From GM’s FastLane Blog: “We’ve been very proud of and grateful for the support and encouragement we’ve received from so many in the business community recently, especially locally here in Michigan. Jim Hiller, CEO of Hiller’s Markets, recently wrote this post on his corporate blog in which he explained why he feels it important to buy from American-based vehicle manufacturers and why he supports his community here in Michigan. We thought Mr. Hiller’s comments were worth sharing.” – Christopher Barger, Director Global Communications Technology” Excerpt:”My epiphany came as I stood on slick-top pavement in a moon-lit night, waiting for my car after a fundraiser for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. I stood with General Motors Vice-Chairman Bob Lutz, watching foreign car after foreign car drive away into the rain-slicked night. He turned to me as those foreign luxury vehicles peeled out of the parking lot and said, ‘How many people realize that when they buy an American luxury vehicle, they’re providing work for a dozen people for at least a week?’ Before then, I hadn’t felt in my bones the direct connection between the car I drive and the people in my hometown being in, or out, of a job. Many of my friends had told me so, but I didn’t listen – friends from other countries, shaking their heads in disbelief at the thought of neglecting one’s homeland… I don’t even remember what kind of car I was driving, but the next day I bought a Cadillac STS and loved it. All of my preconceived notions that foreign cars were better-made and were longer-lasting, well, they proved untrue.”
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Jim – We must really Buy American so we can pay the Executives their “reasonable” salaries at RenCen. Who cares where the car is built (Korea, China, Mexico, Canada, South Africa, Brazil, Europe, etc.?) so long as Wagoner can still make $16M a year – it is the best choice for our economy!
However Jim – have you driven an Aveo back to back with a Fit or a Trailblazer with a 4Runner? You still think those “preconceived notions” were misplaced?
Here we go again (rolling eyeballs)!
How many people realize that when they buy an American luxury vehicle, they’re providing work for a dozen people for at least a week?
And mechanics for years!
John
One day I hope I have the money to just decide to drop in at the Caddy dealership and drop 80 grand on a car cause Bob Lutz made me feel bad the night before.
Way to connect to middle America there. I’m pretty sure Mr. Hiller never had to spend the christmas fund on replacing a Town and Country transmission or beg money from his parents twice in one month because the serpentine belts on his 6 year old Bu kept falling off.
Let them eat cake?
How lovely. Well I can truly say I care just as much about those Detroit automakers’ jobs as those Detroit automakers care about me and my job.
Which is to say, not at all.
I want a car, I don’t want to be a jobs program. If in buying my next Honda Civic (or, perhaps Acura TL) I put the entire state of Michigan out of work I’ll be perfectly happy, because I’ll have a shiny new car.
Buy Toyota and Honda stock if you want to be patriotic, no matter what it’s a better investment than a new GM.
I can support workers in my hometown (Fremont, CA) by buying a Toyota Tacoma or Matrix, or a Pontiac Vibe. If we pretend for a moment that I like any of the three, the next question is which set of execs would I rather support?
‘How many people realize that when they buy an American luxury vehicle, they’re providing work for a dozen people for at least a week about eight hours worth of Rick Wagoner’s bloated compensation?’
Fixed.
Over the last decade GM has destroyed 1.5B of capital from the American economy every month.
A quicky estimate puts that at 4-5k per vehicle.
We coulda put all of GM on welfare for less the whole freakin’ time.
The key to this stupid arguement to buy from GM is understanding that the equation is not:
$1 in= $1 out (wages, parts, utilities, R&D etc)
It is:
$1 in=E x $1 out (wages, parts, utilities, R&D etc)
E is the variable of whether you are making or losing money.
GM: E < 1 Money is lost. Bye, bye forever.
Toyota (for instance): E > 1 You figure out what happens.
Even part of the profit staying here is better than knowing you will lose some.
Wealth is not a constant, it is created and destroyed. Those creating it are good for the economy.
Those destroying it are bad for the economy.
GM (as it stands) is bad for the USA, and buying their vehicles is also.
Bunter
‘How many people realize that when they buy an American luxury vehicle, they’re providing work for a dozen people for at least a week?’
I didn’t realize Lutz had so many personal secretaries. Because if the car isn’t made in the US, the workers he’s referring to would only work at RenCen.
Yeah, screw the Aussies building the G8. Screw the Swedes building those Saabs. Screw the Germans and other Europeans building many Saturns. In fact, screw those Canadians and Mexicans building A LOT of the D3’s products.
I guess ‘ole Jim forgot that GM is a big importer of those ferriner cars.
He should have gotten an Aveo. Or the first ever G5. He probably could have gotten the actual “first” one too, have any sold?
Seriously though, the STS? Aren’t those still FWD? At least get yourself a nice, CTS or CTS-V, thats one GM car I wouldn’t mind owning, however a 4 door car wouldn’t be on my list for a while.
He’ll love the Northstar engine. It will consume prodigious quantities of oil, though he will probably confuse it with the oil leaks. It’s really GM’s exclusive continuous oil change program. Take that Lexus! And right after the warranty expires the head bolts will propel themselves out of the block. Better sink another couple of grand into a GM extended warranty.
These should not be looked upon as quality control issues that GM should have corrected years ago, but as opportunities to forge up close and personal relationships with GM’s warranty administration people and local mechanics. They are undoubtedly happy to see him and grateful he is putting their kids through college!
“Seriously though, the STS? Aren’t those still FWD?”
The STS (not the Seville STS which preceded it) is rear-wheel drive being a derivative of the same platform underpinning the CTS.
The STS (not the Seville STS which preceded it) is rear-wheel drive being a derivative of the same platform underpinning the CTS.
Well. That’s something.
ZCline:
The STS is RWD, basically a stretched and widened CTS. Not a bad car, but in a very competitive market segment against the M, GS, E and 5.
The Chinese get a really nice stretched version called the SLS: http://www.autoblog.com/2006/11/11/more-on-chinas-cadillac-sls/ , but GM is not patriotic enough to offer that version in the American market.
The DTS is the FWD barge for those who are near dead, or, in the case of hearse conversions, dead.
