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Posted by D Sherman on Saturday, December 13, 2008 at 18:08:52 :
In Reply to: Re: Cerberus posted by Joe Cimoch on Saturday, December 13, 2008 at 12:41:29 :
It's a bit of a scam to keep calling them "the big 3", as if they were all in the same predicament. Ford doesn't really need any bail-out money, though Mulally (the turnaround guy they hired from Boeing) said it might be handy to have a short-term line of credit open. When Mulally took over, he did two important things -- he told the engineers to focus on new fuel-efficient vehicles, and he went to the bankers and got plenty of loans lined up before the credit markets collapsed. We don't really know how much financing Cerberus/Chrysler has available since they're privately held, but I suspect they're in better shape than GM. GM seems to have spend the past 2 years doing exactly the same thing they always did, and hoping it would be okay this time. When fuel got expensive, they kept on building the same big vehicles. As credit was tightening up, they kept on spending like they always did and didn't consider that they might need to borrow some money before business picked up again.
I think GMC is using this notion of the "big 3" going down together as a way to jack the taxpayers around. Granted, business is bad for all 3 companies (and for the Japanese) right now, but if the government stayed out of it, GM could go bankrupt, and the remaining two companies, being better managed and having better products, would pick up GM's market share. That increased market share, in turn, might just be enough to keep Ford and Chrysler in business. Isn't that the way capitalism is supposed to work?
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