I’ve started to get emails from more ex-GM employees. Here’s one, with details omitted to protect the correspondent’s identity… “I’ve worked for GM nearly 9 years. No barfing in the toilets that I saw (at least when they weren’t closed for cleaning during the day–you know, after they did away with nightly maintenance to cut costs). But I did break down in tears in the parking deck. This was after fighting for 3 years to get a lateral move that was necessary for career development, getting resisted by management who told me I had to find own my replacement, only to have my director (a long-timer, my-way-or-the-highway type) move me to a completely different group during the 2006 layoff/reorg without bothering to ask me first. Fortunately I did pick up skills to qualify me for my current job. But too little, too late — that’s essentially been GM’s problem for the last 30 years, in fact.
Category: News Blog
In the course of tearing the D2.8 CEOs a new NSFW, Senator Corker (R-TN) told the auto execs that Sam Bodman, Energy Sec, has rejected– so far– all the 136 requests for access to the $25b “retooling” loan fund. We have no other information at this time. But Holy frijoles, Corker is after Motown CEOs’ collective Nardelli. “There is not a person alive who thinks Chrysler can make it as a standalone automaker,” Corker asserted. Although the Senator raised the central issue for Chrysler– why the Hell should the U.S. government bail out the ailing automaker if deep-pocketed owner Cerberus won’t do it– Senator Dodd threw the deer-in-the-headlights ChyrCo honcho a lifeline. He changed the subject. Now Corker is sticking it to UAW boss Gettelfinger by trying to get him to agree to swap health care VEBA payments to equity, relieving GM of a big pile of debt. Another squirm. And Corker’s time is up. NSFWs are unpuckering.
Sadly C-Span‘s coverage of today’s Senate Banking Committee didn’t kick off with a red carpet arrival of America’s automotive future. Similarly, a longish hearing with only the GAO General Comptroller didn’t do much to raise the pulse. It seems that TARP funds are still rhetorically on the table, and some form of oversight board will go along with any bailout. In fact, the seventies were back in a big way, as the 1979 Chrysler bailout is referenced as a model on numerous occasions. As if Chrysler’s CEO weren’t sitting there asking for more money. MarketWatch reports that Comptroller Dodaro said the Federal Reserve also has authority under current law to lend money to the Big Three, if the Fed board of governors determined that the need is urgent and that the loans would be repaid. However, the Fed has determined that it cannot lend to the companies because the loans cannot be collateralized as required.
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Protesters organized by camerafraud.com gathered outside the main Arizona office of photo enforcement vendor Redflex Traffic Systems yesterday to urge the company to pack its bags and “return to Australia.” About three dozen activists armed with signs stood out in front of the speed camera company’s posh new Phoenix suite at 23751 North 23rd Avenue to hold signs while passing motorists honked in approval. The group is preparing a statewide ballot initiative giving Arizona residents a chance to ban photo ticketing. Observers now wonder whether the legislature will act before the ticket ban initiative even qualifies for the ballot. The photo radar program’s staunchest defender, Governor Janet Napolitano (D), is leaving the state to head the US Department of Homeland Security. Her successor, Secretary of State Jan Brewer (R), has been snubbed in the past by Redflex.
As we attempt to understand the UAW’s Job Bank program, and whether or not their reported suspension of that program is a meaningful concession, we’ve been looking for information on it. Unfortunately, as a somewhat outdated but highly informative report from Carlist explains, the details of the Job Bank are kept under wraps by the Union and automakers for “competitive reasons.” In fact, when asked why GM publicized its health benefit and pension obligations but not its Job Bank information, a GM spokesman said “that is public information that can be found in our financial statements, job banks isn’t.” In the absence of public information on the program, the original terms of the Job Bank agreement from 1987 (leaked to Carlist) are all we have to go on.
BMW’s second generation MINI convertible will offer an optional ‘Openometer.’ It records the time spent by the car driving around with the top down. Kind of an interior conversation piece, I guess, providing the same service a Dada coffee table book might in your swank bachelor – or bachelorette – pad. Number of G’s pulled. [ED: Number of birds pulled?] Top speed, and time spent there-– these interest me. Though they should be password protected. Instantly purgeable. Anything but open, really. Does anyone think an openometer is useful in anyway?