Looks like bunkie beat me to it re: the STS correction.
For my money the 1996 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham is the Caddy to have.
The STS and CTS are built on the same platform. The STS is around for those who think the CTS has gone too far in its styling. The STS is a better proportioned car.
Buy an American luxury car and help pay for the upkeep of the UAW golf course
awwwwwwwwwwwwww…
and here’s your boobie prize Jim, Corporate Tool of the Week: The Smallest Violin on teh Interwebs.
—
And honestly, as a Patriot…
->I am First and Foremost a CAPITALIST!
(not a patsy cutout for Communist enablers)
-and I FART in the General Direction of your 1099 gig as part-time corporate Fluffer whitewashing nugget-monger goatboy!
++And as an American, I am Also the Son of our Puritan Forebears, who believed among other things, that You Go To Hell For Lying!!!
(along with Dante Alighieri, btw.)
Human bolt turners are going to start fading even faster into the sunset soon. The Gettelfinger gang and the Chinese are going to have serious competition soon from advances in automation technology.
The processing power we now have available to stuff into a robot is mind boggling. I have a machine sitting on my desk that has 260 processor cores in it. It’s in a case that’s a little smaller than your average desktop tower and is dirt cheap (under $1k). With that kind of power we’re going to be able to do amazing things at very low costs.
They can whine all they want about saving manufacturing jobs. The truth about manufacturing jobs is that they’re on the way out and it’s not the Asians, Mexicans, or Canadians that will be taking them away.
Everyone in Detroit is getting nutty with the “HolyCrapWeGottaSaveEm” bandwagon. It’s not just GM playing the patriotism card….
Mitch Albom’s latest tirade all but accused GOP Senators of wanting to kill UAW members. But, then, who knows? Maybe Albom’s angling for a “Tuesdays With Ricky” interview/book deal when Wagoner retires to the Carribean after CH. 11.
NB Mitch: Don’t count on much Oprah sympathy for that book.
Just ONCE, I’d like to hear the conversation go…
“Gee…why did all those people buy imports and not OUR cars??”or..”What are our competitors doing that we’re not doing, and how can we rectify this situation?”
They’re long past the patriot game, it’s now the guilt trip.
Agree….Detroit should drop the guilt trip. Kill the emotion Dudes of Detroit. This is business, pure and simple. There is a reason all those people purchased other cars, figure it out and stop crying in the rain. Get to the real issues.
Terry & Blobinski, I agree 100%. Precisely the reason GM and Cryberus need changes in management.
…and the doorman, standing nearby and overhearing this comment, says to himself: “Don’t people in your position realize that for all the years you’ve produced substandard, non-competitive luxury cars, that you’ve deprived thousands of people of work for several decades?”
“Gardiner Westbound :
December 18th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
He’ll love the Northstar engine. It will consume prodigious quantities of oil, though he will probably confuse it with the oil leaks. It’s really GM’s exclusive continuous oil change program. Take that Lexus! And right after the warranty expires the head bolts will propel themselves out of the block. Better sink another couple of grand into a GM extended warranty.
These should not be looked upon as quality control issues that GM should have corrected years ago, but as opportunities to forge up close and personal relationships with GM’s warranty administration people and local mechanics. They are undoubtedly happy to see him and grateful he is putting their kids through college!”
Sorry – ridiculous comment. I have a 2001 Olds Aurora with the 3.5l “shortstar”, the six cylinder version of the Northstar. 119k this week, uses no oil, runs perfect and gets me 25.5 long term average fuel economy with a suck ass commute every morning. BTW, the car has only needed new tires and front brakes, looks like new inside and out, doesn’t have a single problem with any of the comfort features, like dual memory seats/radio settings/temp settings, dual zone temp control, stability control/ABS/traction control, rain sensing wipers, and so on. And was one of the very first vehicles on the market with telematics (every heard of OnStar?)
But of course, it is a GM, so you think it sucks, right?
It’s funny because a co-worker’s Caravan just lost it transmission.
At 36,650 miles.
Who says American’s can’t build a car. It’s takes DAMN good precision to build a car(avan) that will suffer catastrophic failure exactly 650 miles out of warranty.
Japanese couldn’t do it if they tried.
My last 3 GM pickups have been exceptional. A back door squeak in the middle one of the three pickups was the only one of the 3 to go to the dealer under warranty. My current 2500HD diesel has been flawless. All 3 pickups spent their lives pulling travel trailers, currently a 29′ Airstream.
in between, I made the mistake of a Dodge pickup. Lousy interior. A transmission full of metal chips at under 50,000. I was disappointed almost from the day I took delivery. No more Chrysler products for me.
I also had a 2000 supercharged Buick Century. Lousy workmanship and a lot of doubtful design. Traded it when the engine was leaking oil and the anti-lock brake system went kaput.
I’m currently on my second Hyundai with minimal problems (a loose connector and a failed windshield fluid pump). My Sonata was made in the US. My used Azera was imported.
Robert, you make it sound like something is wrong with patriotism. We all have common goals, even you, and it’s a great way to further them.
I think we all need to take a step back and look at US auto companies a different way. Imagine GM as a sibling with undesirable traits. Like a drug addict mainlining heroin. Now to solve this do we ignore the problem? No, it will get worse. GM needs an intervention. They have long since needed a stern sit down to right themselves. Now for those saying government intervention, it’s better this than paying for their methadone. And we should be encouraging good behavior like Jim Hiller. Maybe he didn’t make the best choice but it was something. And this anecdotal evidence I have to sift through doesn’t help neither.
I have to disagree with you Anoldbikeguy. I have a friend with an 01 Deville and his car suffers the same stereotypes. It started using oil at 60k miles and the dealer said using 2 quarts per oil change was not considered excessive. I drive an RX8 with an engine designed to use oil and it uses less than his Deville. Also the crank censors went at 50k. Per the dealer, they only last about 50k miles. I didn’t know crank sensors were part of basic maintenance. I also remember years ago having a Cadillac mechanic tell me oil usage was a problem with these engines and they are expensive to fix. GM says they are getting better but I have not seen it.
