Chrysler reports strongest quarter in 13 years

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woolfe9999

Diamond Member
Mar 28, 2005
7,164
0
0
ah yes, the old delay the pain tact. The market needed a correction as was evident by the state of the major companies. The gov't interfered and prevented the major correction it desperately needs. But yeah, i guess you never let a crisis go to waste if you can use other people's money to help your friends....

The automobile companies and all the industry depending on sales to those companies were on the brink of belly up. Now they're doing better than they have been for over a decade. And you call this "delay the pain." Interfere with the market you say? Free market fundamentalism. The free market isn't God. You're delusional.

Like I said, keep it up guys. Romney isn't going to win a single swing state in the mid west.
 

Moonbeam

Elite Member
Nov 24, 1999
72,327
6,040
126
The beautiful thing about Republicans is that they are despicable. The more they reveal how they view others the more disgusting they become. The Obama Presidency is like a knife gutting bottom feeders for the public to see. Just by showing us who they are in the last three years the public is about to vomit. Already you can hear the squeal of Republican brakes as the most rabid of them pull the rest over the cliff. People just have a way of despising the mentally ill.

Keep on wanting America to fail, you idiots, I mean you mental defectives who can't help yourselves.

Wishing that GM and Chrysler had failed is just the way to endear yourselves to the American people. Republicans are like skunks that exude a partisan perfume that convinces their noses that they smell good. That's what makes them smile when they come up and spray you in the face.
 

Genx87

Lifer
Apr 8, 2002
41,095
513
126
GOP policies and Cerberus, run by Bush's treasury secretary, brought Chrysler to its knees.

Right, Cerebus who bought their stake in Chrysler in 07 tanked it in under a year. Chrysler was churning along just fine before that! /facepalm
 

woodie1

Diamond Member
Mar 7, 2000
5,947
0
0
wait a minute... wasn't Bush the one that provided billions of dollars of largely unconditional funds to Chrysler and GM?

I too thought the bailout started under 'W'. Guess we are talking about something else.
 

ElFenix

Elite Member
Super Moderator
Mar 20, 2000
102,414
8,356
126
Private equity guys like Romney brought Chrysler to its knees. Romney wanted it to go bankrupt. You are right, it's going to be OK as long as Romney is not in control of anything.

mercedes brought chrysler to its knees. when cerberus bought it, it was already a zombie with no product. merc failed to integrate chrysler after the 'merger' in the late 90s, took the profit generated from chrysler to fix merc's own problems, and then left a lump of a company that had no competitive car in the midsize and compact markets (with nothing in the product pipe) and continuing to lose in the minivan and suv/cuv markets, which chrysler had invented.
 
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Ausm

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
25,215
14
81
The automobile companies and all the industry depending on sales to those companies were on the brink of belly up. Now they're doing better than they have been for over a decade. And you call this "delay the pain." Interfere with the market you say? Free market fundamentalism. The free market isn't God. You're delusional.

Like I said, keep it up guys. Romney isn't going to win a single swing state in the mid west.

:D
 

CADsortaGUY

Lifer
Oct 19, 2001
25,162
1
76
www.ShawCAD.com
"Major correction"... now I'm just a regular guy and I know virtually nothing about finance. What the hell does that mean?

Uh, maybe that the old auto system was outdated and needed to be updated for the realities of today. You can't keep running these companies like they used to - they needed to be overhauled or they should be allowed to die. The gov't chose to prop them up and allow them to continue to run the old way. We'll see how long that lasts...
 

CrackRabbit

Lifer
Mar 30, 2001
16,641
58
91
Who knows? Could have been taken over by Honda/Toyota/Hyundai or some other company that does a better job than GM or Chrysler. And Ford would have survived on their own and increased their market share even more, thus making the entire supply chain more efficient.

That's the thing all of the auto manufacturers rely on a fairly small number of parts suppliers to build their cars.
They probably could have survived Chrysler alone going out of business, but a double whammy with GM going kaput as well would have killed most of them. Leaving even the strongest survivors in a very bad spot of not being able to get parts to build their products.
 

Svnla

Lifer
Nov 10, 2003
17,999
1,396
126
So are they going to pay back all of the government bail out fund or do it the GM way (smoke and mirror)?
 

CADsortaGUY

Lifer
Oct 19, 2001
25,162
1
76
www.ShawCAD.com
The automobile companies and all the industry depending on sales to those companies were on the brink of belly up. Now they're doing better than they have been for over a decade. And you call this "delay the pain." Interfere with the market you say? Free market fundamentalism. The free market isn't God. You're delusional.

Like I said, keep it up guys. Romney isn't going to win a single swing state in the mid west.

lol, they are temporarily doing better but that doesn't mean they are sound. Yes, the market determines their fate - you know - consumers? If a company can't or won't produce a product the company is offering - why should the gov't prop them up time and time again? With gov't intervention we get things like the Volt and other things consumers don't want/can't afford. In business, the market is God, it's irrational to think otherwise.
 

5150Joker

Diamond Member
Feb 6, 2002
5,559
0
71
www.techinferno.com
That's the thing all of the auto manufacturers rely on a fairly small number of parts suppliers to build their cars.
They probably could have survived Chrysler alone going out of business, but a double whammy with GM going kaput as well would have killed most of them. Leaving even the strongest survivors in a very bad spot of not being able to get parts to build their products.


