clothes you're kidding right? Most clothes from Wal Mart to designer label are made over seas. So either you're lying or buying custom made to order fit only your feet shoes and clothes. If that's the case here's a clue, majority of Americans cannot afford to buy custom made anything right now.-
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BB647 months, 4 weeks ago
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First, my Ford is a Lincoln. I do enough bragging here I didn't want to sound like a bigger jerk. So yes it's actually the car has over 85% US components.
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My shoes, Allen Edmond's. Cloths, you are correct when it comes to the material. Most of the best wools, silks and synthetics are from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. I've seen the new mills their building and they're great. Clean, modern and very automated. Most have their own power generation and the gen sets are actually built in Wisconsin from a company called Waukesha Engine. The material might be foreign but most of my cloths are custom made. It's a challenge finding cloths that hide my back brace.
As to not affording American made cloths, why is that? Could it be all of you union supporting big mouths actually ship at Wal-Mart and forced the American textiles out of business?
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LegsrAssets7 months, 4 weeks ago
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How many people do you know that can even find this many US products. Quick, name 10 manufacturers of shoes that are totally US located! You can't do it. Show me an average small town where US made goods are even available! YOU CAN"T!
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THANKS TO THE GOP!-
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BB647 months, 4 weeks ago
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Where to start. My shoes are made by a firm called Allen Edmond's. Until recently, they were 100% American made. Due to new clean air standards and leather dying requirements, they now have some production in China or India. I don't know. My shoes, Park Avenues, are made in Port Washington like they have for the last 25 years.
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As to your other complaint, why is that the fault of the GOP? GE moved their first automated light bulb plant to Japan in 1947. President Truman was in office and he was a Democrat. Today, I don't think there is one bulb plant left here. Why? Because Americans will buy anything if it's cheap and available. Why do you think Wal-Mart is still growing? If quality or slogans like buy union actually mattered to you, you wouldn't buy the non-union, Chinese junk. The left of our country loves the talk but most never walk the walk.
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Goppy7 months, 4 weeks ago
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The big picture is that ... for decades ... American Car Companies have not been competing on a fair playing field.
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Toyota, Honda, and BMW's are manufactured by nations who have a National Health Care solution.
Heath Care costs add $1,500 for EACH car GM produces - Ford and Chrysler are similar.
For Toyota ... the cost is approximately $250.
And yes ... these numbers reflect cars made in America by foreign companies.
You see, GM (and Ford and Chrysler) pay not only for CURRENT employees ... but all those RETIRED employees.
American Car Companies will NEVER become competitive until they can eliminate this burden - like every other car company.
So you can feel pretty smug about buying American ... I know, because I do as well ... but it's all to no avail until you look at a BIGGER picture ... and understand the REAL problem.
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BB64Comment removed: Spam
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BB647 months, 4 weeks ago
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Your argument is a total fail. Those plants mentioned are based in the United States, not their home countries, so they do offer full health, dental and pension benefits. The one major difference is the retirement benefits. GM for example must add $2000 per car for each of their retired workers. GM has a workers pool where the employee will collect most of his or her salary while laid off for up to 2 years.
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On the health costs you're showing, I'd love to know where you're finding monthly group health for around $250/person, I don't believe that is correct. That might be a weekly costs but even then it's low.
Stop telling automakers what kinds of cars to build and let them use their own marketing research. You want GM, Ford and Chrysler to survive, dump the UAW and the retiree benefits. Why is it the President of the United States is giving 55% of Chrysler to the UAW, did they buy the company or simply the President? For their actions over the years, they're as guilty as the management for screwing up a company. You want a piece of the pie, buy it. Same for Fiat. Don't give away assets that aren't yours. They're in bankruptcy. Follow the current laws. If there are enough assets the firm will reorganize. If not, let the assets be sold off and that's it. But don't reward a union that was one of the major causes of the failure.
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nostalgia7 months, 4 weeks ago
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And which president signed NAFTA?
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When are you going to learn that both parties are going to push free trade
What happened to the "Made in America" provisions in the stimulus bill? Democrats removed that provision because the Obama administration didn't want it in there
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pagey7 months, 4 weeks ago
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Tangent0017 months, 4 weeks ago
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Hogwash! There is a Toyota plant here in the US that has the same compensation as US counterparts. One of the differences is that Japan has Universal health care, so Toyota doesn't have to pay for that.
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The main failure of the US auto industry is lack of competitive products and innovation allowing foreign manufacturers to leap-frog America technologically. How long after Toyota and Honda introduced their hybrids did a US auto maker finally come out with one of their own? As I recall, it was the Ford Escape that had only a 4 MPG gain over the same model all-gas version. Whoa!-
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beavith17 months, 4 weeks ago
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part of it too was management and the unions realizing that constantly fighting each other at contract time was counterproductive.
