Mystic, no offense taken here, and I really hope the same can be said on the other side.
I still wub you 
Mystic, nothing personal, but looks like your argument comes down to the following. Give GM some money now so they stay in business a little longer which would give just enough time to the small business suppliers of GM to adjust their business models to avoid potential bankruptcies. After, let GM fail. Is that a fair statement?
What kind of a deal is that? In this discussion size of the business is irrelevant. If you, be it GM or a small time supplier, committed to a wrong strategy, you are the one to blame. However bad it sounds, both GM and small businesses must be treated the same. If GM is to allow to fail same must apply to their suppliers to. Your own business is a good example of how small business should adjust on their own.
Actually Zera just like this one I hated the fact of giving out taxpayer money for a bailout but I came to the conclusion that the lack of market liquidity ie money being lent, was far worse than my taxpayer apprehension. Just like the lack of help for these huge companies would cause untold damage to the job market and taxpayer expense down the road. I can’t find the thread quote, sorry.
But I have never differed in my “give the CEO and ax” stance. If you make millions of dollars a year you can go down with the ship. If you want government money, you can make a government wage. I also started by defending against the right wing propaganda against unions. But watching MYS stand alone was just not right.
And thanks for answering my question
the house passed it but the senate is really gonna be tough
you guys might get your wish
ok let me try to explain this so you can attempt to see where my views lie.
The word “give” is very objective, it is a loan. That loan is to have so many safeguards put in place by the fine senators that it would be nearly impossible for them not to get it back. ((Watched the news tonight, and it seems the reason it hasn’t passed is because some think there are not enough safeguards. All the better in my opinion)).
It may seem twisted but my view was basically two options:
Option 1: If GM gets the 15 billion, it would save the estimated one billion dollars in unemployment per week. If GM succeeds and gets their heads out of their asses, all is well. (Net gain/loss: if it works out government makes money from the interest of the loan, If it fails the safeguards the politicians have been allegedly putting in place he last week would at least break them even with GM.) ** again news i heard on the radio. Also this would give the little guys time to attempt what we did.
Option 2: No money - Most suppliers 75% dependent on GM or more would close within 2 months. GM would be sold off in pieces, unemployment is estimated at 250,000 in my state alone. That would mean “to me” the government would lose small business taxes and workers income taxes and would have to pay out one billion dollars a week. (to me it is a Net loss of 25 billion worst case and tax revenues of estimated 3 billion over six months)
My argument is not about GM at all. It is the lesser of two evils. Just look at the gain loss the way I see it and help me understand your point. Option 2 to me is more costly than option 1. That is all I’m saying.
I read about opinions of other companies picking up for GM. Well the Japanese or some Asian company bought Budweiser, didn’t they? With our economy as messed up as it is, that is all I can see happening with that option. Maybe I’m wrong but our banks are still not giving loans.
I agree they should be treated the same, but we know that is not possible. About as possible as me and Ross Perot getting the same treatment in a restaurant.
RUCK!! My wife walked by and thought I was surfing porn… Thanks man. :police: :police:
Sounds like its about money after all
My opinion is that either let GM fail completely. then you would have to deal with the consequences that everyone agrees would not be pretty.
The alternative is to nationalize GM together with other major players in the auto industry. On some level it makes sense for the nation to control its strategic auto industry. You never know when you suddenly will need to build large number of cars…
As Ruck would tell you, there is nothing wrong with surfing porn 
OH today, GM dealerships across America, say about 70% of their customers cannot get loans unless they have above 700 credit scores and other tight requirements. The reason behinds this??? GMAC, the lender that deals with GM dealers will not budge. So this just makes even a stronger point that we can dump all the money we have left into the auto companies and in the end they will fail…
Its guaranteed funeral prolonged by a pointless life-support.
Hey Mystic,
Glad to see you’re back.
Just woke up, so excuse me if I’m not 100% eloquent as I give this a shot;
First off, your numbers assume that everyone who’s laid off is going onto some sort of government welfare to get by. A lot of people simply won’t, for a number of reason, a lot of them are similar to why I won’t get grants despite being eligible for at least 3 that I know of. On top of that, eligibility for unemployment is likely to change in the near future, as well as the benefits.