I have another friend with an 07 Escalade they bought new last spring. Beautiful ride but the fit and finish is terrible. A month after they had it, the cup holder broke. Shortly after, there was a rattle in the air duct, the rear inside light rattled to the point it sounded like there was luggage behind the third seat. The chrome on the 22 inch wheels which was a $5k extra is bubbling up and will soon flake off. Supposedly this is a problem on the H2s also. Lastly, the inside passenger side door handle chrome is flaking off which surprises me since it gets less use than the drivers side. On top of this, the car only has about 20k miles.
Jim – We must really Buy American so we can pay the Executives their “reasonable” salaries at RenCen. Who cares where the car is built (Korea, China, Mexico, Canada, South Africa, Brazil, Europe, etc.?) so long as Wagoner can still make $16M a year – it is the best choice for our economy!
Wagoner doesn’t make $15.7 million a year. Last year he took home $3.5 million. $1.5 million in salary, another $1.8 million in bonuses and about $200,000 in benefits and taxable perks. The BOD justified/rationalized the bonus based on the $9 billion or so he took out of costs and the successful launches of the CTS and Malibu. That’s their rationale, not mine. You can read it in GM’s proxy statement. The rest of the 15.7 mil is in stock options and other performance related items that didn’t have any value last year and won’t have any value in the foreseeable future. Stock options only have value if the market share exceeds the option price.
While reading GM’s proxy statement, I came across how much they pay members of the BOD. GM has, I believe, 11 members of the board, all of them outside of the company except for Wagoner, who’s Chairman. Board members are paid $200K a year in director fees plus other compensation. In 2007, the board voted itself a 25% pay cut, so salaries for the board were $1.5 million, and with other compensation, GM paid less than $2 million to it’s board.
By contrast, Toyota recently announced they they were cutting the bonuses paid to their BOD, which amounted to $11 million in last year. Total compensation to the board in fiscal year ’08 was $37 million.
Toyota has 30 members of it’s BOD plus 7 auditors. Unlike GM, which has an outside BOD, nearly everyone on Toyota’s board works for the company. There are two Toyoda family members on the board (just like at Ford, btw). I don’t know if the figure bandied about for “Toyota’s top 32 executives” who make less than Mulally or Wagoner or whoever is independent of their compensation as members of the BOD, or is part of that $37 million, but the fact remains that Toyota pays its BOD members and auditors more than 5 times what GM pays its board members.
When board members of Toyota are raking in a million a year, Wagoner’s base salary of $1.5 million doesn’t look excessive.
Way to connect to middle America there. I’m pretty sure Mr. Hiller never had to spend the christmas fund on replacing a Town and Country transmission or beg money from his parents twice in one month because the serpentine belts on his 6 year old Bu kept falling off.
Let them eat cake?
Hiller comes from middle class roots. His family ran a small grocery store and he turned it a successful chain of 8 stores. That’s in a highly competitive low margin business. He employs a lot of people, is involved in the community and very philanthropic. If you note, he was at a Juvenile Diabetes fundraiser and on his blog he mentions his work on behalf of people with ALS. Because he chooses to buy locally and keep his money in his community, is no reason to disparage him or engage in class warfare.
Those friend from other countries he mentions, btw, are Asian Americans who patronize his stores because Hiller’s carries a lot of specialty foods.
Detroiters, the universal boogeymen. Whether they’re uneducated autoworkers having the audacity to make a good living or successful small businessmen, they’re the source of all evil in the world.
I served my two tours in SE Asia back in the 70s.
Volunteered, not drafted.
Not patriotic enough?
Okay.
In 2004 I bought a new Chevy Silverado assembled in the Ft Wayne plant vice the Toyota I wanted and knew I should buy.
Bought Chevy to assist the “home team.”
I have written several times here (and at hundreds of other venues across the Web) about how Chevy dealers evaded warranty work with the mantra “Can not replicate.”
I am not a rookie. I knew when I am being hoodwinked. Corporate GM spat upon me, also.
No viable recourse via legal means.
Lost several thousand dollars in lost wages due to much lost time and the mantra kept the numerous defects from being repaired.
Let GM fall. Any firm spitting upon a customer in such a manner does not deserve to exist, in my opinion.
If only those who prospered the most economically at GMC could be made to suffer.
Of course, America’s elites seldom suffer or pay the price of incompetency as the mere commoners do.
Lutz should have been mad at himself for driving the customers away instead of being mad at the customers. Where is his pain and agony over the disasters he has wrought? Where is his anguish over his staring role in the decline and fall of the Detroit empire? But no, the habit of blaming the customer has become so reflexive that it seems like the truth to Lutzians.
I don’t even remember what kind of car I was driving, but the next day I bought a Cadillac STS and loved it. All of my preconceived notions that foreign cars were better-made and were longer-lasting, well, they proved untrue.
He must not remember he traded in a 1988 Hyundai Elantra for that STS because that’s the only way he could be impressed. The STS is a horrible car, competativeness, build quality, resale, etc. Out of all the trash GM makes the STS is the worst IMO, and expensive for all that junk.
anoldbikeguy I’m sorry but you are very wrong, and comparing apples(V6) to oranges(V8) doesn’t prove your point at all. From Wikipedia:
Oldsmobile fans have taken to calling it the Shortstar.
It is not a simple cut-down V8. Although it has a 90° vee-angle like the Northstar and Aurora, the engine block was engineered from scratch…
I happen to have a Northstar in my 2000 DeVille and it is the worst most problem prone engine I have ever dealt with and I owned an Italian car for over a decade. I am not going to rehash what I have said on here a bunch of time but to put it mildly I want to torch that car it has cost me so much money and headache since we have had it. And I can point you to forum after forum with thousands of people who feel the same way I do about that car and that expensive lump of junk they call a Northstar.
I’m through being patriotic, that DeVille was me being patriotic and giving them another chance. They used up their last bit of good will from me. I could care less about the 12 job associated with building that car, if it means they will be flipping burgers where they belong insead of building more junk like that and hurting more customers, so be it.