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they worked together to provide good pay and great benefits... worked great until this business collapse.
they worked together to build a house of cards rather than a solid business. that's GM and Chrysler. Ford is hanging on by its fingernails.
i don't feel bad for them. they should have gone bankrupt before we plowed $30B into them and still got to watch them fail.
engineer. big manufacturing is never coming back because it never left. its more efficient. what did leave are the mindless labor manufacturing jobs that can be done anywhere and for minimum wage or less. -
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fjgalt7 months, 4 weeks ago
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I had a 1984 Toyota Corolla with a 1.4 cu ft engine that got 44 miles per gallon on the highway, ran on regular gasoline (until the government forced the formula for gasoline to include oxygen molecules, i.e., air, and then I got 35 mpg). Get the government out of designing cars and forcing companies to deal with unions (sorry, a job on the assembly line making cars isn't worth $70 per hour (wages and benefits); it's just keeping a robot out of work).
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My next three cars were Nissan Sentras, each made in Smyrna, Tennessee by American labor making about $40 per hour. Japanese management has been quoted as saying American workers are the best in the world. Why can't American manufacturers make it in America? Answer: the UAW.
The industries suffering the most are/were heavily unionized. We used to lead the world in manufacturing of electronics and automobiles. Personal computers were the innovations of American companies until employment costs -- especially health care -- and regulations were increased by government interference and pcs are now made overseas.
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Progressive7 months, 4 weeks ago
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Two words: corporate greed
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http://www.propeller.com/story/2009/04/30/obama-bl...-
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beavith17 months, 4 weeks ago
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what if it was your money that was being taken for nothing?
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isn't that theft?
everybody that went into this with some sort of value should come out with something. Cerberus is walking away with nothing. who could blame them? what's left of Chrysler will be a tar baby/money pit for years.
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FrankHummel7 months, 4 weeks ago
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I suspect Chrysler is probably really serving as a trial-balloon prelude to the much LARGER-stakes "play" involving GM.
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Obama has taken a (very much JUSTIFIED!) PUBLIC stand against "special" financial interests (and specifically, the "collateralized" debtholders) getting any proportionally better treatment in the whole fiasco than any OTHER group --- but I gather the likely resolution of the whole business IN BANKRUPTCY COURT is ACTUALLY apt to be that these "interests" probably WILL benefit (relatively) for "calling the bluff" of the government planners and managers who have tried to get things "going again" on all-around more "amicable" terms. So "we the People" really should not kid each other and themselves to the effect that the apparent "resolution" of things seen here actually constitutes any sort of "victory" for ANYbody (and LEAST of all for US!).-
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nostalgia7 months, 4 weeks ago
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FTA:
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The bankruptcy filing, which was made in federal court in New York, comes after some of Chrysler's smaller lenders refused a Treasury Department demand to reduce the amount of money the troubled automaker owed them.
Major banks such as Citigroup (C, Fortune 500) and JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) agreed to reduce their portion of $7 billion in secured loans to a more manageable $2.25 billion, but talks with smaller lenders broke down Wednesday when they refused to meet a deadline set by the Treasury Department to accept pennies on the dollars for loans to Chrysler.
Gee I wonder why the large lenders were willing to take a cut on their loans to Chrysler? Couldn't be because they are receiving huge bailouts from the Feds already could it?
Those small bond holders refused - they aren't receiving taxpayer bailout dollars
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calitennflo7 months, 4 weeks ago
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We are headed for a time, when all realize what money and economics has always done...over and over...as for Chrysler...they have to retool every year...and that's not good alone...if we started using our heads that are centered ontop our shoulders...we might walk a leveled walk...stability. We? I included them...seems we are doing well.
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FrankHummel7 months, 4 weeks ago
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With respect to what is coming soon for GM, it is SAD that many fine traditional product lines and old names now (like Pontiac) have to be retired --- but there is now hardly any choice. What I have heard theorized is that GM is now looking to split itself into two pieces, corraling its VIABLE businesses and assets into one of them and letting the other go bankrupt.
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But those VIABLE assets will include the Chevy VOLT --- which is CLEARLY the prototype of the whole automotive technology of the future, since it points the way to ELIMINATING up to seven-eighths of "our" abject, addictive dependency on foreign OIL to refine into gasoline to brainlessly burn up as a mere fuel to power automobiles --- which is something "we" COULD (and SHOULD!) have been doing more GRADUALLY, going back MANY YEARS AGO NOW ALREADY!
GM has also, I gather, put in for $2.6 Billion in "bailout" funding to COMPLETE the Volt initiative (which has already been just about completely engineered and is all but "ready to go" --- having been "under development" for the past two or more years now already), and that plans are now afoot to extend the technology to the Cadillac and Buick lines as well. And THAT, I submit, would be about the SMARTEST $2.6 Billion the government will have spent in the whole massive attempt to underwrite the reestablishment of a functional economy for this nation. For THAT would be the "skeletal framework" on which the whole automotive industry could rebuild!-
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nostalgia7 months, 4 weeks ago
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But look at the stats
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2008 GM Vehicle Sales
Chevrolet 1,801,131
GMC 376,996
Pontiac 267,348
Saturn 188,004
Cadillac 161,159
Buick 137,197
Hummer 27,485
Saab 21,368
http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/27/autos/pontiac_obit...