Brother, I don’t want to sound alarmist here, but the sky is falling. And it needs to, there is no choice. We’re so far in debt that it’ll take a decade bare-minimum for us to get out, likely quite a bit more, and drastic measures. You’re money-assumptions are based on numbers that I can pretty much guarantee you we’ll be slashing as part of our effort to spend less, so we can pay off China faster. I’m sure our government will always offer something to keep its people from starving in the streets en mass, but yeah…
I’m a registered democrat, because I like being able to vote in the primaries. Real democrats (I’m a liberal-leaning independent, if anyone’s wondering. Just not fiscally…) are going to be real upset with some needed changes in our “everything”… We’ll basically need to cut our budget on absolutely everything by a whole lot. I’m betting “half” is the number the first line of politicians throw out to let us chew on, but honestly, half is too low. Quite frankly, “unemployment” as we know it probably won’t exist for too much longer. It can’t. We can’t afford to pay it.
Your numbers are basically assuming that the only thing that changes is the job market. Our country as a whole is going to go through some serious pains soon, which is my side of the argument basically.
It’s not that I’m coldly and callously saying “Fuck the small business who are going under, I don’t want to give them our money.” I’m saying “More small businesses are going to go under than you can imagine, and we need to start hording our money as a collective unit now, or that number could be even higher.”
Small businesses are going down, big businesses are going down. It won’t be a permanent thing, our economy always goes in curves if no one’s notices. We’ll have another retardedly excessive spending era within a historical blink of an eye, I’m sure. But in the meantime, we’re going to see a 10-20 year mini-depression in our life time. We’ll, as a country, experience a decrease in the quality of our living. It’ll be damned depressing on levels, the likes of which not seen since the great depression. And if we stop our money hemorrhage now, not tomorrow, not next week, but now, we might be better off than we were then, and we’ll get over it faster.
Like I said, this comes in waves. If we start reducing our deficit now, we may actually be completely through this down-time within a comparable “no time at all.” Don’t get me wrong, it’ll be many years of shit. But our kids may not still be getting fucked by it by the time they’re getting out of high school.
You’ve been hearing me saying “I don’t want to give the money that will bring job security today,” and I understand how that can make me look cold and callous, but I’m looking at this as the opening wave of something far bigger, and worse than this. The unemployment rate is going to go up a whole lot more before it starts going back down again, and the period of time that we’re stuck in the worst time to be alive in America since “the first great depression” (that’ll be a great joke at parties) will be directly proportionate to how much of our money we spend on ventures where the money won’t be coming back to us within 5 years at 500% interest.
We as a country are all about to be comperably poor, and shoddily employed. All of us. Few exceptions. Only the wealthy will stay “completely comfortable.” And wealth is a business principal which really isn’t hard to achieve, folks. Our country needs to start thinking like a business, or we’re all fucked. America’s entrepreneurial spirit is the only thing that can pull us out of this with anything even remotely resembling grace and speed. We need to start making investments that we expect to pay off at 2 to 1, minimum. We need to start paying off debt fast, and the only way to do that is to not spend a single dollar that we don’t need to in order to survive. I assure you that if too many people start going on welfare and unemployment, then welfare and unemployment will suddenly start to mean a whole shitload less per each person on it.
See how many people you know that are old enough to remember the last time that food stamps were considered a hot commodity? Our generation is going to have a lot of those. Kind of like how everyone you know has a close friend or family member who’s a war veteran, or who died at war. Yeah man, not since Vietnam for that one.
Our country has lost its way. I mean that both philosophically and practically. The republicans were always the smart businessman candidate! It didn’t matter what his personal beliefs were, you voted republican when you needed a smart businessman to pull you out of a shitty financial situation.
Bush was the worst fiscal republican I’ve ever seen. Seriously, he did republicans a disservice. I am WAY not a republican, by the way. I’m so liberal and atheistic that most of the republicans I know can never have a real conversation with me, lest it end in yelling. But one thing that I’ve always respected about them is their business savvy. Yes, some small percentage of well-off republicans do evil things… but they know how to turn a deficit into a profit.
Bill Clinton, believe it or not, put into play some of the big fuck-ups that caused a good portion of our current problem. Full disclosure. I love Bill, he was my president, but some of the policies went through on his watch. That said, George Bush’s war debt accounts for a large sum of money that we’ll never get back. Remember me saying we need to start making 5 to 1? It could have been closer to 2.5 to 1 if our country didn’t have a habit of going to “shoot brown people for oil.” Oh! Oil! The reason the big three is fucked in the first place! Small world, huh? Some coincidence.
