After getting their asses handed to them after begging for dollars a few weeks ago, the CEOs of the Big 3 automakers are back again. Besides the usual, "We're too big to fail" argument, they are saying that they have all of these great technologies right around the corner, and if they only had a few tens of billions of dollars they'll get them to market soon and make tons of money.
There are (at least) two serious flaws with this argument:
1) If you guys were such management geniuses to be able to use all of this money wisely and bring great products to market, you wouldn't be prostrating yourselves right now. GM has been running their business into the ground for 30 years. What's different now? This whole thing about, "Oh, if you give us this money we'll work for $1 a year and we'll sell our jets" has nothing to do with anything. These guys do not know how to run a successful car business in North America. $25,000,000,000 won't change that. Remember, GM came out with the first modern electric car, the EV, then gave up on it.
2) If these new cars are that awesome and they just need capital to get them to the finish line, they should go looking for venture capital (perhaps from their unions?), not taxpayer money. There must be venture capitalists who want to cash in on these great cars of the future. What's that? Oh, yeah, they wouldn't have faith in Detroit to pull it off. Nevermind.
The Big 3 will have you believe that they made American capitalism great. For a time, that might have been true. But their arrogance and stubbornness has contributed to the degradation of our environment and their own demise. Let them sink or swim on their own merits, but not with my tax dollars.
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which is why i ONLY buy Japanese or German automobiles.
i had a buick once for, like, 4 months until i could find an old lady to unload it onto. it was only because my mazda had been totalled by a red-light runner, and i immediately hopped into a nissan. the fucking buick got stolen 2x in 3 days, too. i was praying they'd total it in some high-speed chase up I-275.
everything else has been toyota, scion (ok, we'll just call that toyota), and mercedes-benz. fuck off, GM. go to Japan and figure out why none of the Honda plants are closing ... and part of it's because there's not 14 Honda dealers on every damned corner.
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