We here at Democratic Financial World have never believed Obama's Change You Can Believe in slogan, though we believe in the man. Obama has thrived with ciourage and grace confronting challenges that would disinhearten lesser folk.
But his slogan is simply too much...
Now that both Chysler and Eneral Motors are in bankrucy we can say niether has learned any lessons, judging from impatial newsmedia sources. Consider the Business Week June 8 2009 report that Cadillac and Chevorelt will get $1.3 billion in marketing money"Double the existing budget and pretty close to what Toyota spends on Lexus"....
Where we ask is the cash for hybrid vehicles? Where is the stepped up paced for the electric cars? Where are the new fuel effecient vhehicles?
Chevy and Cadillac don't have either. But let's move on with Biz Week's breathless report:"With lower costs GM will have more money to spend on Buick and GMC which were long starved of new vehicles",writes Biz Week. Yet almost every analist has pointed out GM needs fewer, not more car brands.. GM's new production boss Tom G Stephens doesn't get it.
We can read between the lines: government funding for proven patterns of failure. This is change we can't believe in.
We have said before the Deocratic party should not run ib on the "We Saved Cadillc" platform. That belongs to the other party-the party of gas guzzles.
While Chrysler offers hope of small cars from Fiat as a part of it's alliance, we can not be confident of a turnaround. European management --Volkswagon,Dailer and others ran Chryster into the ground where it is today. American were never impressed with German engineering, and Fiat offers more of the same.
Fiat is sports cars in the puclic mind in the US, but the biggest and richest market is family vehicles--which is why SUV's are still popular- but tarnished because of low gas milage.
If fact,if it were not for fuel economy they would still be wildly popular.
Detroit's problem is not design; it is efficiency.It makes too many cars with little regard to markets. We recall when Auto Nation did a computer analysis of what sold three years ago-including every bell and whislte-and noted Detroit lacked specific detail of exactly who their customer was..
How could Gm and Chrystler have so many outlets between them and not have such basic data? One cannot imagine Proctor and Gamble , Hp or Dell not knowing who their costomers were.
We wonder too about the post bailout debt load forcast by Business Week. Chrysler's barely moves from $22.7 Billion to 21 billion. Yet, Gm's moves from $69 Billion to 10-20 billion. The pupose of bankrutcy is to erase debt, and re-emerege- yet, Chysler's barely changes.
So we have to ask what kind of deal did the Obama Administration cut with Chrylser to allow a bare nick?
We also note the German governments money for GM Europe-specfifically for Opel. Yet this stuff isn't even included in the GM plan. Will GM-europe profits be bought back to GM-assuming there are profits.
We're sorry, but this is not change we can believe in--
--it makes no new efforts toward fuel effecient cars, or even makes them a priority..
--it still favors gas guzzelers over electric or hybrid vehicles, and lays out no roadmap for change...
-- it makes no claim of technological advancement No joint planning for electic waystation of reueling and no integration with highway planning or electrical grid restructiong for smoothing the change over.
The Democratic Party shioulod not mortgage it's futuree to a post brankrucy rescue operation unless there is a clear road map for change in the car industry from its addiction to oil.
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