Ah yes, the musings of the Grosse Pointe Myopians or in Lutz’s case it’s Ann Arbor but nonetheless as a GM executive…
When you have a new car of your choice given to you every three months with a gas card, you do not understand why gas mileage matters.
When your car is washed and vacuumed for you each day in the executive garages and all maintenance is performed at no cost to you… you do not understand ownership or the dealership experience.
If and when your 3-month old new car breaks down in a catastrophic manner, you are handed a new one…no questions asked…once again you do not understand the dealership nor ownership experience that has alienated so many of the people driving those foreign cars away from your products Bob.
When the weather is inclement, not only is your car parked inside, you simply call down to a garage porter and your car is started and the heat or A/C is turned on so by the time you get down to the garage, you probably do not have to listen to the snap crackle and pop of the interior plastics and such….can’t have any executive riding around in cold cars now can we?
Now here’s where the plot sickens. While they don’t get to choose their vehicle they receive, they do not have the luxury of the executive garage nor the porters, nearly everyone at GM above the rank of Manager receives a car and gas card every three months.
Another thing to consider Bob…Does any American manufacturer seriously make anything to compete with a S-Class Mercedes? A L-series Lexus? A 7-series BMW? an Audi A8? I don’t think so…if you made a car they wanted, they would buy it…it’s that simple, it’s certainly not an issue of means, credit availablity or price. You can’t rely on charity, you have to create desire. The people at that JDF charity event simply don’t want an American car because you do not make one that they want…
I think Mr Karesh nailed it on the whole domestic vrs. import reliability issue.
The problem isn’t that import brands are necessarily better today. The import brands can afford to fix many “just-over-warranty” defects that become common. That’s a function directly related to the financial health of the mothership.
no_slushbox : The Chinese get a really nice stretched version called the SLS: http://www.autoblog.com/2006/11/11/more-on-chinas-cadillac-sls/ , but GM is not patriotic enough to offer that version in the American market.
As a result of stretching the wheelbase of the STS to create the SLS, the SLS does not meet American side-impact crash standards, and GM is not patriotic enough to invest in making the SLS meet those American side-impact crash standards so that it could be offered for sale in the American market.
If an American flag was manufactured in Mexico (or any other foreign country) would you still respect what it stands for?
I do not see *any* patriotic reference in the exchange cited, nor in the narrative about the exchange with Lutz, nor in the writer’s response. He only refers to a self-interest argument, and a nod to communitarian thinking. It’s a misrepresentation to characterize this line of thinking as “patriotic.” Of course, it’s further specious to imply that there’s anything wrong with patriotic motives, but that’s another matter. “Patriotism” as logic for altering one’s vehicle or market perceptions isn’t even remotely mentioned here.
Also, 2008, with 2009 well nigh, is not 2000. Someone buying a Northstar drivetrain Cadillac today is not likely to duplicate oil consumption cited by some older Northstar owners. I don’t have six figures on my car yet, but my Northstar-derived engine is approaching 50,000 miles and it registers no measurable loss of oil between changes, nor is it babied in any way.
Back to the issue at hand. It is tiresome to see TTAC persistently unable or unwilling to distinguish between a “Buy American” plea grounded in blind patriotism, and a logical suggestion that self-interest and the larger context of communitarian motives argue in favor of buying a luxury car from a domestically-owned producer. In this case, the headline is not supported by the story within. Barack Obama made the point today that doing “what’s good for me” at the exclusion of other considerations isn’t enough, making the case that responsibility must be shared. If that’s patriotism, give me more of it. America worked better when people took a moment to think about how their decisions affect others, and how their actions could be tuned to benefit the community-at-large.
Phil
GM is obviosly trying a toe in the water of one-eye-cabaret business.
Lets try to see the patriotic issue the other way round – according to Sun ZU “the art of war” – see it through the eyes of your “enemy”. Its natural in the limited gene-pool that an average intellectually-easy-going-dump-ass patriot acquired through evolution (hard over the crocodiles as ancient as tiny gene pool) all and everything not-domestic in best case as potentially hostile and ready for military intervention.
If all car producers worldwide, the Germans, French, British, Italian, Spain, South american, Asian producers e.g. would retaliate by well playing the “patriotic card” from the other side – put a “Heimatland zuerst” (“homeland first”) propaganda trail up convincing folks only to buy “real” domestic 100% home made brands – avoid foreign and license products, the US car makers would be out of business in a split of a second.
The Europeans (besides the whole rest of the world but the Europeans profit most due to their high quality and technological standard)) would survive with bruises initially but win a 100% domestic market – just like the Lada, Mosqiitch, Jugo, Skoda, Trabant e.g. enjoyed in the former Soviet Union a 95% market share with sky high prices.
Only with two little differences:
– That time with with well established technical solid Porsche, Mercedes, BMW, Fiat, Peugeot, Citroen, Rolls-Royce, Maserati, Lamborghini e.g. roaming the streets. Dont forget, there is a world outside the US which is bigger then the next US town. Really! Believe me & check it out. The “foreigners” would loose at home under this condition on the way the shining “patriotic buys” in form of localized derivates of a truly negative outstanding Chrysler Sebring / Dodge Avenger or Cheep Compass. Big deal.
– In case of Europe a 500 million folks with cash buying force (not so strong lending culture the in the US) in a unified market with strong export capabilities – to nearby huge cash filled outside the US markets like Russia e.g.
The US is lucky that the international car-world is wiser and much more open minded then the US automakers avoiding a platform of a patriotic propaganda limited vision in a globalized world
When the American automotive culture can begin making consistant cars across their entire line that doesn’t start exhibiting quailty issues after two years of ownership (don’t get me started on the interior build quality of my 2006 Fusion…I know…it’s not a GM, but still), then we’ll talk. My driver’s door panel squeaks relentlessly with the slightest bump, the steering wheel is literally falling apart (the glue that holds the foam to the metal rim has given way, and I can twist the foam/rubber around the rim now), and the interior door handles have air bubbles behind the chrome applique. It might be incidental proof, but my son’s 1997 Toyota Tercel with nearly 200k is holding up better. I tried…really wanted the car to be a good one, but can’t see sinking this kind of money into an “American” nameplate again. And therein lies a huge part of GM/Ford/Chrysler’s problem. They try to sell on Patriotism and cost advantages, but still fall short of what people expect from a car these days.
