Kids Allowance Pulled at GM and Chrysler

There comes a time when every parent has to pull the weekly allowance to their child. When your child outspends or refuses to change spending habits you just can’t give them advances on their allowance month after month. Junior (aka your child) needs to learn the value of a dollar and seek out work to earn their own money to pay for those hundred and fifty dollar sneakers. Junior needs to know how hard it is to earn the dollars needed to pay for an expensive prom dress or tux. Junior needs to know that mom and dad can’t give them everything simply because they want it.

Even as liberal as I am, I have had thoughts of doubt about the recent bailout of the auto industries in America. The auto industry alone is so intertwined with many other industries in our nation that at times I honestly believe that we should be doing everything we can to save them. Then again, we can’t afford as a nation to continually poor dollars down a bottomless well. GM and Chrysler should have cut expenses and costs to the bone by now since the first Bush Presidential era bailout but they really have not. The United Auto Workers should be more than willing to work with them given the number of union members employed at both corporations but they are waiting for the next bailout as well to drop. Suppliers, distributors, show rooms and the list goes on should be contributing to the savings of these two companies but they are not. This all spells bankruptcy for both GM and Chrysler and maybe that is not a bad thing for them at this point in time.

President Obama spoke today on this very subject and Yahoo News has it covered with the full speech…

In recent months, my Auto Task Force has been reviewing requests by General Motors and Chrysler for additional government assistance as well as plans developed by each of these companies to restructure, modernize, and make themselves more competitive.
Year after year, decade after decade, we have seen problems papered-over and tough choices kicked down the road, even as foreign competitors outpaced us. Well, we have reached the end of that road.

We cannot, we must not, and we will not let our auto industry simply vanish. But we also cannot continue to excuse poor decisions. And we cannot make the survival of our auto industry dependent on an unending flow of tax dollars. These companies -- and this industry -- must ultimately stand on their own, not as wards of the state.

That is why the federal government provided General Motors and Chrysler with emergency loans to prevent their sudden collapse at the end of last year -- only on the condition that they would develop plans to restructure. In keeping with that agreement, each company has submitted a plan to restructure.

But after careful analysis, we have determined that neither goes far enough to warrant the substantial new investments that these companies are requesting. And so today, I am announcing that my administration will offer GM and Chrysler a limited period of time to work with creditors, unions, and other stakeholders to fundamentally restructure in a way that would justify an investment of additional tax dollars; a period during which they must produce plans that would give the American people confidence in their long-term prospects for success.

What we are asking is difficult. It will require hard choices by companies. It will require unions and workers who have already made painful concessions to make even more. It will require creditors to recognise that they cannot hold out for the prospect of endless government bailouts. Only then can we ask American taxpayers who have already put up so much of their hard-earned money to once more invest in a revitalized auto industry. - Yahoo News UK/Ireland

Before you call me a UAW or Detroit automaker hate filled monster hear me out. GM and Chrysler need to grow out of the bankruptcy as better companies just like your child would do so on learning that they have to stand on their own and pay for what they can realistically afford. Something has to give and the truth is that everyone involved with making a profit from GM and Chrysler products has to own up to it and decide if they want to work for and profit from the same company in the next couple of months or twenty years down the road. Everyone involved in these two companies survival needs to knuckle down and offer savings to save paychecks and jobs at all levels of the corporations survival structure. That works from the guy or gal cleaning the toilets to the people supplying steel, Union Workers, health benefit suppliers, guys and gals on the production floor in management, and retired workers. Everyone getting a piece of the GM and Chrysler pie needs to push a slice back. President Obama more or less fired the CEO of GM today because he came to the taxpayer trough. It was Rick Wagoner’s job to save GM. He didn’t act fast enough and he got his just reward. The details don’t matter, he didn’t do his job and his stock holders should have tarred and feathered him over a year ago!

Nobody wins if either company fails.

