Great commentary in today's Detroit Free Press: re auto industry

[1gobluedem]

The policies that ruined the auto industry
By BARRY C. LYNN • December 1, 2008

GM, Ford and Chrysler seem still too bloated and old-fashioned, their workers too pampered. For too long the carmakers have failed to design and bring to market the smaller and more fuel efficient vehicles we now want to buy. Yet it is important to put the blame where it really belongs, not on management or labor, but on Congress.

Viewed over the long haul, the all but complete bankrupting of the Big Three is a stunning event. Not long ago the American auto industry was the greatest manufacturing complex in the world. Had a competitor nation consciously intended to destroy this system the result today would surely count as one of history’s great coups. Yet no strategist in Tokyo, Brussels or Beijing cooked up this blitzing of Detroit. Rather it was the product of a set of incoherent policies made right here in America. The environment of law in which these companies had to operate in recent decades all but guaranteed their destruction.


Full text here: http://www.freep.com/article/20081201/OPINION05/81126100/1068/opinion

[zeemike]

1. What a load of crap

No no it could not be managements fault...the government made them build and market gas gusseting big trucks because of CAFE standards...bulshit.
And Taxes are always the boogie man
And workers getting too much money...all bullshit

What is wrong is managements lack of vision...they are completely blind to the obvious trend to fuel efficiency and the need for the electric car, as GM proved when they crushed their EV1.
There are no Henry Fords in the industry but Harvard business school grads who only know the bottom line, and cannot accept responsibility for there own actions.

[phantom power]

2. I call bullshit on the "energy policy" bullet.

The Big Three fought any improvements to CAFE for decades. Nobody made them focus on the truck/SUV market. They made a conscious choice to build them, because it allowed them to blow off the existing CAFE standards, which they made sure were never extended to the SUV realm, and because they could rake in huge profit margins.

Well, now their quest for those big profit margins has come home to roost, and they're going to try and blame Congress?

Fuck you, Big-3 CEOs.

:rofl:

[riqster]

3. If they still can't recognize their own culpability,

...they aren't ready for a bailout. All they'll do is that same old stupid shit. Like an addict in denial, buying another bottle or baggie isn't gonna help.

[catnhatnh]

4. AS long as It's a Major Recognized Problem...

Where's the call to ban "right to work" in the US??? OH-RIGHT...WE all gotta' be more like the Japanese and they don't cotton to unions...

[yurbud]

5. yep it's the pampered workers--the ones that get corporate jets and eight figure bonuses.