Phil the Northstar in your XLR is not the same as mine or anyone elses production line V8’s. It is a debored example. The modification they made for the supercharger most likely fixed all the nightmare quality issues the rest of us get to deal with. Time will tell though, 70,000 miles is where I have read most engines start failing. Expect to have very expensive repairs over and over again after that.
Also to clarify something the STS is built on the original Sigma platform the one in the last gen CTS not the current one. The new CTS sits on the Sigma II platform.
Maybe Mr. Karesh can tell us if the Northstar they currently build has improved from the one built just a few years back. From stuff I have read all the way up to 2006 model DTS’ I highly doubt it.
Phil did you ever stop to think that maybe we are considerig the community-at-large from the other side of the coin. GM is BAD for this country and keeping them around is BAD for this country. Keeping around failed, corrupt, unaccountable companies that waste resources is bad for the future of the nation regardless of how many people they employ. It’s not a good representation of what America is about.
Here is some food for thought I refuse to shop at Walmart because I believe they are a bad representation of this country and destructive to all our futures. I think you would agree or maybe not that their business model is rather unsavory. They drive out local businesses with cheaply made Chinese goods and employ at the lowest wages and dump healthcare on the state and federal government. Using your logic I am doing a bad thing because I am not supporting the largest employer in the country and the most profitable retail company in the world.
Just because some company may be the largest and have the most jobs doesn’t mean it is good for the country to back them. I support companies that I feel have similar values and morals to me. I’m all for local made goods and buying from my neighbor but not out of charity but because they make the best products and bring pride to the country as a whole. Backing the status quo keeps the country from moving forward, keeps the failures failing, sucks up resources and is BAD for the future health of the country.
I know I am going to get a lot of flack and hate responses for this but I am actually looking forward to the coming depression. We as a country need to learn some serious lessons and clean the system out. Why would I ever think a depression is good, no it’s not because I hate this country I love it with all my heart. It’s because I am thinking long term and the Pheonix can’t rise from the ashes until after it’s death. The pain we endure now will make us stronger and smart as a nation, force the failures out and the winners in, create responsibility and accountability, bring about innovation because of adversity, etc. All the things that make Americans and this country so great. I don’t want to see people suffer, but I don’t think they will in the long run. The country didn’t collapse and vanish during the last depression or the one 100 years before that, no we came out stronger, smarter, more powerful and healthier in the end. And we had 50 years of growth and prosperity. Maybe I am different from everyone else but I look at problems and adversity as oppertunities, I love solving problems and gaining knowledge along the way regardless of how difficult it may be at the time. And no I’m not living in some privilege world, I have had to deal with years of physical and economic pain to get where I am today, and it helped shape me into who I am today.
Ok let the flaming begin if Robert doesn’t ban me outright.
Redbarchetta :
December 19th, 2008 at 10:24 am
Chapeau!
Great post – and an brave & important one.
Phil the Northstar in your XLR is not the same as mine or anyone elses production line V8’s. It is a debored example. The modification they made for the supercharger most likely fixed all the nightmare quality issues the rest of us get to deal with. Time will tell though.
XLR-V, to be precise. I am fully aware of my supercharged Northstar’s differences from the production 4.6L Northstar. I did, after all, refer to it as “Northstar-derived.”
70,000 miles is where I have read most engines start failing. Expect to have very expensive repairs over and over again after that.
I am not even remotely concerned the problem you fear will materialize. I will say that the few people I know with high-mileage Northstar drivetrains have not experienced an oil consumption problem.
Phil did you ever stop to think that maybe we are considerig the community-at-large from the other side of the coin. GM is BAD for this country and keeping them around is BAD for this country. Keeping around failed, corrupt, unaccountable companies that waste resources is bad for the future of the nation regardless of how many people they employ. It’s not a good representation of what America is about.
Yes, I thought about the point-of-view you espouse well before you brought it up. I reject it. America is also the land of second chances, where people (and companies) get to re-invent themselves and reform. After decades of sputtering business performance and myriad missteps, GM is and has been on the mend. Its trucks are very well regarded. It has brought heavy, medium and light hybrid technologies to market. Its current vehicle quality, evidenced by STS, CTS, Malibu, Lacrosse, Lucerne, G8, Saturn’s current line, etc. was hard to imagine in, say, 2000. GM has whittled down its cost footprint while raising vehicle quality. That kind of reversal of prior neglect is definitely American. Few things would be better for America than seeing through reform of the D3 to completion.
Here is some food for thought I refuse to shop at Walmart because I believe they are a bad representation of this country and destructive to all our futures. I think you would agree or maybe not that their business model is rather unsavory. They drive out local businesses with cheaply made Chinese goods and employ at the lowest wages and dump healthcare on the state and federal government. Using your logic I am doing a bad thing because I am not supporting the largest employer in the country and the most profitable retail company in the world.
Retail is fungible in all ways. Manufacturing infrastructure tends to stay lost once it’s lost, and losing more tends to accelerate decline. Its displacement tends to be a net loss if you’re a large, growing country seeking to retain the middle-class-expanding properties of a full-spectrum economy.
I have never spent a cent with Wal-Mart, and have no intention to, ever. But we’re not doing a bad thing by choosing not to support the country’s largest employer. First, the jobs they provide are quite portable. Even within domestically-owned retailers, rise and fall of competitors can be quite rapid, and ascendant players can scale quite quickly as former leaders falter. There is no net loss to us if Target, for example, muscles Wal-Mart down to size. The economic consequences aren’t nearly the same in your comparison. Moreover, the community interest you’re protecting is also domestic and the value of protecting it is higher. That is, if more of Wal-Mart’s business were diverted to local merchants and goods, the net result would be economic gain on Main Street even it Wall Street took it as a loss. Your example is orthogonal to the matter of supporting the D3.
