NewsTrust - Cars - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Mainstream)

Paul Ingrassia: Saturn Couldn't Escape GM's Dysfunctional Orbit

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - Oct. 03 (Opinion) - Union leaders hated the flexible work rules and eventually got rid of them.

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Obama Honors Nascar Drivers - The Caucus Blog - NYTimes.com

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Andrea Fuller - Aug. 19 (Opinion) - The car parked behind the White House wasn’t a black limousine or a S.U.V. or another vehicle typically seen in the presidential motorcade. It was Nascar driver Jimmie Johnson’s No. 48 Chevy. President Obama took some time out from promoting his health care plan on Wednesday to honor Mr. Johnson, the three-time winner of the Sprint Cup, on the South Portico. The winner of the Sprint Cup series is Nascar’s champion of the year.

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Chamber of Commerce Urges Lawmakers to Raise the Gas Tax

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Alec MacGillis - Jul. 15 (Opinion) - On the same day as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was attacking President Obama and congressional Democrats over a tax-hiking plan to pay for health care reform, its leader urged the same people to have the courage to raise taxes on another front: the federal gasoline levy that pays for our highways

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GM: Is This The End of The UAW?

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Daniel Gross - Jun. 03 (Opinion) - Most significantly, as stockholders, unions will have to start thinking like owners. The theory of Detroit was that the United Auto Workers union didn't care about returns Chrysler, Ford, or GM could generate to the stockholder because it was simply concerned with maximizing wages and benefits. But the joke was ultimately on the unions, since high labor costs were one of the many factors that caused the companies to fail—and hence to renege on the long-term retirement and health care benefits they had agreed to pay.

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The Obama Motor Co.

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - Jun. 02 (Editorial) - Welcome to Obama Motors, and what is likely to be a long, expensive and unhappy exercise in political car making.

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No gain but we avoid a lot of pain

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Michael Hiltzik - Jun. 02 (Opinion) - Whether the government's novel venture into industrial ownership will save the economy, or whether it's even a necessary component of an economic recovery, are questions certain to be widely debated in the coming months while GM hares its way through an expedited bankruptcy reorganization.

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GM goes bust: Bankruptcy, at last

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - Jun. 02 (Editorial) - If GM cannot revive its good name, and if the cycle of falling market share and piecemeal readjustment begins again then GM, in any form, looks doomed.

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Car Crazy

Thu, 28 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - May. 28 (Editorial) - At the end of his Rose Garden explanation yesterday of the new U.S. fuel-efficiency standards, President Obama remarked on the good that can be accomplished when we are "working together." The President may be getting ahead of himself. Watching the unlikely coalition arrayed behind him as Mr. Obama committed the U.S. to an astonishing passenger-car mileage average of 39 miles per gallon by 2016, it looks truer to say we are merely standing together in this adventure, for better or worse. Mr. Obama's fleet-mileage partners yesterday included the two auto companies that have fallen into his arms, Chrysler and GM, still-independent Ford, the major foreign manufacturers, United Auto Workers chief Ron Gettelfinger, and beaming representatives from the Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund and the Union of Concerned Scientists. All that's left to arrive at the President's new destination for the American way of driving are huge, unanswered questions about technology, financing and the marketability of cars that will be small and expensive.

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Gangster Government and the Chrysler Fix

Wed, 13 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Weekly Standard - By Henry Payne, Richard Burr - May. 13 (Opinion) - In an extraordinary abuse of government power, the Obama administration has run roughshod over bankruptcy law, bullied Chrysler investors, and orchestrated a takeover of the Auburn Hills-based automaker by the United Auto Workers union, a key Democratic party constituency that gave $5 million to the Obama campaign in 2008.

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Mismanaging the collapse of Detroit's giants

Fri, 08 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - May. 08 (Editorial) - In its rush to save Detroit, the American government is trashing creditors’ rights

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Top 10 Tech Cars of 2009

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

IEEE Spectrum - By John Voelcker - Apr. 06 (Review) - If necessity really is the mother of invention, then surely the auto industry is on the verge of an era of blinding brilliance. Times are that bad.

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Detroit: Can Obama's Auto Bailout Work?

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By John Gross - Apr. 01 (Opinion) - Obama also used the B-word, bankruptcy, which would be particularly disastrous for Cerberus. Under any circumstances, it seems, many of the Wall Streeters who celebrated Obama's toxic-assets plan won't profit from his auto bailout.

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Detroit Dissonance

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Eugene Robinson - Mar. 31 (Opinion) - Through a series of logical decisions, the Obama administration has maneuvered itself into an illogical and uncomfortable place. The president is telling Detroit to shape up or die while at the same time politely asking Wall Street, whose recklessness and greed caused this economic crisis, if it would be so kind as to accept another heaping helping of taxpayer funds.