I go on tangents…
The big three has had a lot of leeway from the government afforded to them that smaller companies don’t get. Plain and simple. They’ve had a strategic edge, and a financial edge, and a limitless credit with practically everyone. And they shouldn’t have, because they knew this was going to happen, and they aren’t prepared. Other companies in other countries were. This wasn’t a secret, we’re running out of oil, we need to start using it less and less… but as a society, we were taught by the big auto makers to use more and more. Our country has been fiscally stupid. The big 3 helped make this happen. They are the first people who have to fall. Sucks. Sorry to hear that. But everyone else is going to follow. So we can’t afford to pay out to anyone, business or citizen, the way we have been. We have to kick ourselves in the ass, and start spending money with a financial conservationism that we traditionally do not associate with a democrat in office. It’s going to be some real ground-breaking, history-making times ahead no matter what happens.
I voted Obama, by the way. He used cutting edge internet marketing to secure some of the voter base. On a personal and professional level, that man’s a fucking inspiration.
Basically Mystic, the companies shouldn’t be allowed to have this bailout because it’s not profitable, and at least half the people who will go on unemployment as a result of the layoffs shouldn’t. Some people will have no where to turn, so they’ll have to. No shame in that. But we have an epidemic of laziness in this country. Myself included, like I said, I’m just coming back into being self employed after a quarter of a decade of me letting myself become a lethargic line cook. It’s easy to get too comfortable, and we all have. We all need to educate ourselves on how to make money, and how to live going into zero debt.
We’ll be OK. The future is cool! I’m still very optimistic about the future! We’re going to see all kinds of cool stuff! I genuinely think in my lifetime that atheism will become the dominant religion. Amazing, isn’t it? Progress is great, and there’s a lot more to come. But in the meantime, we’re all going to need to lose some weight. Some of us literally, some of us figuratively. It’ll all be alright in the end. I promise.
Stinger for President…
I am a Registered Republican, I voted for Obama as well because he really did have inspirational words to the American People. He is a smart man no doubt and VERY confident, which I want as the leader of my country. I may not agree with everything he does or says just like any other politician, but I went against my parents(hardcore Republicans) and voted for who I thought had the BEST chance to turn this country around and furthermore, repair and rebuild our shot relationships with foreign countries thanks in part to Mr. Bush.
I am not one who really like politics, but as an American, I felt it was my duty to vote for a leader and I did regardless of how I felt.
Point being, Obama I believe, will get this economy turned around…it might not be in a year, two years or even his first term, but he will get us on track.
McCain has the shaky sound in his voice of failure. I believe he would cave under pressure, either mentally, physically or both.
You do know he supports the auto loan, right?
http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dc/2008/12/obama-uses-bully-pulpit-for-au.html
He’s also a christian, and a lawyer. Nobodies perfect, but I like him a lot anyway.
I am aware of that…but like I said there are difference of opinions regardless of who you vote in. Its how the world works. I am not happy about his support of the BIG 3, but it is what it is and we have to deal with it.
Thank you huffingtonpost, for more biased crap.
“WAAAA! You gave them money! We want money! Waaaaa! Don’t be hypocrites, you guys! You gave them money when they wanted it! We’re a business, so clearly this is exactly the same situation! Waaaaaaa! We want money now! Waaaaa!”
Not even remotely the same situation. The death of the big three is a black eye, as other companies roll in en mass to take their place with better cars, more efficient technology, and to do it all fast (when compared directly to how long the big 3 claim it’ll take them to make comparable vehicles, we have no reason to expect we’d see equivalent cars within 5 years, or longer). The death of the banks would have been a knife in the gut of America, twisting slowly as tiny banks made token attempts to fill a gap that they’d be completely incapable of filling, and we dove headfirst into a new great depression.
And that’s not all, folks! The banks were federally ordered to start making bad loans! The government literally forced them to start doing a very stupid thing, that is heavily to blame for the economic melt down. So that makes two, count them two, reasons that they got a federal bailout when they asked for it. Not “right”, but sure as fuck not even remotely similar to the Detroit situation. Not even a little. The banks were doing as they were told, and they shouldn’t have, and they started down a tailspin that would have taken everyone down with them, so they asked for a hand and they got it.
I’m tired of seeing people with more bias and balls than actual insight into the situation compare the two.
I didn’t like the bank bailout either, but it was needed, or the whole country was going to go tits up. Not “3/4 of a million people need to go look for a new job”, but “3/4 of America loses all its money and the concept of an American “loan” become a historical curiosity”. It’s apples and oranges. It really is. There’s no rational way to compare the two situations.