Just because some company may be the largest and have the most jobs doesn’t mean it is good for the country to back them. I support companies that I feel have similar values and morals to me. I’m all for local made goods and buying from my neighbor but not out of charity but because they make the best products and bring pride to the country as a whole. Backing the status quo keeps the country from moving forward, keeps the failures failing, sucks up resources and is BAD for the future health of the country.
No one is making the argument that GM should be supported only because they employ the most people among the D3. This is a non-sequitur to the topic. America has been built on tolerance for failure. Sure, one must get past failure and overcome it. Use failure as a platform for trying again more successfully. GM is in reform, and with the right changes and support, it could reform more rapidly. It has run into a macroeconomic environment that will push even well-run companies into losses, before its reforms are complete. Rescuing GM or Ford does not “keep failures failing,” it preserves the chance for reform already underway to survive a hostile macroeconomic condition and complete a revival.
I know I am going to get a lot of flack and hate responses for this but I am actually looking forward to the coming depression.
We are not going to have a depression.
We as a country need to learn some serious lessons and clean the system out. Why would I ever think a depression is good, no it’s not because I hate this country I love it with all my heart. It’s because I am thinking long term and the Pheonix can’t rise from the ashes until after it’s death.
The US and its people have to reset some expectations and alter some behaviors that became ingrained over the last 35 years. But our social, economic and political systems have so much adaptability that nothing so extreme as a “death” or depression is needed to spark reform. The human cost of depression is vast, unnecessary and it is deeply hostile and dysfunctional to “look forward to one.”
The pain we endure now will make us stronger and smart as a nation, force the failures out and the winners in, create responsibility and accountability, bring about innovation because of adversity, etc. All the things that make Americans and this country so great. I don’t want to see people suffer, but I don’t think they will in the long run.
People die in depressions. Many don’t make it through to the vaunted sunshine on the other side. We have a solid track record as both a society and nation of out-innovating the rest of the world. There are pauses from time to time, but depression isn’t needed for us to prove we can innovate. The rest of the world consistently tries to damp our ability to innovate, because they know it is a key source of our strength. Depressions waste human capital prodigiously. Nothing good comes of economic depression. In retrospect, someone always tries to make the case that what didn’t kill us made us stronger. But reality is that like years of war, economic depressions set everyone back from where they could have progressed otherwise.
Our leadership, media and money managers seem quite adept at talking us into a steep downturn. That’s irresponsible enough. It’s socially hostile to actually wish for an economic blood-letting.
The country didn’t collapse and vanish during the last depression or the one 100 years before that, no we came out stronger, smarter, more powerful and healthier in the end. And we had 50 years of growth and prosperity. Maybe I am different from everyone else but I look at problems and adversity as oppertunities, I love solving problems and gaining knowledge along the way regardless of how difficult it may be at the time. And no I’m not living in some privilege world, I have had to deal with years of physical and economic pain to get where I am today, and it helped shape me into who I am today.
Managing not to collapse is intrinsic to our systems. We are superbly adaptable as a society and political system, even if the daily particulars can be infuriating and nauseating from time to time. I don’t have any fear for the country’s survival. Of course adversity represents opportunity, and some people get richer in depressions. Nevertheless, as a society we’re vastly better off avoiding one.
America in depression pulls the rest of the world down with it. The poorest people suffer disproportionately. Environomental damage increases. Opportunity costs spike exponentially. Sure, there is revival after depression. But we’ll be so much further ahead if we don’t have one. Our systems are adapting across the board to global changes, as I write this. Viewing a depression as the best way to reform the US is shortsighted, hostile and foolish, IMO.
Phil
Hope you don’t have a ton of problems with your xlr-Vmaybe you have great luck. I wasn’t talking about drinking oil, the engine has many more problems than that for a “100,000 tune up” engine. From all the stuff I have read and had to live through it looks like they designed it to be thrown away at 100,000 miles.
I was using Walmart as an example of an American company that doesn’t deserve support not their retail chain, I guess I should have used more of an industrial business since you totally missed my point.
About the depression comment I knew I was opening a huge can of worms because most people aren’t going to understand and then they get all hostile about it like I am attacking them personnally.
The problems are deep in our economic system, I wasn’t refering to the things on the surface that always make it look like our economy is hopping and strong. I don’t expect you to get what I am talking about, sort of like trying to explain to Rick Wagoner that his corp. culture is flaud and needs to be fixed. You just get the deer in the headlights look, and rebutals that miss the point entirely. You already didn’t understand where I was going with the Walmart reference.
I’m not talking about the little economic things on the surface that need the reset button to be fixed, reinvented, innovated whatever you want to call it. It’s the basis of our economic system, a government that constantly meddles and gets in the way “trying to fix an unsustainable system” and government totally run a muck that needs a major overhaul(can’t happen until the denial stops). Maybe you wont get what I’m talking about but I’m sure you will debate what I’m saying and I welcome it.
An unsustainable economy kept a float by 70% personal over consumption doesn’t get fixed easily by making a bunch of new laws or propping up businesses when there too many powerful people that depend on the imbalance. And especially since most everyone is in denial it’s part of the problem. A government that thinks it’s job is to stop the natural cyclic correction regardless of future damage or expense and a population that supports such an intervetion no matter how much it’s true cost might be. The populace is diseased with short term thinking, lack of accountability and the wrong expecations of government. Things are going to collapse, not because I wished it but because it’s inevitable, the ball has already been set in motion.
I’m not wishing for a depression, I wish things and the country would change without it, but that doesn’t seem to happen unless we have some seriously painful lessons, just human nature I think. The government is going to keep trying to fix things by tossing money at it and in the end making it worse. Look at all the housing market fixes, they want it to start going up right now so we can start spending again and they are going to force it. It needs another 24 months to fix itself with lots of losses but that is not acceptable so they will mess with it some more. What do you think is going to happen when the true correction finally happens.
