Does this sound strange to you: Chrysler proposes spending $224 million of your tax money (bailout bucks) to land another $244 million of your tax money (Department of Energy green bucks). They plan on using the money to develop and, yes, build electric vehicles. Volt Envi much? Hang on; is the DOE money a “grant” or a “loan”? I mean, in all this $100 billion bailout excitement, has everyone forgotten about the $25 billion Department of Energy retooling loans? Is this deal part of that deal or the billion dollar battery research thing? Anyway, Reuters doesn’t say from whence cometh this particular part of the feds’ attempt to fix Motown’s meltdown. But they do put quote marks around Chrysler’s “partners” (you and Fiat sitting in a tree?) and parrot the zombie automaker’s enviro-agitprop without question.
“Chrysler and its ‘partners,’ plus the Department of Energy, would pay $224 million each should the proposals be approved and would include an investment of up to $83 million to build a new technology and manufacturing center in Michigan to help develop and assemble these vehicles. That complex should be functional by 2010 and produce more than 20,000 vehicles a year, Chrysler said.” Right. Like we believe anything Chrysler says. But they should have at least mentioned the number of “green jobs” (TTAC hearts quote marks) the project would create. C’mon guys, get some game going! Saying that, you gotta love this little tidbit . . .
The plan would also include $365 million for a national demonstration fleet of more than 365 test vehicles for select customers and partners.
Holy shit! A million dollars a pop! Now that kind of proposal takes some serious balls. You know; for a bankrupt car company living on Uncle Sam’s dime. Props.
In Japan, Korea, Germany and probably every other country, Government would force heads banged together; they would not allow this “tech” to be done separately.
Why is a bankrupt tax-payer Chrysler spending money duplicating what a bankrupt tax-payer funded GM is doing?????????
This stuff is bat-shit crazy.
Is it truthfully more cost-effective to built a new manufacturing facility than it would be to renovate one of the multitudes of facilities that were just shut down?
And $1mil per demo vehicle for select customers….EV2 anybody?
When the fiats fail what else can they do?
I’m just happy that as taxpayers cum investors, we have absolutely no say in how GM and Chrysler are run. The shit just keeps getting deeper, and the automakers that should be dead and gone are finding more ways to siphon money into their accounts. Something has got to be done, I just wish like hell I knew what would work.
I have a couple of horses in this race, one being my vehicle (Chevy), the other being my job (Cadillac). That said, if the whole thing blew up tomorrow and I could be guaranteed that I wouldn’t pay another tax dollar towards the support of automakers that simply don’t deserve it, I might not have a problem with that. I’m absolutely beside myself pissed.
There are hundreds of thousands of people in this country struggling to get by after losing their jobs, and rather than put billions into an economy that can support new jobs for them, we are pouring that money into a couple of lost cause manufacturers. It’s got to end somewhere, although we’re really past the point where it should have. I will say it, just as with the failed companies they’re bailing out, the leadership of this nation has no direction or plan, and as long as this is the case, no amount of money will fix anything. We as a country are on a collision course with absolute financial disaster. I don’t think we’ve even come close to seeing the worst of it. Thank you, Obama, but this is not a change I can beleive in.
superbadd, I’m right there with you. As an upper middle class tax payer (but harldy rich by any means) I’m sick about what Hopey-Changey and the Chicago Thugs are doing to the country. I’ve lived through the recent recessions that they said were the next worst in modern times, but we came out of them in better shape than going in, I’m not so sure about this time. My business really relies on the success and growth of small to mid size Main Street business to be successful. I fear we are in for a time when government is all that will be growing.
There are hundreds of thousands of people in this country struggling to get by after losing their jobs, and rather than put billions into an economy that can support new jobs for them, we are pouring that money into a couple of lost cause manufacturers.
Those lose causes are currently employing directly or indirectly a similar amount of people. If the fed could conveniently spend about as much to keep the rest employed, they prolly would have. Can you imagine the political strife (“socialism!”) if they directly subsidized every employer?
The funny thing about fiscal spending during a deflationary cycle is that it’s “free” in the sense that there’s no inflation.
WildBill:
We only wish we can live in a recession, and incidentally, that’s exactly what the fed hopes to turn this into.
Remember, blame the people who were blowing up the bubble, not the ones left holding the bag.
Far more jobs will be lost if the GM and Chrysler go under than anything in the private sector.
What is happening to our auto industry is the worse thing this country has probably faced since the British burned down Washington in the early 19th century.
No domestic auto industry = no viable nation.
No domestic auto industry = no viable nation.
That might be overstating the case, just a tad.
There is a perfectly viable industry; it happens to be operated by more competent companies in locations other than Detroit, with Ford just hanging in there.
People who were blowing the bubble are still in charge, now “fixing” the very same problems they’ve created during the years of unlimited credit and overspending.
The deflationary cycle wouldn’t last indefinately. The market will correct itself if only the government would stay away.
Oh, no, the “social engineers” in the White House can not allow that and let a good crisis go to waste..
The market will correct itself if only the government would stay away.
You don’t seem to get that without a gov, there would be no “market” that you speak of, unless you were mostly into trading beads.
Haven’t we been down this expensive gov’t funded vehicle program before? Tech that never reaches the consumer?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_Precept
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partnership_for_a_New_Generation_of_Vehicles
Why not concentrate on infrastructure projects instead of supporting car manufacturers that are failing? Fix bridges, schools, neighborhoods. That shovel-ready BS they were talking about until recently.
Why not green projects like solar and wind and whatever. For the price of the bailouts for Detroit and the banks the gov’t could run around and put solar on every gov’t rooftop across the nation and employ alot of people doing it. That’s long term thinking – not can we turn a big profit next year at the detriment of the following five years…