The reigning government has not only neglected to check the excesses of the auto industry, it has aided, abetted and encouraged the excesses, a practice which can only be explained if the government is an extention of the corporation, ala the fascist state.

"At this rate, the entire country will be nothing but a rust belt and an entertainment industry.... It can't happen."

It has already happened.

Some people have suggested Ralph Nader as an auto czar, and that would be good, but Ross Perot would be more entertaining. Some quotes from Perot, whose company EDS was once owned by GM:

# I had several memorable experiences with GM. One, it just drove me crazy that when a customer had a problem with a defective engine, we wanted to treat it as a class action suit rather than fix the engine.

# It takes five years to develop a new car in this country. Heck, we won World War II in four years.

# Revitalizing GM is like teaching an elephant to tap-dance. You find the sensitive spots and start poking.

# The first EDSer to see a snake kills it. At GM, the first thing you do is organize a committee on snakes. Then you bring in a consultant who knows a lot about snakes. Third thing you do is talk about it for a year.

I do not expect industry to act in the nation's interests. I expect capital to behave like capital, with minimal regard for their workers let alone the country at large.

MJ, I don't think many people are blaming the auto industry for failing to act in the nation's interest. They are blaming the auto industry for failing to act intelligently in their own interest.

It's just not true that the auto industry has simply "acted like industry". I work for a large corporation myself, and my corporation is not on the verge of bankruptcy. It is succeeding. It is not somehow in the nature of industrial corporations to drive themselves into bankruptcy. If those corporations make smart decisions in the competitive environment within which they act, they succeed.

I support some form of bailout with government mandated and overseen re-structuring, for the sake of all of the working people whose lives and communities depend on the auto industry. But that doesn't mean I can't still blame the auto industry for screwing up.

If there's no way to help the auto workers without also helping Nardelli, I'm not too interested. All of the execs at the Big Three have to be replaced before they get public money.

By all means let us save the jobs of the workers in Detroit. Now, what shall we have those workers do? It seems to me that the problem faced by the big 3 is that too few people want to buy what they are selling at the price they sell for. Giving those corporations money to "save" them, but not forcing a hard decision to be made about just what they can make and sell for a profit in the world as it exists, is just giving our borrowed money away for nothing.

Also, we are utter fools if we lose this opportunity to convert the big 3 into a little dozen, none of whom are "to big to allow to fail".

Bushie, we already did offshore our citizens. Without the expense of exporting them.

For years the majority of this country have only enjoyed an improving life style by being encouraged to spend money drawn from a false appreciation of their homes, converting transient capital appreciation to income. Simultaneously the US was a net dis-saver. Meanwhile, at the bottom end of incomes we have allowed huge numbers of illegal workers to keep the wheels spinning.

Of course, at the same time most corporations were encouraged not to hold cash, and the government has been spending money it doesn't have. And the balance of what we don't produce ourselves has been streaming out to the oil producers, China, India, and to Iraqis, Afghanis, Pakistanis, and who knows who else.

Our economy and, by extension, the world's just wasn't and isn't as big as we thought it was.

So it doesn't matter what Obama's cabinet attempts to achieve, this sag in the economy is going to be long and very painful for many of us. It's going to be a long slog out of this recession, and the repercussions will echo down the years.

As I've said in here before, I think the entire American domestic auto industry is a genuine matter of national crisis, with only PARTS of the 'crisis' (actually, perhaps the lesser parts) being purely economic in their nature. The immediate psychological costs to America, and the potential ultimate national security costs, combine in my opinion to make the TOTAL loss of domestic auto manufacturing a non-starter: It simply cannot be allowed to happen, whatever theory must be either employed or debunked to prevent it.

I tend toward a free-trade, free-market view (I actually have a close working relationship with a 'transplant'), but there are practical LIMITS to all such ideological slants, and I've hit one here in my own mind.

I've also said in here that I don't claim to know the answer. I've seen many decent proposals in this thread alone, any one of which might provide the way forward. Of course, when JFK said we would go to the moon in the 1960's, I didn't know how we were going to do that, either. The point is to make a national pledge, and then do what it takes to get it done. That's the American way.

It is Congress that allowed lobbyists to thwart any chance we might have had houston auto transport of establishing an industrial policy like every other major industrialized state. houston auto transport

Of course we can't let the auto industry disappear. This is one of our major employers and it gathers around it many other connected businesses. Without this industry, the unemployment rate will skyrocket and a country without industry can't sustain it's self.
Mercedes Parts

For five years, between 2001 and 2006, cars were very cheap and everyone who wanted to buy or replace a car, bought one. In 2003-2004, the big three automakers –GM, Ford and Chrysler — started offering significant employee discounts on car purchases. Then, the second-hand price of these cars collapsed. The four to five year projection on resale was down by about 10 per cent – rather than a car being worth 50 per cent of its value after five years, it turned out to be more like 40 per cent. In short, when people were ready to trade-in their cars when leases were up, cars were worth one fifth less than expected. The car companies, who get all their leased vehicles back automatically, were not able to get rid of them.The same demands for vehicles and auto parts for older models will exist with or without the big three. Companies that are successful in this business will need workers to manage the increased demand of their product. In my opinion a bail out money would serve a better purpose helping innovative, forward thinking companies rather than providing a temporary lifeline to dying ones. Deborah @ car repair Manchester NH service

I think GM has largest amount of annual sales as compared to other automotive companies. It has reached 15% of global market.
Scooters For Sale

From last year auto industry is continuously adding more and more jobs, after bankruptcy of GM, 75,000 and more jobs have been added.
Travel Trailers For Sale

I wonder how the car insurance industry will look in a few years from now. I wonder if we will have a majority of electric cars on the road because it seems that oil will slowly be depleted and at some point, the cost of oil will not be affordable anymore.