"Mike Sykes" <mikesykes@cox.net> wrote:
>>>After all, the people who
> basically own and run Chrysler (hint: most of them have .gov e-mail
> addresses) are the same idiots and/or scumbags who are doing their
> level best to tank the economy and screw up the entire country. (I
> don't think its a coincidence that the only one of the big three
> currently turning a profit - Ford - is also the only one that didn't
> latch onto the government "bailout" teet.<<<
> While I make it a habit not to disagree with Jon, I have to say that there
> is no conspiracy on Ford's part here. Ford saw the economic hurtin' on the
> horizon and closed a bunch of plants and offered packages to employees in
> preparation. Ford has their finger on the pulse of fleet sales, and that has
> always been a really good indicator of sales trends to come. Once fleet
> sales started dropping off, Ford started preparing for bad news. Since Ma
> Mopar and Chubby don't really see the fleet numbers that Ford does, they
> probably didn't see it comin'... of course, poor business decisions and
> being dropped recently by larger corporations didn't help either... =(
I think I disagree that we disagree. ;-) I wasn't trying to imply
that there was any sort of conspiracy or anything like that on Ford's
part. My post was a compliment to Ford on their very smart decision
to stay away from the toxic bailout cash. (As Mike pointed out, this
may have had more to do with the timing of the way things worked out
than anything else, but for whatever reason, Ford didn't take the
money and thus didn't give the government even more control over
dictating how the company must be run.)
From what you are saying above, it sounds like Ford saw the storm
coming, made preparations to deal with it and is weathering it well so
far; they are to be complimented for that. It kinda reminds me of the
situation Chrysler was in near the late 90s. Despite Bob Eaton's
bungling, they were still doing fairly well, and were preparing for some
hard times ahead ($20 billion in cash reserves, etc.). Then Eaton
(with stockholder support) basically sold the company to Daimler who
promptly blew all the cash, sucked the company dry and discarded the
husk, leaving Chrysler in a bad spot. I think the Daimler "merger"
was the beginning of the end. They've had two owners since then and
the future is anything but certain for Chrysler. :-(
--
-Jon-
.- Jon Steiger -- jon@dakota-truck.net or jon@jonsteiger.com -.
| '96 Kolb Firefly, '96 Suzuki Intruder, Miscellaneous Mopars |
`-------------------------------- http://www.jonsteiger.com --'
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Dec 01 2009 - 18:23:04 EST