Phil people die everyday. They die in recessions, in booms, you name it. Death is something you can’t escape. I don’t want people to die and government should be there to stop that at the least but not there to protect me from losing some of my net worth, that is my responsibilty, so is basic survival but there has to be a safety net for the worst situations. THat woul be wat welfare is really meant for not this perverted system we have now. Again our fundamental system and thinking are completely screwed up, and it’s happened over decades.
I love it now I’m short sighted, hostile and foolish because I’m not hiding behind some fantasy of this country and the world as a whole and bowing down to your rhetoric. Depression is just a word that everyone understand, I’m just saying we need to break everything down to it’s foundation, a starting point for rebuilding, it could be called a revolution depending on which side looks at it. I just used depression because that is the word our lame media wil most certainly use for it. I’m looking forward to a rebuilding does that sound better, unfortunately we ned to tear it down to rebuild. I wonder Phil would you have been a Loyalist back in 1776, they didn’t want things to change either and were pretty happy to keep the status que. I’m not trying to be condesending, seriously look at your point-of-view compared to their’s at the time and tell me where you would have stood. I think you will find that lots of American’s right now would probably fall into the Loyalist camp because they can’t see any good coming from pain right now to get to something new in the future.
I’m going to have to continue this in a few hours I need to head out of town before my wife gets any more angry at me. I’m getting to a point.
TO BE CONTINUED
OK I’m finally at the in-laws. This is probably a dead post and wont get read by anyone but I’m only wasting my own time and some bandwidth.
We are not going to have a depression.
That remains to be seen over the next 12 or more months. Housing is not going to bounce back for a while. And with the recession driving up unemployment it will keep it from bouncing back by feeding a viscious cycle. With easy credit gone and not coming back for a long time there isn’t goingot be an easy quick fix to stop it like the government keeps hoping it can do.
Managing not to collapse is intrinsic to our systems. We are superbly adaptable as a society and political system, even if the daily particulars can be infuriating and nauseating from time to time. I don’t have any fear for the country’s survival. Of course adversity represents opportunity, and some people get richer in depressions. Nevertheless, as a society we’re vastly better off avoiding one.
I don’t agree with this. You can’t stop the enevitable and a lot of times trying to stop delines makes them worse and last longer. Consumer and government spending has been so unsustainable for such a long time when we are forced to pay for our past and present sins it is going to be really painful, at least economicly. The government is so irrisponsible they keep trying to stop the correction my mortgaging out future. We can’t borrow our way to prosperity and then fix the mess we created by more borrowing and shufflng the cards around. The endless avoidance just makes things worse in the long run, driving us to that collapse. I would rather take my lumps and pain now and hit the reset button than keep driving us deeper into this hole.
The poorest people suffer disproportionately. Environomental damage increases. Opportunity costs spike exponentially. Sure, there is revival after depression.
I hate the fact that that is what come with it, but that is also where some of the lessons will come from. And I would rather have to deal with a mild depression now that corrects thangs than one a 100 times worse later in the future because we avoided deeling with it now. I look forward to fixing it now and accepting it rather than push it of to the future in turn giving us a total catastrophy.
I wont keep dwelling on this, since it’s a car site.
GM is and has been on the mend
It’s been too little to late and really hasn’t even addressed GM’s flaud business model. Regardless GM can’t be fixed in the time they have left. They lost the American trust with 30 years of bad business and decided to wait until their last dime to start changing(if any change has happened at all, the culture still rules). They need trust to sell their products. It doesn’t matter how great you say their products are they have the build trust with those cars and trucks and they just haven’t been enough to do that. Wining back the American consumers trust is going to take 10 years or more, about 9 years to long for them. The way I see it they still haven’t started down the trust rebuilding road, that wont happen while they still have contempt for the customer. I don’t want to prop them up for a decade hoping they figure that out, and it doesn’t look like a lot of the buying public wants to either.
I was hoping to see them cut up and a new owner(smart and responsible) take some of the parts and reinvent and make it successful. BUT again the government meddled with that and will keep the status quo going, on our dime, without the right kind of changes. And we will keep pouring money into GM’s flaud business, slowly destroying what someone else might have been able to make good with, until it is completely burned into the ground and we have nothing left except a lot of jobless people, junk cars and bombed out cities in the midwest, while our kids get the bill. But management will make out like bandits. Again avoidance is not the answer.
American Leyland here we come and I really wish we weren’t.
I was using Walmart as an example of an American company that doesn’t deserve support not their retail chain, I guess I should have used more of an industrial business since you totally missed my point.
I didn’t miss your point. I disagree with it. From corporate to supply chain to distribution to retail, every Wal-Mart job is fungible, and has equivalents in rival companies and their own ecosystems. As with automotive suppliers, there’s even duplication. Denial of your revenue to Wal-Mart is consistent with my recommendation that personal buying power should be influenced by social considerations. But in denying Wal-Mart and buying instead locally or with another chain, there is no net cost to the general domestic economy. This is not true when your decision involves domestically-owned manufacturing behind consumer goods.
About the depression comment I knew I was opening a huge can of worms because most people aren’t going to understand and then they get all hostile about it like I am attacking them personnally.
I did not infer that your depression comment was a personal attack, nor did I respond as though it was.
The problems are deep in our economic system, I wasn’t refering to the things on the surface that always make it look like our economy is hopping and strong. I don’t expect you to get what I am talking about, sort of like trying to explain to Rick Wagoner that his corp. culture is flawed and needs to be fixed. You just get the deer in the headlights look, and rebutals that miss the point entirely. You already didn’t understand where I was going with the Walmart reference.
I fully understood your Wal-Mart reference. I simply disagree with its relevance and reject it as an invalid analogy.
An unsustainable economy kept a float by 70% personal over-consumption doesn’t get fixed easily by making a bunch of new laws or propping up businesses when there too many powerful people that depend on the imbalance. And especially since most everyone is in denial it’s part of the problem. A government that thinks it’s job is to stop the natural cyclic correction regardless of future damage or expense and a population that supports such an intervetion no matter how much it’s true cost might be. The populace is diseased with short term thinking, lack of accountability and the wrong expecations of government. Things are going to collapse, not because I wished it but because it’s inevitable, the ball has already been set in motion.