Bloomberg reports that Ford is seeking $6b for its Volvo division, and is “counting on the strength of the brand to draw bidders”. Dearborn has hired JP Morgan to advise in the sale of the final remaining brand from Ford’s erstwhile Premiere Auto Group. But even with a Wall Street heavyweight easing the deal along, Ford isn’t likely to get anywhere near that much. “Anything other than a heavily discounted sale seems unrealistic,” says Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer of Gelsenkirchen University. “For a buyer it’s the best time that one could wish for. But it’s not ideal for Ford.” With the global players facing a sales downturn, Dudenhoffer figures that only cash-rich Chinese automakers, buyout firms, or a group of investors backed by the Swedish government might be interested at all. Bloomberg quotes a mysterious “person familiar with the situation” as saying Texas-based TPG Inc may be interested in Volvo. TPG, which has more than $50 billion of capital under management, was among four private-equity companies to make preliminary approaches for Jaguar and Land Rover last year before Ford sold the businesses to Tata Motors. SAIC and Dongfeng are among the Chinese firms that could bid on Volvo.
Eddy and I are watching the live-stream of the Senate Banking Committee hearings on the bailout. We’ll provide updates as and when. Meanwhile, Automotive News [AN] gets tense. AN reports that GM CEO Rick Wagoner said (read: is going to say) oops, sorry, yeah, I know, we fucked-up [paraphrasing]. “We made mistakes,” Wagoner said in testimony prepared for delivery to the Senate Banking Committee today. GM made many decisions that were ‘right for the times,’ Wagoner said. But the company failed to build enough flexibility into its operations and did not move fast enough to invest in smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles for the United States, he conceded. Wagoner said the Detroit 3 learned a lot from last month’s “difficult” congressional hearings on their aid requests. For GM, he said, that process accelerated ‘a healthy internal review.'” I’m not going to say it. I’m not going to say it…
As part of TTAC’s emphasis on the human side of the Motown’s meltdown, we’re keeping our editorial eye out (ouch) for stories on the human impact of this debacle. After all, whether or not the Big 2.8’s CEOs succeed in liberating Uncle Sam of enough money to live to die another day, hundreds of thousands of people are going to suffer [NB: the blame belongs with the bailout brigade]. And so, “at the invitation of Cardinal Adam Maida, archbishop of Detroit, 12 Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders will gather at Sacred Heart Major Seminary on Thursday, December 4, to share how their faith communities are responding to the economic crisis in metro Detroit and discuss possible future initiatives.” We put in a call to the group for more info, but they’re too busy to schmooze or spin. In any case, we salute Detroit’s religious community for recognizing the scope, scale and pace of this reckoning. They have their work cut out for them.
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Nuclear fusion is the preferred deus ex machina in the minds of some who long for cheap, abundant energy, although fusion will never be either. The challenge: containing the plasma fuel that heats to millions of degrees inside a “bottle” made of magnetic fields produced by a superconducting magnet kept at absolute zero a few feet away. The concept’s been likened to trying to hold water inside rubber bands. A press release from MIT News entitled “New Insights on Fusion Power” celebrates the kind of esoteric advances that indicate that fusion lies somewhere beyond the Hubble Deep Field in the cosmology of future energy sources (i.e. just as distant as when I first wrote about it in 1978).
The AP reports that “Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says the Democrats’ plan to tap the Wall Street rescue fund to save U.S. automakers doesn’t have the votes to pass. One day after Detroit’s Big Three sent survival plans to Capitol Hill in an urgent plea for $34 billion in government aid, Reid said there’s still not enough support in Congress for using some of the $700 billion bailout to help the teetering carmakers.” So it looks like the plan to tap Tarp has tapped-out. Plan B: modify the terms of the Department of Energy’s $25b retooling loans, as suggested by President Bush. Only Detroit is now asking for $34b, and the rest (bailouts for the automakers’ credit divisions). Plan C: new “emergency legislation” to top-up the Big 2.8 until Barack Obama administration can ride to the rescue (or not). Only CNNMoney says 61% of the voting public opposes that plan, and 70 percent it won’t do a damn bit of good for the U.S. economy (sorry Detroit). Plan D: pre-packaged bankruptcy, as suggested and outlined here on TTAC by Richard Tilton. And lo and behold, Bloomberg reports General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC executives are considering accepting a pre-arranged bankruptcy as the last-resort price of getting a multibillion-dollar government bailout.” Volte-face.
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