Break out the credit card..But we can keep spending

[Mike Noel]

Mike, I definitely don't like a union owning the company. I understand the stock is in lieu of the payments to the pension fund with the idea of selling it off latter at a profit when he company bounces back. The proceeds are to cover the reduction in payments to the health and pension funds. Still this is way to prone to conflicts of interests.

I have a lot of friends/clients at the hedge funds and investors that owned those loans and we/they call it BULLSHIT!

If you don't like the prospect of the govt covering those pension obs why would you support a pres that is spending a LOT more on a stimulus plan that is worth about 10% of what they said it would be and a budget that takes our national debt off the freaking charts? I think the pension obligations would be a lot smaller in the scheme of things.

I had this conversation with my stepmom the other day, she is a big Obama supporter and she didnt even know what was going on with the auto companies. I asked her what she thought we, as a country, have gained now that Obama has thumbed his nose to the rule of law and has been implementing his "hug and a handshake" diplomacy......keep in mind, she is a PhD, and the asst super at a very big school district here in Texas, a very intelligent lady.....she couldn't answer me because so far his actions have accomplished nothing!

[zeus3925]

Mike, if you haven't noticed the whole financial world is in the tank. I had some hedge funds too and they largely evaporated. There goes the Great Retirement. Don't feel like the Lone Ranger.

[Mike Noel]

Mike, if you haven't noticed the whole financial world is in the tank. I had some hedge funds too and they largely evaporated. There goes the Great Retirement. Don't feel like the Lone Ranger.

Haha, seriously. I am in the financial world...I trade bonds for a living. My firm is printing money right now but that doesn't change the fact that BHO has this country on the path toward financial ruin.

What part of the budget/stimulus do you support? And do you not see the BS behind his "hurry we got to have the money now" and "we cant be borrowing that much money" flip flop?

I sell bonds to them but would never invest in a hedge fund regards!

[zeus3925]

Ameriprise is doing some mea culpas right now. I had a bond fund that dumped a lot of their holdings into derivatives. Didn't tell their investors about their plans. Big time law suits.


Ok I'll bite--You got a different solution? You're the guru. What would you do if you were POTUS?

[Mike Noel]

Ameriprise is doing some mea culpas right now. I had a bond fund that dumped a lot of their holdings into derivatives. Didn't tell their investors about their plans. Big time law suits.


Ok I'll bite--You got a different solution? You're the guru. What would you do if you were POTUS?

I would be doing the same thing Clinton did, trying to shrink the govt and the deficit...let the markets take care of weak companies. It's like I have said before, either pay now or pay later and BHO has taken the pay later route purely for political reasons. Not that any politician would do any different.

If we were to take the pay now option it would hurt for a while but in the long run would make things better.

And I am far from a guru. Just an average Joe with a little common sense that is tired of the BS coming from DC.

Mutual funds don't have to tell you what they are going to do unless it is something that is not allowed in their bylaws....

[Gerry Clinchy]

Look at the bright side:

As the U.S. job market has tanked, immigration from Mexico has gone down. If 900 Chrysler jobs have moved from WI to Mexico ... less immigration; we save money on providing social benefits to illegal immigrants Maybe we save enough to provide re-training benefit to the 900 US workers who need different jobs that will be more productive to the GNP than the inflated union wages/benefits they used to get putting in the 42nd weld on the left door of a Caravan?

If the union has ownership of the company, they might actually see a reason to make sensible labor demands and a reason to see the company become profitable. The workers get long-term benefits by making good products that sell well, and the company profits enable the company to provide jobs with reasonable wages and benefits. Capitalism wins.

[Mike Noel]

The boy took the words right out of my mouth.....

http://http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/05/18/obamas_dangerous_debt_96539.html

[zeus3925]

Look at the bright side:

As the U.S. job market has tanked, immigration from Mexico has gone down. If 900 Chrysler jobs have moved from WI to Mexico ... less immigration; we save money on providing social benefits to illegal immigrants Maybe we save enough to provide re-training benefit to the 900 US workers who need different jobs that will be more productive to the GNP than the inflated union wages/benefits they used to get putting in the 42nd weld on the left door of a Caravan?

If the union has ownership of the company, they might actually see a reason to make sensible labor demands and a reason to see the company become profitable. The workers get long-term benefits by making good products that sell well, and the company profits enable the company to provide jobs with reasonable wages and benefits. Capitalism wins.

I don't know how many of you have worked in a auto plant. My parents did as well as my brother. My wife's father and some of her relatives worked for GM. My uncle before he retired in the early 80's was diector of Chrysler's corporate tax department. I paid for my college on a bumper plater line at Ford Motor Company.

It is easy to demonize the worker. But, the auto business is as much company attitude toward engineering as it is labor. If they are slack or technically laggard, then the best workers in the world will turn out junk. If management treats workers like crap then, crap will be the product. An fine automobile is a product of all the parts of an organization functioning harmoniously--something the American auto industrial complex has never quite gotten together while the Japanese have.

The American Auto business was formed in an era where capital was the ruling class and the capital-less were seen as industrial fodder not much above a slave. Unions were inevitable in that environment. Attitudes of this Dicksonian world die hard and slow.

[Gerry Clinchy]

Zeus 3925 wrote:

The American Auto business was formed in an era where capital was the ruling class and the capital-less were seen as industrial fodder not much above a slave. Unions were inevitable in that environment. Attitudes of this Dicksonian world die hard and slow.

It is surely true that unions corrected an injustice. Unfortunately, the unions became a source of power over the years that led to corruption of the unions as well. I don't really blame the individual workers, but rather the leaders ... who succumbed to the temptations of power and greed.

However, you state

An fine automobile is a product of all the parts of an organization functioning harmoniously--something the American auto industrial complex has never quite gotten together while the Japanese have.

If the union workers are now also "owners", this is a unique opportunity to prove that they can join in the "cooperative" effort to build a better company, a better product, and also serve the interests of their workers with reasonable modifications to contract requirements that created some unreasonable production costs (along with the reasonable ones).

It was interesting that Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" used an auto plant as the microcosm of the socialism model. When workers are not compensated according to their production, even other workers are disgruntled by such rules. When conscientious workers are compensated for such effort, the worker and the company thrive. And the consumer benefits from that in the end. Most studies, as I recall, is that the American worker is the most productive in the world when given the opportunity.

It would be kind of interesting to compare worker productiveness of the Japanese company plants: those in Japan v. those in the US.

My son works for Toyota corporate (he visits dealerships as a mechanical trouble-shooter/trainer/problem-solver). He's always been kind of a "independent" spirit when it comes to his line of work (an auto mechanic since the age of 15). He is impressed with the quality aspect that Toyota demands at all levels ... from the production level to total customer satisfaction that extends to the sales force at the dealer level. His respect for Toyota products grew over nearly 25 years of knowing their innards very up-close-and-personal. I wasn't sure whether he had the capacity to become a "company man" ... but it seems that the company's sincere commitment to quality and customer satisfaction has made the transition from "free spirit" to "company man" possible. If they treat their production workers in accordance with those principles, then it should follow that the workers will take pride in what they produce.

[Evan]

"When the white man found this country the Indians were running it. No taxes, no debt, women did all the work. The white man thought he could improve on this system?"

Old Cherokee saying

Evan