Should the government bail-out include domestic automakers?

[Len_A]

Bailing out Wall Street financial firms vs. Loan guarantees for the Big Three:

White collar vs. blue collar

When comparing the bailout for financial institutions to the bridge loans for the domestic auto industry, Steelworker President Leo Gerard made this comment:

"The people who take a shower before they go to work get bailed out. The people who must take a shower after work get thrown out."

Nice truthful quote!!

[JuneBug]

Len, maybe you should consider moving. I've got friends in Michigan and they all say it pretty much sucks up there. Did you ever think about it, cut your losses, quit waiting around for the guv-ment .I worked in a machine shop years ago and it was full of out of work guys from Michigan. They were good machinists when they wanted to be. But the problem was (is) that union mental illness they brought with them. I moved on to another job and after a few years - the one plant in the area, maybe the state that had a union was closed. Does that tell you anything? My Dad was born in 1909, he lived through the Great Depression and joined the Marines at the age of 32 to go fight in WWII, he made it home with a shatterd left hand that was only partly functioning and that 1000 yard stare that was kinda creepy at times. But he wasn't one to sit and let the ship go down with him in it. He told me he lived out of hotels rooms from Florida to New York for years before he found a job that he liked. He was almost 50 when I was born and had settled down with a good job. He lived to almost see his 93 birthday before pancreatic cancer took him. He was a fighter till the end. I share this with you and everybody else with time to read it in hopes that it will inspire you and others. Times have been worse, and people have had far greater hardships.

[Len_A]

Originally Posted by JuneBug

Len, maybe you should consider moving. I've got friends in Michigan and they all say it pretty much sucks up there. Did you ever think about it, cut your losses, quit waiting around for the guv-ment .I worked in a machine shop years ago and it was full of out of work guys from Michigan. They were good machinists when they wanted to be. But the problem was (is) that union mental illness they brought with them. I moved on to another job and after a few years - the one plant in the area, maybe the state that had a union was closed. Does that tell you anything? My Dad was born in 1909, he lived through the Great Depression and joined the Marines at the age of 32 to go fight in WWII, he made it home with a shattered left hand that was only partly functioning and that 1000 yard stare that was kinda creepy at times. But he wasn't one to sit and let the ship go down with him in it. He told me he lived out of hotels rooms from Florida to New York for years before he found a job that he liked. He was almost 50 when I was born and had settled down with a good job. He lived to almost see his 93 birthday before pancreatic cancer took him. He was a fighter till the end. I share this with you and everybody else with time to read it in hopes that it will inspire you and others. Times have been worse, and people have had far greater hardships.

Ya think I should consider moving?? Really? Ya think!!

Problem is, like I previously posted, we're not just talking about cutting losses. If I could sell this house tomorrow, I'd break even - if the city would sign off on the occupancy permit. They won't. All our homes in this subdivision are like 99% of any new construction in Michigan - they have basements with sump pumps. If those basements and the rest of the foundation settle and crack, and it shows any moisture, you have to bring in a basement waterproofing contractor like Insta-Dry Basements to correct it to prevent mold problems, or the city won't approve the occupancy permits. And all the municipalities have dug their heels in on this.

Long story short - we have to spend money we won't get back in the sale. We actually will lose money to move away, and we're not flush with cash.

Let even one of the Big Three file a Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and property values tank even further.

Your Dad was one tough customer. I'm certain, from your post, that you're proud of him. That 1000 yard stare of his - that's combat. 'Nuff said.

My wife & I have had it with this area. Believe me, all we want to do is survive long enough to bail out of this. In the meantime, I want these Three Stooges to survive, so they don't cost me any more money than their problems have, not that all of their problems are all their fault. Just many of them.

[BigAl3]

in anycase Len A, i hope things get better for you and the family over time...

[Len_A]

Originally Posted by BigAl3

in anycase Len A, i hope things get better for you and the family over time...

Me too! Thanks!! Much appreciated.

[JuneBug]

Damn - is there anything you could do to that basement to get it to pass, I mean is there anything that can be done on the cheap? Most houses down here don't have basements unless it's one with a side open, like on a hill. Maybe one of those companies that do this work could give you a break, maybe they're hurting for biz too. I don't know, just thinking out loud. I really feel for you, I hope that you get that house sold and move to a better place. NC was full of opportunity - but the word got out and we're experiencing some surplus of workers now. My company is so diversified that all we have is a hiring freeze and no raises this year, but I'm not complaining. I have 25+ years, but no degree -I had two years of general college and I quit to start working, and worked my way slowly up to a sales job. But, if i can make it 10 more, I'm out of here.

Take care Len. I wish you and your family the best.

JB

[Lumadar]

Originally Posted by BigAl3

in anycase Len A, i hope things get better for you and the family over time...

Agreed. I hope you come through ok Len.

All I want and hope for is what is best for the nation as a whole, and all the honest hard workers out there.

[Len_A]

Originally Posted by JuneBug

Damn - is there anything you could do to that basement to get it to pass, I mean is there anything that can be done on the cheap? Most houses down here don't have basements unless it's one with a side open, like on a hill. Maybe one of those companies that do this work could give you a break, maybe they're hurting for biz too. I don't know, just thinking out loud. I really feel for you, I hope that you get that house sold and move to a better place. NC was full of opportunity - but the word got out and we're experiencing some surplus of workers now. My company is so diversified that all we have is a hiring freeze and no raises this year, but I'm not complaining. I have 25+ years, but no degree -I had two years of general college and I quit to start working, and worked my way slowly up to a sales job. But, if i can make it 10 more, I'm out of here.

Take care Len. I wish you and your family the best.

