I just sent Sen. Leahy this message at senator_leahy@leahy.senate.gov:
"Dear Senator Leahy, I am extremely disappointed in your capitulation to the Rove-led caucus' demands to delay confirmation hearings on Eric Holder's nomination as Attorney General.
Senator, why on Earth are you willing to do this? Is it not obvious that Rove and his GOP lackeys only want time to crank up their spin machine to start chipping away at the new administration's authority?
Unless there is some concern that Mr. Holder may be forced to withdraw from the nomination, there is no reason -- none -- to acquiesce to those who foisted Alberto Gonzalez on us. If three weeks was good enough for the likes of him, two weeks is all they need to consider a nominee with Mr. Holder's credentials.
I frankly do not understand why, with this watershed election for change, you do not exercise some authority to remind the GOP of what took place just five weeks ago. We do not want to hear from Rove again -- ever. Isolate him and his supporters. This man lies and cheats as naturally as he breathes, is not an elected official and has no place at the table. He intends to foster obstructionism in any way possible and you are making it easy for him to do so. I am, as stated above, not only deeply disappointed, but angered by any action that enables his pursuit of his personal agenda."
Monday, December 15, 2008
On Bailing Out the Big Three
Copyright 2008, Creators at Large, LLC
By YleXot
Why should we spend our hard-earned tax dollars on Detroit? Well, first of all, to steal a line from the past, what's good for GM is good for the country. We may be able to survive as a nation if we produce only search engines, cheeseburgers and insurance policies, but we will not thrive.
The Big Three, despite all the blather to the contrary, have done a remarkable job of closing the quality gap with the likes of Toyota and Honda, and have regularly beaten Mazda, Mitsubishi, Subaru and Suzuki in quality metrics. The Ford F-150 has been the best-selling vehicle in the U.S. for more than 30 years with the Chevy Silverado nipping at its heels. And, yes, Ford also invented the modern SUV with the introduction of the Explorer almost two decades ago. Chrysler invented the other most-successful concept in the market 25 years ago with the original Dodge Caravan/Plymouth Voyager minivans.
So just in terms of providing what consumers want, which is the definition of capitalism, the Big Three have done so. Right now, today, GM offers hybrid vehicles in more classes than any other manufacturer in the world. However, until the Chevy Volt rolls out in the next year or so, the Big Three have no competition for the hands-down most popular hybrid on the planet: the Toyota Prius. I would like to compete with the rest of the world's automakers for this ultimately huge market. Wouldn't you?
So the question is not whether the Big Three are capable of supplying cars (and trucks) that Americans want, but rather what happened to turn them upside down so quickly? Two reasons, neither of which they created:
1. The "Credit Crunch." This is the ogre in the closet, the alligator under the bed. When banks start to go bankrupt, other banks lose their confidence in lending money for fear that they might be the next to fail. This is what the TARP is supposed to do: restore confidence and liquidity. The actual implementation of it is open to interpretation and beyond the scope of this article. Let me just state for now that when the banks quit lending money, the economy gets squeezed, businesses that depend on credit lines get squeezed even more, people lost their jobs and those who don't slow their spending way down. Ergo, sales of big-ticket non-essentials, like new cars and trucks, fall as well.
2. As if the Credit Crunch weren't/isn't bad enough, at the same time it really got rolling, so did the price of crude oil. Rolling, hell, crude went through the roof like a Titan missile,hitting $147 per barrel, and sending the price of a gallon of gas to $4.25 a gallon and a gallon of diesel to $4.80 where I live. Your prices may vary. There is substantial evidence that rampant speculation, i.e., what most of us would call "gambling," inflated oil prices by as much as 60 percent. Subtract 60 percent of $147 and you get $59. The price of oil right now is $45. Hmmm, maybe it was more like 70 percent. Anyway, the Big Three weren't the profiteers/pirates speculating in the oil-futures market. But baby, they weren't the only ones to be hurt by it. Toyota, Honda and Nissan sales were hit just as hard as GM, Ford and Chrysler.
Now, make no mistake about it, we Americans love our big vehicles. We loved our woodie-style Country Squire and Town and Country station wagons in the 1940s, '50s, '60s and even into the '70s because they were the only vehicles big enough to put the whole family in whether we were going to church a few blocks away or to Grandma's a few states away. Or picking up the Little League team, or hauling plywood home.
Not much has changed since other than more activities to haul kids of both genders to.
But, like Studebaker, DeSoto, Plymouth, Oldsmobile and scores of other great American marques now relegated to museums, the station wagon was pretty much killed by the oil embargoes of 1973 and 1977. The demand, however, never died, although it was tempered severely by their 8-12mpg fuelishness when the price of a tank of petrol quadrupled. But when the price of gas stabilized for long enough, SUVs, with their roominess, and the one thing a station wagon never had, increased visibility due to their higher stance, emerged as the peoples' choice. Especially when they were (under)powered by V-6s that got double the mileage of their ancestors. Everybody, including the Japanese and Germans, jumped to cash in on the success of the Ford Explorer. Why? Large people movers (not to mention large-people movers) will always be around. They are just too useful.