Would you get rid of Pontiac and keep Buick?
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FrankHummel7 months, 4 weeks ago
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But better get busy actually WORKING on all of that, folks --- for, contrary to FALSE ideas fondly perpetuated by many of the older heads among us --- "we" are NOT any longer (if indeed "we" EVER actually were) the only center of technological advance in the world! The EUROPEAN counterpart of the VOLT (jovially dubbed the AMPERE) is now SLIGHTLY AHEAD in the "development derby" --- having been UNVEILED already at a major European auto show. And you can BET that all those clever folks over in ASIA are ALSO "hot on the trail" as well!
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I submit that it is WAY PAST high time to nostalgically long for the "good old days" of "business" to return --- and time to instead "roll up our sleeves" and GET BUSY doing the ALTERNATIVE ENERGY THINGS that are going to be needed in the aftermath of "cheap, easy" oil. Those technological alternatives DO EXIST, and they HAVE INDEED already been "explored", investigated, and many even "piloted" going back MANY YEARS NOW ALREADY. What needs to happen now is that they are actually going to have to be IMPLEMENTED --- and that "green-collar-economy" about which many have been talking NEEDS TO ACTUALLY BE INSTITUTED AND SERIOUSLY PURSUED!
So get busy DOING that, people, instead of milling about aimlessly like cattle in holding pens at a slaughterhouse. If WE don't do the job --- you can RELY on it that OTHERS ELSEWHERE WILL do it "for" us. And I wonder how many people here will then enjoy being in a position of "economic subservience" to folks of OTHER ethnicities and cultures... -
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FrankHummel7 months, 4 weeks ago
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But better get busy actually WORKING on all of that, folks --- for, contrary to FALSE ideas fondly perpetuated by many of the older heads among us --- "we" are NOT any longer (if indeed "we" EVER actually were) the only center of technological advance in the world! The EUROPEAN counterpart of the VOLT (jovially dubbed the AMPERE) is now SLIGHTLY AHEAD in the "development derby" --- having been UNVEILED already at a major European auto show. And you can BET that all those clever folks over in ASIA are ALSO "hot on the trail" as well!
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I submit that it is WAY PAST high time to nostalgically long for the "good old days" of "business" to return --- and time to instead "roll up our sleeves" and GET BUSY doing the ALTERNATIVE ENERGY THINGS that are going to be needed in the aftermath of "cheap, easy" oil. Those technological alternatives DO EXIST, and they HAVE INDEED already been "explored", investigated, and many even "piloted" going back MANY YEARS NOW ALREADY. What needs to happen now is that they are actually going to have to be IMPLEMENTED --- and that "green-collar-economy" about which many have been talking NEEDS TO ACTUALLY BE INSTITUTED AND SERIOUSLY PURSUED!
So get busy DOING that, people, instead of milling about aimlessly like cattle in holding pens at a slaughterhouse. If WE don't do the job --- you can RELY on it that OTHERS ELSEWHERE WILL do it "for" us. And I wonder how many people here will then enjoy being in a position of "economic subservience" to folks of OTHER ethnicities and cultures... -
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Tangent0017 months, 4 weeks ago
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While the Volt will certainly help GM, it is no silver bullet. Toyota and Honda are both poised to debut their own plug-in hybrids in the 2010 time frame as well. The market will have stiff competition IF US consumers get back into a car-buying mood.
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fjgalt7 months, 4 weeks ago
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The problem with electric cars is that they don't solve the problem of pollution. Instead of pollution being created by the car, it's caused at the electric generating plants that mostly use coal and oil.
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Same with hydrogen-powered vehicles. You need electricity to break down the water into hydrogen and oxygen.
Now, if the environmental whackos (going back to the 1970s) hadn't stopped the implementation of nuclear-powered electricity (France is about 80% nuclear, for example, so we know it can be done), we'd have cheap and clean energy now.
Today, still, the most cost-effective and cleanest automobiles are the internal-combustion engines. Taking all factors into consideration, using fossil fuels is still the best way to go. Look behind the scenes and you'll find large corporations pushing for alternative energy solutions (ADM for ethanol, GE and T. Boone Pickens for windmills) that actually cause more pollution.
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reallypsst7 months, 4 weeks ago
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This action just might be the template for GM,as all of you know GM has until june to submit a restructuring plan,and as usual the government will throw more money into the pot,this bailout of the automakers was a dismal attempt to mask the inevitable!
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Progressive7 months, 4 weeks ago
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"...as usual the government will throw more money into the pot..."
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I'm hopeful that letting Chrysler file for bankruptcy may inspire GM to work a bit more diligently on a realistic restructuring plan, now that they know they won't be bailed out if they try to pull the same BS Chrysler did.
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aceofspades17 months, 4 weeks ago
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What the article doesn't say is that the smaller lenders were about 20 hedge funds that held out & rolled the dice assumming that bankruptcy would force liquidation that in turn would bring back a bigger return to them than debt settlement would -- it's time to do some hedge trimming
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