With all of the pious talk of the importance of the big 3 auto makers, it is hard to dissociate ones feelings with the subject. American car culture and our affinity for happy motoring is woven into the Stars and Stripes. But our automotive manufacturers have come to the end of the road. Their myopic practice of pure market-pull business operations, as opposed to the technology push of industrial leadership, has left them stranded on a slender spit of sand surrounded by the rising tide of change. The very immensity and gravitas that allowed these corporate creatures to dominate the market now threatens to sink them as our unsustainable mania for consumption and wretched excess comes to a squealing halt.
Three ailing patients show up in the congressional emergency room and plead for help. But the market and the government must do triage on this group of patients lying on cots before us and throw resources at those who may live and wheel the living dead to expire in the dark hallways of the corporate morgue.
The delegation of big wheels from Detroit were apparently unsuccesful in their reconnoiter to DC looking for national treasure. Their bizjet faux pas was the finishing dab of paint on this silly cartoon. It was a signature blunder marking arrogance and an artless attempt to exploit the transient alignment of stars motivating congress to fund business institutions “too large to fail”.
These business dinosaurs need to become extinct so as to allow other more competitive creatures a chance at survival. I urge the Congress to stand back and allow these companies to enter into Chapter 11 and reorganize. Their cost structures are simply too bloated with overhead to go forward. If a company is willing to reorganize, then it may be worth advancing a loan of public funds to aid their survival. But as they are presently configured, they should not be encouraged to live on to produce more of the same.
Lamentations on Chemistry 
You know, they will get some kind of bail out, just like the banks did. Washington is so scared of what might come out of the ashes of a true collapse that they will do anything to keep the status quo.
I am a firm believer that this country has gotten too fat and lazy. Come on, there is much more to life than a 55″ LCD tv! And he who dies with the most money/toys has not won, cause they are dead!
We, as a country need a good old fashioned reality check to get us back on the correct course.
I say let any business, no matter how big or small, who cannot adapt to the new economy fail. Social evolution at its finest.
Of the 27 cars on my block only 9 of them are “Big-Three”… unless you redefine the Big-Three as “BMW, Mercedes and Volvo” and then of course you have a clear majority.
Here’s a novel idea. Let’s buy all three of the US Autofakers (~$6b market cap – half a month in Iraq), fire the entire management chain and task the workers, as the newly formed U.S. Department of Transportation’s Automotive Works Project, to develop the kind of alternative-fueled high-performance vehicles we should have had by now.
The technology is there, the workers and the infrastructure is there. Let’s turn decades of bad management into a Manhattan-Project style national security issue and get this done once and for all.
One of the side effects of loss of the big three to the economy is the loss of jobs in other industries outside of the automotive industry which act as suppliers. Steel, And Chemicals will be greatly effected as well. Chemicals is an area that this BLOG supports (I Think!). I have contacts in many chemical industries, and automotive down sizing is effecting paints, coatings, plastics, and fiber industries.