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Reviving cars and newspapers

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Christian Science Monitor - Mar. 23 (Editorial) - Both autos and newspapers are foundational to the US. Detroit feeds a multitude of suppliers and dealers, leaving a big economic footprint. Newspapers do the digging upon which magazines, television, and the Internet largely rely. As watchdogs, the print media have a big civic paw print.

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The Net-Zero Gas Tax

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Weekly Standard - By Charles Krauthammer - Dec. 29 (Opinion) - Today's economic climate of financial instability and deepening recession, moreover, makes the piling on of new taxes--gasoline or otherwise--not just politically unpalatable but economically dubious

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Chapter 11 is the right road for US carmakers

Sat, 13 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Financial Times - By Joseph Stiglitz - Dec. 13 (Opinion) - The debate about whether or not to bail out the Big Three carmakers has been mischaracterised. It has been described as a package to help the undeserving dinosaurs of Detroit. In fact, a plan to bail out the carmakers would benefit shareholders and bondholders as much as anybody else. These are not the people that need help right now. In fact they contributed to the problem.

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The Big Three's real union problem

Sat, 06 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Los Angeles Times - By Jonathan Cutler - Dec. 06 (Opinion) - Even if a deal for a $15-billion to $17-billion preliminary bailout comes together this weekend to keep carmakers afloat into 2009, they will continue to be dogged by their most significant competitive disadvantage: a high-priced, unionized workforce.

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Car Talk

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

New Yorker - By Elizabeth Kolbert - Dec. 05 (Opinion) - During two days of congressional hearings, the C.E.O.s were unable to answer the most basic questions, such as how they had arrived at the sum they were asking for—twenty-five billion dollars—or why it would be better to give it to them rather than to their customers, or whether, if they got it, it would be enough to keep them solvent.

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The Big Three's Stalemate

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Steven Pearlstein - Dec. 03 (Opinion) - The clock is quickly running out. General Motors and Chrysler both acknowledge that they will effectively be out of cash by the end of the month and will have to file for bankruptcy if they don't get a government loan.

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If Bankruptcy Hits Detroit

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - Nov. 22 (Editorial) - Congress has given Detroit’s flailing automakers less than two weeks to come up with a restructuring plan that would justify giving them tens of billions of taxpayer dollars and ensure that they have a reasonable path back to profitability. We hope it is a good plan, because the lame-duck Congress does not have a choice.

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Prepackaged Bankruptcy

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

New Yorker - By Steve Coll - Nov. 20 (Opinion) - We are now not only abutting the limits of my knowledge of bankruptcy law; we have passed well into the wilderness.

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Let Detroit Go Bankrupt

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Mitt Romney - Nov. 19 (Opinion) - IF General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.

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No concessions? No bailout

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Boston Globe - Nov. 19 (Editorial) - Concessions shouldn't be a one-way street. As a condition of any bailout, auto executives should be prepared to reduce their ranks, accept management changes, and take cuts in salaries and bonuses, too.

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Bailout to Nowhere

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By David Brooks - Nov. 16 (Opinion) - Democrats from Barack Obama to Nancy Pelosi want to grant immortality to General Motors, Chrysler and Ford. They have decided to follow an earlier $25 billion loan with a $50 billion bailout, which would inevitably be followed by more billions later, because if these companies are not permitted to go bankrupt now, they never will be. This is a different sort of endeavor than the $750 billion bailout of Wall Street. That money was used to save the financial system itself. It was used to save the capital markets on which the process of creative destruction depends. Granting immortality to Detroit’s Big Three does not enhance creative destruction. It retards it. It crosses a line, a bright line. It is not about saving a system; there will still be cars made and sold in America. It is about saving politically powerful corporations. A Detroit bailout would set a precedent for every single politically connected corporation in America. There already is a long line of lobbyists bidding for federal money. If Detroit gets money, then everyone would have a case. After all, are the employees of Circuit City or the newspaper industry inferior to the employees of Chrysler? But this, apparently, is about to change. Democrats from Barack Obama to Nancy Pelosi want to grant immortality to General Motors, Chrysler and Ford. They have decided to follow an earlier $25 billion loan with a $50 billion bailout, which would inevitably be followed by more billions later, because if these companies are not permitted to go bankrupt now, they never will be. This is a different sort of endeavor than the $750 billion bailout of Wall Street. That money was used to save the financial system itself. It was used to save the capital markets on which the process of creative destruction depends.

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Stimulate Car Buyers, Not Car Makers

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Wall Street Journal - By Robert Hahn, Peter Passel - Nov. 15 (Opinion) - Should Uncle Sam save General Motors, Ford and Chrysler from bankruptcy? In normal times, most mainstream economists (and many mainstream legislators) would probably say no. But with financial markets in turmoil and the economy on the cusp of a nasty recession, these are hardly normal times. In any event, Congress and President-elect Barack Obama are committed to spending billions to keep the Big Three afloat.

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