No one knows what constitutes “personal overconsumption.” Americans will have to adjust their expectations, but optimum consumption is an elastic notion. Our government (US) does not think its job is to “stop the natural cyclic correction..,” it believes it has a responsibility to mitigate market excess. Rightly so. Markets are frequently wrong. They exaggerate boom markets, and they amplify pessimism about plunging fortunes. They fuel irrational bubbles and ratify excessive contraction. Today, a 900 point market dive is viewed as catastrophic and evidence the bottom has fallen out, while a 900 point rise is ignored as irrelevant. Only bad news has value, while good news is dismissed.
Collective economic loss of faith is 70% psychological, which is to admit markets are emotional, not rational. Collapse is not inevitable, but risk of it is heightened by the self-referential gloom of a monetary and financial ecosystem disconnected from the real economy and the realities of how business functions. Government has a proper role in mitigating runaway loss of confidence. Market purists always miss the politics of economics in a continental, multi-cultural nation.
The government is going to keep trying to fix things by tossing money at it and in the end making it worse. Look at all the housing market fixes, they want it to start going up right now so we can start spending again and they are going to force it. It needs another 24 months to fix itself with lots of losses but that is not acceptable so they will mess with it some more. What do you think is going to happen when the true correction finally happens.
The housing market depends upon alignment of costs with incomes, and mortgage availability/affordability. We don’t have to return to unrestricted availability of sub-prime negative-equity mortages for housing to stabilize and recover in most urban markets. There will be continuing damage in ex-urban mushroom markets, but the task is to arrest foreclosures, put a ceiling on mortgage rates to release more disposable income into the system, and boost the flow of confidence into badly eroded perceptions. Also to stabilize housing access to the majority qualified buyers. Unmitigated, volume foreclosure is extremely corrosive to societal function. The simple elevation of confidence resulting from keeping most people in their homes puts a floor under much of the rest of the economy, and as we’ve seen, a value floor most people believe in moves people from the realm of risk-driven to opportunity-driven.
Phil people die everyday. They die in recessions, in booms, you name it. Death is something you can’t escape. I don’t want people to die and government should be there to stop that at the least but not there to protect me from losing some of my net worth, that is my responsibilty, so is basic survival but there has to be a safety net for the worst situations. THat woul be wat welfare is really meant for not this perverted system we have now. Again our fundamental system and thinking are completely screwed up, and it’s happened over decades.
Yup, no kidding, people die every day. You know what I meant. Depressions kill people prematurely for preventable reasons. They undermine health, divert talent from opportunity, waste human capital, render an environment more favorable to communicable disease, spike mental health problems, and generally set vast numbers of people back unnecessarily. Your words were “….I’m actually looking forward to the coming depression…” Reprehensible.
Depression is just a word that everyone understand, I’m just saying we need to break everything down to it’s foundation, a starting point for rebuilding, it could be called a revolution depending on which side looks at it. I just used depression because that is the word our lame media wil most certainly use for it.
No, sorry, depression has a specific meaning both denotatively and connotatively. You can’t slip out of the knot by claiming you were really referring to a “revolution,” or a “rebuilding.” Revolutions are not automatically accompanied by depressions nor vice-versa. It is entirely consistent to believe one would have been on the side of breaking away from England in 1775, and also in favor of mitigating depression spiral in 1930 or 2009. Revolutions can be part of a boom, and vice-versa.
Consumer and government spending has been so unsustainable for such a long time when we are forced to pay for our past and present sins it is going to be really painful, at least economicly. The government is so irrisponsible they keep trying to stop the correction my mortgaging out future. We can’t borrow our way to prosperity and then fix the mess we created by more borrowing and shufflng the cards around.
Yes, in fact, we can. We did exactly this during and after WWII. The key was growth. As a nation we have a long history of growing our way out of our problems, and there is no reason that the combination of innovation engines, capital base, and the return of confidence can’t result in same going forward. We don’t need restoration of 2004 or 1999 spending mentality to manage a soft landing for economic decline, arrest of the precipitous and unwarranted plunge in investor confidence, and packing around people a sense that bad news will abate so shift to opportunity is safe.
Winning back the American consumers trust is going to take 10 years or more, about 9 years to long for them. The way I see it they still haven’t started down the trust rebuilding road, that wont happen while they still have contempt for the customer. I don’t want to prop them up for a decade hoping they figure that out, and it doesn’t look like a lot of the buying public wants to either.
There is a minority hard core of skeptics that do not have to be won back anytime soon for the D3 to rebuild their business. They sell millions of cars today amounting to about half the domestic market. Their gains can be incremental and if they are, the rate at which they can erode the stony skepticism or hostility of the core alienated can accelerate. The D3 start their reform with a large footprint of paying customers that can give them traction for renewed viability. Millions of people still trust one or more of the D3 and that’s far better than none or just a few.
And we will keep pouring money into GM’s flawed business, slowly destroying what someone else might have been able to make good with, until it is completely burned into the ground and we have nothing left except a lot of jobless people, junk cars and bombed out cities in the midwest, while our kids get the bill. But management will make out like bandits. Again avoidance is not the answer.
The bailout approved by the administration today is merely a bridge over the political inconvenience of a crisis having arisen during a change-over in administrations and shift in Congressional representation pending. The opportunity to fund restructuring of these companies without carte blanche grants remains in front of us. The incoming team is considerably more sophisticated about managing a crisis of confidence in the economic realm.
American Leyland here we come and I really wish we weren’t.
There are large differences between British Leyland and the current and contemplated government auto market interventions in the US. BL’s bureaucratic rise accompanied a continuing trend to declining product quality. Innovation was absent. Our intervention is undertaken in a period of generally increasing product quality. The Brits at the time viewed nationalized industries as permanent and desirable, while in the US they are temporary and of last resort. All of the technology in BL was old. I know “American Leyland” has become flippant shorthand here for what results from Federal assistance to the D3, but it’s a maladroit moniker. We retain many options for punishing management incompetence and rewarding progress.
Phil