The Evening Wrap-up - Thursday November 20

20 thoughts on “The Evening Wrap-up – Thursday November 20”

1. As a “cradle Catholic” I’m glad the God I still worship is tolerant, loving and forgiving and less inclined than his costumed minions like Stafford and Chaput to use the whip and chair approach to scare us into Heaven.  I’d think a leader who plans to end the war in Iraq and shut down Guantanamo might be someone their faith demands they support, not disparage.

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2. It’s the unions’ fault, isn’t it LB?

   Yes.  Without the ridiculous benefits of the retirees that have to be paid, the companies wouldn’t need a bailout.  

   If the UAW doesn’t back waaaaay down and renegotiate much of what its established, we’re just going to feed a gentler dissolution of the big three so it’s not all three at once in January.

   The fact that there are more entitlement costs in each car built in Detroit than there are costs in parts might be a small hint as to why this is happening.

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   1. What role does the big 3’s reliance on SUV’s and failure to develop hybrid technology play in this situation? Little to none? As much as the unions? Somewhere in between? MORE than the unions?

      What fault is it that the Big 3 AGREED to those contracts? You know, back when everything was hunky dory. If they thought they were such a bad deal, they would have faced down the UAW on the issue.

      Blaming the unions ALONE is the sign of obsession and not reason.

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      1. Not the unions alone.  The companies were so fat for so long, you see things like:

         The execs not having it cross their minds that it might be offensive to take three corporate jets to a meeting to ask for money.

         But, to say they agreed to the contracts is like saying Iraq agreed to have us ‘help out’ in establishing a Democracy there. They were a bad deal then, and now it’s hamstrung the company.

         The SUV angle isn’t a valid one because it’s only been in the last year that gas was such an issue.  It’s the fact that they can’t build anything before they pay for outlandish entitlements granted in years past.  Trust me – the moment there is a demand for a product that can be made profitably, the cars will get made.  If US automakers can’t make anything profitable because their costs are too high, they have to restructure.  Which in this case means dumping $200 billion of entitlements on the taxpayer because they can’t pay for them.  It’s going to happen.

         You seem a little tense lately, Ari.  You were really nice to me when I first started posting here, so it makes me feel bad that you seem so angry – not to me, just in general.

         You should be happy! Dems control everything and the rivers are already flowing with chocolate and wine!  Ayn Rand is still dead!

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         1. If that’s supposed to be liberal elitist then sign me up! Care to indulge LB?

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         2. In our cold, unfeeling, Objectivist hearts.

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         3. I think the SUV angle is a valid one. I’ve seen experts warning about SUVs being trouble since the mid 1990s. They making the warnings comparing it to the production of the big iron beasts of the 1960s. Because profits depended on selling big cars they were setting themselves up for a fall that was as predictable as winter following summer, though as uncertain of when as the first snowfall in Colorado.

            I’m not that smart a guy, but I could see this coming. Energy shocks are a sure a fact of life as the business cycle. And it isn’t as if every car maker is in this trouble or every industry sensitive to expensive energy and discretionary spending is in this sort of trouble. Look at the (heavily unionized) airline industry. Not in great shape, but not warning they’re about to go under either.

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            1. I’m pretty sure it was a requirement to have a small SUV that gets something like 30mpg. I remember the companies whining at the time.

               I completely agree with you that it’s just bad business.  How do these people make so much money?  Apparently we could all do a better job from our couches.

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               1. But I’m not sure if there’s a requirement for a hybrid, just a fleet average.  I could be wrong…

                  To tell the truth, I haven’t been that impressed by the hybrid SUVs out there yet.  I do have my eyes set on my next car, though – Subaru’s supposed to have a diesel Forester out in the 2010 model year with a 34/41mpg economy and 4400lbs. towing capacity.

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                  1. I suppose if I needed something to tow big loads that would sound great. But I don’t need or want anything with under a 40/mpg rating which is about what my Geo Prizm gets on gasoline. I would want at least 50 if I was driving a diesel car. If I need big hauling or towing capacity I’ll rent something for the weekend.

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                     1. We currently have one reasonable-efficiency vehicle and our gas Subaru, but the “efficient” car is going to die out some year…  We’ve always averaged out on the highway end of Subaru’s EPA numbers, so it would be a step up even from the Neon we have right now.  Of course, it wouldn’t be cheaper to fill with the current diesel prices.

                        We’ve thought about trying a Prius or something, but that only gets in the low 40s mpg in the mountains….

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                  2. I was looking for a reference and only found interesting things that make your post correct.  The guy that used to complain to me about it thought that the standard couldn’t be met without the use of alternatives fuels, so that’s how he said it.