So then survival of the fittest, the big players would have survived and the tiny ones dissolved or absorbed. Doesn't mean we'd be worse off for it. The government should not have bailed out Wall Street either. All of these bailouts have just kept the status quo going for a little longer until the next crisis hits. As it stands, our federal (and some state like California) govt are far too big and need to be cut down drastically both in terms of size and power.
 

Ausm

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
25,215
14
81
I blame the gov't - period. These companies shouldn't have been propped up byt the gov't. They shouldn't have been run by the gov't - period.

So if you hate what the Gubermint did, does that mean you won't vote this time around since your still pissed at the Republican "free market" intervention?
 
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rudder

Lifer
Nov 9, 2000
19,441
85
91
Uh, maybe that the old auto system was outdated and needed to be updated for the realities of today. You can't keep running these companies like they used to - they needed to be overhauled or they should be allowed to die. The gov't chose to prop them up and allow them to continue to run the old way. We'll see how long that lasts...

Along those lines... Chrysler has moved to a 401K plan.. but because the way the bailout was handled... the unions got to keep current pension and benefits. So now there is a at huge unfunded liability. GM is in worse shape. Both of which the U.S. taxpayer could be on the hook for once again. Chrysler needs to make $2 billion in payments in 2013 and 2014.

Regarding market corrections.. there are a lot of notable economists who feel the housing market would have corrected itself also... but government intervention made the problem worse and is making the problems drag out longer.

Chrysler was saved. They are now owned by Fiat. Will Fiat gut Chrysler as well? Will they be profitable enough to make pension payments? Can Chrysler produce a line of cars that don't populate the yearly worst car list?
 

CrackRabbit

Lifer
Mar 30, 2001
16,641
58
91
So then survival of the fittest, the big players would have survived and the tiny ones dissolved or absorbed. Doesn't mean we'd be worse off for it. The government should not have bailed out Wall Street either. All of these bailouts have just kept the status quo going for a little longer until the next crisis hits. As it stands, our federal (and some state like California) govt are far too big and need to be cut down drastically both in terms of size and power.

You're not getting it.
There wouldn't have been any fittest to survive.
Both GM and Chrysler going OOB at the same time would have been like dropping a nuclear weapon on all automobile manufacturing within the US.
Without suppliers available, it would cause a cascading effect, Ford would have gone belly up in short order. Honda, Toyota, Hyundai, BMW and anyone else that still manufactured cars here would have likely shuttered their factories and pulled their operations back to their home countries.
 

woolfe9999

Diamond Member
Mar 28, 2005
7,164
0
0
lol, they are temporarily doing better but that doesn't mean they are sound. Yes, the market determines their fate - you know - consumers? If a company can't or won't produce a product the company is offering - why should the gov't prop them up time and time again? With gov't intervention we get things like the Volt and other things consumers don't want/can't afford. In business, the market is God, it's irrational to think otherwise.

They're doing well now because consumer demand has propped back up due to improvements in the macro-economy. They needed a bailout because the macro-economy had tanked. If they had structural problems before that which made them more susceptible to the broader economic downturn, then the government needed to step in and fix them, assuming private investors would not. They needed to do this for one basic reason - too many people's jobs depended on it. If they're all out of work, they go on unemployment, an automatic increase in government spending and decrease in tax revenue, then their demand for consumer goods and services goes down, putting more people out of work.

I don't see any scenario where letting GM and Chrysler go out of business is better for the American economy. The market is a tool, a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. It's a system for distributing resources, like any economic system. It isn't God. We've had a mixed economy for a long time now and we're doing pretty well, relatively speaking. The current status of these companies is a product of market forces and some government intervention working in concert.

The Volt is proof of concept. You can find statements from GM going back 4 years stating that they knew it would lose money for many years. Yet GM is doing fantastically well right now. The point of the Volt is to position them in a market that will expand in the future. They never expected to profit from its early generations.

- wolf
 

Ausm

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
25,215
14
81
Along those lines... Chrysler has moved to a 401K plan.. but because the way the bailout was handled... the unions got to keep current pension and benefits. So now there is a at huge unfunded liability. GM is in worse shape. Both of which the U.S. taxpayer could be on the hook for once again. Chrysler needs to make $2 billion in payments in 2013 and 2014.

Regarding market corrections.. there are a lot of notable economists who feel the housing market would have corrected itself also... but government intervention made the problem worse and is making the problems drag out longer.

Chrysler was saved. They are now owned by Fiat. Will Fiat gut Chrysler as well? Will they be profitable enough to make pension payments? Can Chrysler produce a line of cars that don't populate the yearly worst car list?

Can you post the links to verify the union problems because I am having trouble finding this information.
 

5150Joker

Diamond Member
Feb 6, 2002
5,559
0
71
www.techinferno.com
You're not getting it.
There wouldn't have been any fittest to survive.
Both GM and Chrysler going OOB at the same time would have been like dropping a nuclear weapon on all automobile manufacturing within the US.
Without suppliers available, it would cause a cascading effect, Ford would have gone belly up in short order. Honda, Toyota, Hyundai, BMW and anyone else that still manufactured cars here would have likely shuttered their factories and pulled their operations back to their home countries.


IF that was the case, then all the government had to do was offer loans to some of the suppliers to temporarily help them sustain operations. There was no need to bailout the entire industry.
 

RampantAndroid

Diamond Member
Jun 27, 2004
6,591
3
81
So, this news means the bailout was worth it? Propping up a stagnant automaker that pretty much deserved to go under?

I think it's wrong, same as I think the BBC shouldn't be funded by a tax on TVs.