A very good point was made today by the Governor of Michigan, Jennifer M. Granholm, we can’t support them but they do play a part in our national security as far as having an industrial complex that can convert quickly for full scale military production. I’m thinking she was talking about WWII and the complete military industrial transformation. That isn’t a good selling point to the discussion but it is a point to really think about.

I’ll toss my cost savings into the ring, I bet that I could save GM and Chrysler millions per year each if they changed their supplier standards and let a guy like me quote their wire and cable needs. They won’t, but I could save them a bundle and the product I would supply would all be made in the USA and the same regulatory safe product they use today. The standards and requirements built into wire and cable design for all of the automotive industry adds hundreds of millions to the cost per year when a simple guy like me could supply the same damn product for mega savings without all the extended BS specifications that limit competition. Email me if you are a buyer at GM or Chrysler!

I’d put the email address in this post but I have enough offers from African nation people willing to split millions with me if I just give my banking and personal contact info.

I’m just one guy willing to bid competitively on their business. Who else is out there willing to jump in to save GM and Chrysler some serious cash in the supply chain? Step up boys and girls and be heard here! My company is willing to save GM and Chrysler some money, who else is willing to step up to save American jobs?

Papamoka

Interesting article over at the Gun Toting Liberal on this same topic...

Buy American Buffoonery

Politicians never cease to amaze me and the latest crew in The House is no different. Somebody was bamboozled into thinking that we need to start a trade war at the beginning of an economic recession and slipped in a “Buy American” only requirement into the stimulus package. Pardon me but I am about to go super nova with rage over this issue since none of these morons has looked at the world economy that is just as much dependent on the American economy as our industrial base is reliant on them!

Over at the New York Times they had this simple and eloquent explanation as to why a “Buy American” stance is idiotic and should be scratched out of the stimulus package in the Senate…

Op-Ed Contributor
If We Buy American, No One Else Will

By DOUGLAS A. IRWIN
Published: January 31, 2009
Hanover, N.H.

WORLD trade is collapsing. The United States trade deficit dropped sharply in November as imports from the rest of the world plummeted in response to the financial crisis and global recession. United States imports from China, Japan and elsewhere declined at double digit rates. The last thing the world economy needs is for governments to give a further downward shove to trade. Unfortunately, we may be doing just that.

Steel industry lobbyists seem to have persuaded the House to insert a “Buy American” provision in the stimulus bill it passed last week. This provision requires that preference be given to domestic steel producers in building contracts and other spending. The House bill also requires that the uniforms and other textiles used by the Transportation Security Administration be produced in the United States, and the Senate may broaden such provisions to include many other products.

Snippet

Remember the golden rule, or the consequences could be severe. When the United States imposed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff in 1930, it helped set off a worldwide movement toward higher tariffs. When everyone tried to restrict imports, the combined effect was a deeper global economic slump. - New York Times

I’ve worked my entire life in the manufacturing sector where goods are produced here in the USA and shipped all over the world. Most of them are shipped to other manufacturers here in the United States that then sell some of their finished products overseas. Those overseas companies look for replacement parts sometime down the road that are technically specified on drawings of the product of who and where to buy those parts from and what do you know, it points back to the United States for a high tech gadget used in India, Saudi Arabia, France, Germany, South Africa, Japan, China, Australia and the list goes on.

Manufacturers here in the United States that have survived the China Syndrome, and the India Technical Revolution have learned how to compete, beat, and sometimes buy into the companies in those nations in order to stay in business. Our American manufacturing businesses has survived and prospered because it was compete or close shop. Something the people in our government, apparently more so in The House, that could never understand even in the simplest of terms.

Needless to say, we now live in a world economy where companies owned in say Japan, have multiple manufacturing facilities all across America. Hint, hint, hint, AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY Speaker Pelosi!!! American companies also own manufacturing facilities all over the world too now!

Smucks! Now if we want to discuss fair trade then that is another subject for another post…

Papamoka