In Detroit, locals brace for holidays

If not now, later. It is almost inconceivable that the union will agree to a wage cut of all the workers, not just the new hires, without which the car companies cannot survive, no matter what the Congress sends. If I were a young man in an auto town, I'll be looking for work as a missionary in Papua New Guinea.

All of this mismanagement has led to this failure of the BIG 3 and we are expected to reward this mismanagement with finical bail outs. The collapse of the financials caused by Liberal Democrat home ownership policies thru sub-prime and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, was a Democrat Federal Government sponsored failure. Therefore the Federal Gov’t is responsible and is required to clean up that big mess. We as taxpayers elected these clowns into office which makes us as taxpayers obligated to bail them out with our grand children’s futures. The mismanagement and unreasonable demands of the auto unions is a different story altogether and we as taxpayers aren’t responsible to bail them out. On the other hand the Democrat’s need to buy their votes with our money. THEY WILL GET THE MONEY after Act II to be played out soon at a theater near you in the Congress in out Capitol. Reed , Pelosi, Frank, Dodd and Chuckey Schumer are all great performers. The big three should CAR POOL in this time. Chapter 11 and reorganization looks good to me. As the honorable Rev. Jeremiah Wright said “Looks like Americas (Detroit’s) chickens have come home to roost”. Then he said something like God ___ America ??????????????

All this talk of mismanagement is really just old news and more of the pot calling the kettle black (blame shifting, changing the subject, etc). Detroit has made significant progress in dealing with the unions and their legacy costs. Has anyone heard about the new contracts signed last year? Those were major here in Detroit and gave the city great hope that the auto makers could get out of the hole the UAW put them in. Unfortunately they've suffered from an external event (the credit crisis) that has seriously challenged those plans. The real issue can be described through simple accounting (stay with me here). Last year, GM managed to lower their cost structure through a new union agreement. Profitability would be achieved through them successfully transitioning some retirement expenses to Medicare and UAW health care expenses to a union managed fund. Between 2008 and 2010, they would seed the managed fund and then take the costs off their books. So costs would be down to X by 2010. With costs down to X by 2010, profitability would be achieved if sales stayed at level Y (average annual sales not peak) so costs came below revenue. Now here's where Washington comes into play.... Due to the credit crisis, your average customer cannot get a loan to buy a car. Due to Washington lack of interest in addressing or helping with oil price stability, gas prices went way high, residual values of leased SUVs went in the tank, sales of same vehicles went through the floor - and now revenues don't match the model originally in the business plan to profitability. Washington had a major hand here. Washington still has lots of work to do to fix all this. Mismanagement? In a very big way. Bigger than in Detroit? I'd say yes. Detroit can continue to cut costs but Washington needs to fix the credit markets to help them restore their sales volumes to something closer to an average year over year volume. In the mean time, Detroit needs some operating cash to keep things going. But that won't be enough if Washington doesn't take appropriate actions in a timely manner to re-establish normalcy in the credit markets. So quit shifting blame, get to work, and do YOUR job of governing the United States of America.