JB

I'm looking into it. Sometime in the first quarter of the year, there are a couple Home & Builder shows, and I'm going to shop them for price like my customers (Big Three included) have done to me in the past. It's freaking highway robbery. I want a cheap solution that I can cover up with a simple, DIY basement finishing system. One neighbor just had cracks that showed dampness on either side of the cracks, so he got some carpeting and padding, and glued it down to cover up. Somehow, the city building inspector suspected, and on a pre-sale inspection, the S.O.B. from the city pried up one edge and found the cracks - sales was out on hold three months pending resolution.

The dumbest thing on this subdivision is that the city signed off on the development of this subdivision knowing, but not disclosing, that the site was ten to fifteen feet closer to the water table, when construction started, than the property was twenty-five years years ago. Seems the prior owner strip mined the top soil and sold it to the state - to landscape one of the local freeways. Bastards. After checking out some of he new home construction in Dallas three years ago, I've come to the conclusion that some home construction companies around here do some really stupid sh*t. My phase of the sub is the lowest point, and of thirty-three houses, twenty-eight have some degree of water seepage or damp concrete. All the "black mold" talk the past five years adds fuel to the fire. Average basement waterproofing job rounds $3500 to $6000, plus whatever you spend to finish the basement and cover it up. One neighbor epoxied the floor and the walls to cover up the repairs. The contractors that do that do this won't even bid until the dampness is resolved, so that idea to camouflage the problem is kind of out the window.

NC is joining a lot of company in getting surplus workers. Seems that the slow economy we've had in Michigan for the last eight years has spread to the rest of country. We were in Las Vegas in September, turning an interview my wife had with DOE into a mini vacation (she didn't get the job), and business in Vegas is off a whooping 15%. My brother's consulting business in Dallas is losing clients as lines of credit get frozen.

I wish you and your family the best as well. Have a great Thanksgiving.

[Len_A]

Originally Posted by Lumadar

Agreed. I hope you come through ok Len.

All I want and hope for is what is best for the nation as a whole, and all the honest hard workers out there.

Thanks. Like you, I want what's best for the country. Seems like the country needs it.

Take care and have a great holiday.

Remember - any day above ground is a good day!!

[MuttGrunt]

i'm not a fan of going to big daddy government for money... but somewhere u have to draw the line. like Len A, i'm from metro Detroit, and i've been able to see some of these things slowly building over the past couple years, to the point now michigan has the highest unemployment rate in the nation. that makes for tough times. the problem isn't just that the state is losing auto jobs, it's that all industries are affected by the big three here, and very very few new jobs are coming here. truly some tough times in metro detroit / michigan / spreading around the midwest and through-out america.
just seems real shady to see the backlash towards the auto makers when banks keep getting more and more. i understand we want people to have secure money/savings, but what does that do if they don't have jobs?

-Marc from Southfield MI

[Setec Astronomy]

Originally Posted by MuttGrunt

i'm from metro Detroit, and i've been able to see some of these things slowly building over the past couple years, to the point now michigan has the highest unemployment rate in the nation. that makes for tough times.

Building slowly...I know I've probably said some of these same things already in this thread, but I guess I've seen this slowly building since the 80's. Here in NJ, we started to see the mass exodus of manufacturing in the 80's. That was the era of leveraged buyouts and when the guy at Coke upended the CEO pay scale. Manufacturing here moved south and west, or just closed up. Mfg. plants (and farms) were converted to malls and houses.

It seemed to accelerate in the 90's, the "service economy" and the internet bubble. In the late 90's, the real estate boom, feeding swelling housing prices. I actually predicted the mess we're in now when the Enron/Worldcom fake money thing was exposed...I thought that the confluence of that fraud with the internet bubble bursting and the stock market tanking would force people out of their overpaid jobs on Wall St. and into foreclosure, but it didn't happen.

It seems a lot of the companies that moved from this area in the 80's have gone offshore in the 00's, along with companies that had stayed. To my eye, we slowly built from a state/country/economy that made things and grew things to one that simply buys and services things. And to my mind, that just can't work. If you don't make/grow anything, you don't have anything that other countries want to buy or trade for and the numbers just don't add up.

Maybe because I've never worked in an industry that didn't make something or depend on heavy equipment, that's why I can't understand how CitiCorp can have 5 times the number of employees as GM and can't imagine what all those CitiCorp employees do...all I know is that here in the Wall St. commuter corridor those guys are the ones living in the McMansions.

PS Yes, I know we do still manufacture in this country. I'm hearing the chorus of "we still have corporate giants like GM and Intel and Dell"; well, look at some of the parts in your GM car for the "Made in China" labels, and open up your Dell computer with the motherboard from Taiwan and read the markings on the Intel chips and see where they were made. I'm not anti-foreign, I'm just pro-American manufacturing, and I remember when we were the ones who called the shots when we had all the manufacturing might and technical know-how.

We're all communicating here by virtue of the transistor, which was created not far from here at what used to be known as AT&T Bell Labs, at one time one of the foremost research centers in the world, also where the Big Bang theory was confirmed (actually at an outlying facility in Holmdel). I've seen the signs change to Lucent, and now to Alcatel (a French company), as employment has shrunk. Holmdel is long closed ( Developer to raze Bell Labs Holmdel facility, birthplace of the cellphone - Engadget ). Don't look to those places for any new transistors.

[RedlineIRL]

Originally Posted by Lumadar

No, they are asking for a loan. They are not selling or giving a stake in the company to the government.

America is known around the world as the country that helps out to those in need, but when our own need help it somehow is different. Interesting.

To me, it would seem "un-American" to not help the automakers out and simultaneously make a decision that would boost the economy as a whole.

That's for sure. I guess the goverment and American public seem to have forgotten who prodcued the tanks, armored vehicles, plane engines, and other goods during WWII. If something like that were to happen again do they honestly think they could depend on honda and toyota here in the US?