                     The SUVs aren’t impressive and neither are the cars.  My friend just bought a Yaris for $10 grand less than a Prius, it gets 40 mpg.  It has all the features and when you press on the gas pedal, it, you know, goes, fast.

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            2. but, hey, people were demanding them, so automakers gave them what they wanted!

               Why have S.U.V.s been so popular? According to an expert cited in Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker article, SUVs appeal to the non-rational, reptilian back-brains of car buyers: S.U.V.s provide an illusion of safety–not actual safety. And the car designers knew this and catered to it!:

               http://www.gladwell.com/2004/2…

               The truth, underneath all the rationalizations, seemed to be that S.U.V. buyers thought of big, heavy vehicles as safe: they found comfort in being surrounded by so much rubber and steel.   To the engineers, of course, that didn’t make any sense, either: if consumers really wanted something that was big and heavy and comforting, they ought to buy minivans, since minivans, with their unit-body construction, do much better in accidents than S.U.V.s.   (In a thirty-five m.p.h. crash test, for instance, the driver of a Cadillac Escalade-the G.M. counterpart to the Lincoln Navigator-has a sixteen-per-cent chance of a life-threatening head injury, a twenty-per-cent chance of a life-threatening chest injury, and a thirty-five-per-cent chance of a leg injury.   The same numbers in a Ford Windstar minivan-a vehicle engineered from the ground up, as opposed to simply being bolted onto a pickup-truck frame-are, respectively, two per cent, four per cent, and one per cent.  ) But this desire for safety wasn’t a rational calculation.   It was a feeling.   Over the past decade, a number of major automakers in America have relied on the services of a French-born cultural anthropologist, G.   Clotaire Rapaille, whose speciality is getting beyond the rational-what he calls “cortex”-impressions of consumers and tapping into their deeper, “reptilian” responses.   And what Rapaille concluded from countless, intensive sessions with car buyers was that when S.U.V. buyers thought about safety they were thinking about something that reached into their deepest unconscious.   “The No.   1 feeling is that everything surrounding you should be round and soft, and should give,” Rapaille told me.   “There should be air bags everywhere.   Then there’s this notion that you need to be up high.   That’s a contradiction, because the people who buy these S.U.V.s know at the cortex level that if you are high there is more chance of a rollover.   But at the reptilian level they think that if I am bigger and taller I’m safer.   You feel secure because you are higher and dominate and look down.   That you can look down is psychologically a very powerful notion.   And what was the key element of safety when you were a child? It was that your mother fed you, and there was warm liquid.   That’s why cupholders are absolutely crucial for safety.   If there is a car that has no cupholder, it is not safe.   If I can put my coffee there, if I can have my food, if everything is round, if it’s soft, and if I’m high, then I feel safe.   It’s amazing that intelligent, educated women will look at a car and the first thing they will look at is how many cupholders it has.  ” During the design of Chrysler’s PT Cruiser, one of the things Rapaille learned was that car buyers felt unsafe when they thought that an outsider could easily see inside their vehicles.   So Chrysler made the back window of the PT Cruiser smaller.   Of course, making windows smaller-and thereby reducing visibility-makes driving more dangerous, not less so.   But that’s the puzzle of what has happened to the automobile world: feeling safe has become more important than actually being safe.

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      2. I think you’re reading into my posts something that isn’t there, if you’re detecting anger. I’m just speaking (or writing) plainly. Sorry for the miscommunication.

         Gas has been an issue for several years now, not just recently. Probably since it climbed over $2 and stayed there until the recent crash in oil prices brought it back down.

         I don’t buy that the costs of the entitlements were that extravagant. Did the Big 3 enter those contracts with full cooperation? No, but I think they would have let the matter go to strike if it were too outrageous for them. Again, it comes down to their lack of vision.

         Note that I’m not arguing that the entitlements aren’t a problem for the big 3, just that it’s not the number one cause of their troubles.

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         1. Well FUCK YOU!

            It’s all good.  Again, I wasn’t worried about me, I just kind of like you.

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            1. These wrap-ups are awesome.

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               1. Keep it up Aristotle. You could make an insurgent run at editor-in-waiting Danny the Red for front page ed.

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                  1. when I tried doing this regularly a while back it proved to be more work than I felt was worth it. I can’t spend too much time trolling for interesting political news that isn’t already being discussed here.

                     I’m content to just do these when the headlines are busy and have Pols bump them up. They seem to like them too.

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            2. If I am angry about anything, it’s my goddamn broken dishwasher… Hope I didn’t let any of that rage leak through.

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