While it's nice to tie this in with the failure of the bailout plan- it really points more to the car market right now. You'll see all the major car manufacturers reduce their production by 20%-30% for the first quarter. That's just where the market it at, for foreign and domestic makers.

An estimated 16 million/year market is now a 12m/ year market, that's a 25% reduction for everyone.

The bailout does nothing to change the waning demand for the product.

The difference being the domestics are way over infrastructured- the Japanese companies were working their plants overtime to meet the 16 million demand peak. Where GM is closing plants, Honda and Toyota will just be cutting that 6th day of weekly production they had been running, and maybe a day here or there to match the reduced demand.

can you think of a more toxic asset right now than a gas guzzling carbon spewer ?

Besides, they asked for 14b right? I know it's crazy but compared to 700b that's pretty dang small.

Stupid repugnant union busters. Fuckthesouth.com is still up right? They need an update...

My initial reaction to your post, Andrew, was that GM is playing chicken with the GOP. Notice they cut production in Kansas and Tennessee? Both solidly red states. That will of course weaken the GOP in those states and could get their senators in a bit of trouble. So perhaps GM is trying to pressure Republican senators in a more indirect way to change their minds?

And, of course, if you point out what the Republicans are doing, you're engaging in that dreaded practice of class warfare. Oooh! Scary visions of heads falling from guillotines and Tsarist families hustled out to the countryside! The Right Wing has been practicing class warfare in the guise of the holy "free market" for years, and we should be calling it exactly what it is and reminding people of the hardworking, everyday people in their sights every day.

They just cannot sell the cars now. I would like to find out what plants, making what models, will stay open.

I bought a Prius because at $22k it was cheaper than most new cars. It has had no repairs and given me 48-50 mpg ever since.

Are you saying that if I don't support a Washington bailout of Detroit I am in it for the UAW busting?

Is everyone who bought a foreign car, or a southern non-union car, out to get unions as their primary motivation?

Should I (as was suggested in another thread) happily pay my tax dollars to Detroit because "ask workers where they'd rather work?"

I have sympathy for anyone in the path of history, I really do ... but it just doesn't work to bail everybody out. We aren't that rich. We have a $10T+ national debt. We really should be looking for the fewest things we can do with the maximum leverage to reinvent our economy. We should not put everybody and his uncle on life-support.

You don't want Wall Street to get a better deal? Start calling on Obama to nationalize some of them (for the short term). That might be a path to reinvention too.

Basically I was talking about the Scandinavian solution much-discussed a few months ago. Seize failing banks which are too big to fail, give their shareholders their haircuts, fire management, unwind their obligations, and spin them off again.

at the expense of his base?

How very un republican.

"It's the bursting of a huge leveraged-up credit bubble. There's no going back, and there is no bottom to it. It was excessive in everything from subprime to prime, from credit cards to student loans, from corporate bonds to muni bonds. You name it. And it's all reversing right now in a very, very massive way. At this point it's not just a U.S. recession. All of the advanced economies are at the beginning of a hard landing. And emerging markets, beginning with China, are in a severe slowdown. So we're having a global recession and it's becoming worse."

-Nouriel Roubini

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fortune/0812/gallery.market_gurus.fortune/index.html

"You're going to see gigantic shortages developing over the next few years. The inventories of food worldwide are already at the lowest levels they've been in 50 years. This may turn into the Great Depression II."

-Jim Rogers

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fortune/0812/gallery.market_gurus.fortune/5.html

"Yes, there's been a tremendous amount of capital thrown into the system, but my concern is that it's just going to plug the holes. It's not going to create new liquidity, which is what the system so desperately needs."

-Meredith Whitney

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fortune/0812/gallery.market_gurus.fortune/7.html

"These guys are all such wild optimists."

-Scorpio69er

Not that there might be some partisan retribution here, but Spring Hill, Tenn is the Saturn factory. Saturn was one of the brands on the chopping block, so maybe they're just moving ahead with the drastic restructuring they were already planning.

Greetings

The auto companies are dying because no middle class exits to buy their products. All the good jobs sent away and now we can't use home equity to support lifestyle choices

All the auto companies are in the same boat. It has little to do with type, style or horrors that they sell hummers...

The real fun starts when 'GM' dies for real and lays off "everybody" then the 'suppliers' lay off everybody, then all the little 'vendors' who sell to GM/Suppliers lay off then...

Its going to get very very ugly as the circularity builds, in the end the UAW retirees will be the very smallest group affected

No middle class means that soon no market exists for ANYTHING!!!

Welcome to 1932

Agreed. The difference is that GM, Chrysler and Ford will reduce production but see little or no reduction in labor costs. Other automakers with non-union workers can reduce production and see a corresponding reduction in expenses. GM may save on other operating expenses and avoid overproduction in a down market but the labor costs will remain as an albatross around its neck.