The big 3 wasn’t duped into selling gas-guzzling pieces of shit that break twice as fast as their fuel-efficient foreign competition. They chose to do that in the face of mounting evidence that exactly this was going to happen. They’d go out of business because their cars are now irrelevant. This was not a surprise. They chose to do this so that they could make more money now by promoting fuel-consumption as an American fucking value.
They’re greedy fucks without even the tiniest thread to grasp when it comes to an excuse that makes them look innocent and blameless for the mess they’re in, and there are plenty of companies locally, and internationally chomping at the bit to help fill the void they create, both in product and in jobs, when they finally shut the fuck up and go away.
The big 3 dying is good for America in every sense except that 3/4 of a million people will need to find a new job, something that literally everyone in the world has to do many times in the their lifetime. The falling of the banks was bad for America in every sense, and the only businesses that would have jumped in to try to help then wouldn’t have been even remotely qualified to handle the increased load.
This is a matter of selfishness, alright. Entirely on the part of the big three. Sorry, folks, but if you lose your job because your company was depending on a strategy that supported the oil industry, than you have no one to blame but the people who came up with and stuck to that strategy.
You can call me a heartless asshole all you want, but the only people you should be mad at are the same people I am; The fuckers who came up with, and stuck to the plans that landed you here knowing full well that this was inevitable. That this had to happen.
Change happens when change needs to happen. This has been put off too long already. If the big 3 gets more time to flop around inefficiently at the expense of the taxpayers, then selfish fucks brow-beat their way into a complete and total travesty that goes against everything that America stands for. People need to stop being selfish, and welcome change. Put your resume on monster.com and prepare yourself for a wild, but ultimately fulfilling ride starting the second these whiny selfish bitches shut the fuck up and die.
hi
If nothing else, this should be why we bail them out !!!
http://www.chevrolet.com/camaro/multimedia/
check out the Tom Peters : coupe vid
http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2008-07-21-camaro_N.htm
From that article;
[quote]GM’s Chevrolet unveiled its 2010 Camaro on Monday, bringing back to life the iconic sports car it retired in 2002, but with a focus on fuel efficiency.
The new Camaro will get 26 miles per gallon on the highway, GM said.
[/quote]
26 MPG is “fuel efficiency”? They aren’t building that Camaro to race, they’re building it for people with money to tool around town in. If anything, that’s a prime example of why not to bail them out. It’s proof they don’t intend to change shit.
I just went to the chevy site and looked at their sales-pitch page touting their most fuel efficient models. Here’s the list.
http://www.chevrolet.com/fuelsolutions/?evar10=DIVISIONAL_HOMEPAGE_MASTHEAD_FUELSOLUTIONS
The one on the top is a Cobalt XFE Coupe, with 37 MPG highway. My 1997 Honda civic does 35 MPG highway, and I haven’t done any upgrades. I’m always late on oil changes, I don’t know how to check tire pressure, I speed by 10-15 mph on the highway as a matter of principal, but my decade-plus old Japanese car is on par with the most fuel efficient thing Chevy makes today.
This is a good idea why?
Oh look, the new Civic hybrid does 45 MPG highway. God Bless Japan!
There are a lot of things about this nation that deserve serious feelings of pride, and that are worth fighting for. I’m very proud of America for many thing. Cars simply isn’t one of them.
The difference between a car that gets 35 mpg and 45 is minimal at best.
And you are pure LOL stinger
They aren’t gonna bail them, it’s on to bankruptcy. Maybe the presiding judge will sell the corporate jet that the union employees fly on and the HUGE bonuses the union has doled out to it employees over the years. Maybe the judge will also reduce the inhuman salaries the union gets.
Your a fucking tool if you think for a second that the union had anything to do with these companies demises’. Like I’ve said before and I’ll say again, the union has no input whatsoever in the direction of the company.
The burden on the health care system if all 3 million plus jobs are lost due to the demise will pull this crippled economy down so hard. Also Toyota and Honda were both lobbying for the bailout because they are gonna get crushed when the domestic parts suppliers go under. Not to mention the “Mystic” aux. style companies .
One good thing though Nascar is gonna tank, and that will be AWESOME !!!
But hey, maybe it had to happen. Maybe the 15 billion or so wouldn’t have done anything. I actually have awesome job security and don’t have anything to worry about.
So I’m with you guys now, FUCK EM.