Furthermore, the U.S. is not Asia or Europe. For better or worse, we have geography - and lots of it. Our cities, especially in the West, are new and designed to be car-friendly. Do you like to fly anymore if you don't have to? I don't. Have you ever gone grocery shopping and tried to get frozen food home before it thaws using public transportation? In the summertime? In the desert? Or had to grab an overcrowded bus that takes an hour and a half to make the same trip that is less than half that in a car? Public transit, like the poor, will always be with us, even though it makes very little sense compared to subsidizing electric/hybrid taxis in most, if not all western cities. Plus, there hasn't been a car built in the last 30 years capable of pulling a horse trailer. At least not one with a horse or two in it.
Then there are the jobs at stake. Creative ones in design and engineering. Laborious ones in production, repair and maintenance. Worthless ones in sales (kidding, sort of). Plus the jobs from the myriad suppliers, from glass and rubber to electronics and steel. With the economy shedding jobs like a truck full of Christmas trees headed to the recycling chipper, how many jobs do we want, or can we afford, to lose? Do you want to take the gamble on a new Depression? I don’t.
Let's face it, folks. We need a new generation of greener cars and trucks. We can do it. We must do it. The market for cars and trucks worldwide is only going to grow. Think of it as "Car Wars" instead of "Star Wars." We need a Manhattan Project to develop the new technologies, whether they are electric batteries or carbon-neutral sustainable biofuels. If we don't do this, rest assured someone else will and we will then be forced to buy it from them at their price. Haven't we learned this lesson yet? Wouldn't you rather have us selling it to them?
Finally, I don't see bank CEOs who have their hands out for money willing to work for $1/year like the Big Three chiefs have promised to do to save their companies. This is passion, folks. You have to have it in your job if you want to succeed. Especially when you produce a product that packs a lot of emotional appeal, like cars and trucks. Henry Ford had it. So did Walter P. Chrysler, and Soichiro Honda. Let's get this done and let's do it now.
By YleXot
Why should we spend our hard-earned tax dollars on Detroit? Well, first of all, to steal a line from the past, what's good for GM is good for the country. We may be able to survive as a nation if we produce only search engines, cheeseburgers and insurance policies, but we will not thrive.
The Big Three, despite all the blather to the contrary, have done a remarkable job of closing the quality gap with the likes of Toyota and Honda, and have regularly beaten Mazda, Mitsubishi, Subaru and Suzuki in quality metrics. The Ford F-150 has been the best-selling vehicle in the U.S. for more than 30 years with the Chevy Silverado nipping at its heels. And, yes, Ford also invented the modern SUV with the introduction of the Explorer almost two decades ago. Chrysler invented the other most-successful concept in the market 25 years ago with the original Dodge Caravan/Plymouth Voyager minivans.
So just in terms of providing what consumers want, which is the definition of capitalism, the Big Three have done so. Right now, today, GM offers hybrid vehicles in more classes than any other manufacturer in the world. However, until the Chevy Volt rolls out in the next year or so, the Big Three have no competition for the hands-down most popular hybrid on the planet: the Toyota Prius. I would like to compete with the rest of the world's automakers for this ultimately huge market. Wouldn't you?
So the question is not whether the Big Three are capable of supplying cars (and trucks) that Americans want, but rather what happened to turn them upside down so quickly? Two reasons, neither of which they created:
1. The "Credit Crunch." This is the ogre in the closet, the alligator under the bed. When banks start to go bankrupt, other banks lose their confidence in lending money for fear that they might be the next to fail. This is what the TARP is supposed to do: restore confidence and liquidity. The actual implementation of it is open to interpretation and beyond the scope of this article. Let me just state for now that when the banks quit lending money, the economy gets squeezed, businesses that depend on credit lines get squeezed even more, people lost their jobs and those who don't slow their spending way down. Ergo, sales of big-ticket non-essentials, like new cars and trucks, fall as well.
2. As if the Credit Crunch weren't/isn't bad enough, at the same time it really got rolling, so did the price of crude oil. Rolling, hell, crude went through the roof like a Titan missile,hitting $147 per barrel, and sending the price of a gallon of gas to $4.25 a gallon and a gallon of diesel to $4.80 where I live. Your prices may vary. There is substantial evidence that rampant speculation, i.e., what most of us would call "gambling," inflated oil prices by as much as 60 percent. Subtract 60 percent of $147 and you get $59. The price of oil right now is $45. Hmmm, maybe it was more like 70 percent. Anyway, the Big Three weren't the profiteers/pirates speculating in the oil-futures market. But baby, they weren't the only ones to be hurt by it. Toyota, Honda and Nissan sales were hit just as hard as GM, Ford and Chrysler.
Now, make no mistake about it, we Americans love our big vehicles. We loved our woodie-style Country Squire and Town and Country station wagons in the 1940s, '50s, '60s and even into the '70s because they were the only vehicles big enough to put the whole family in whether we were going to church a few blocks away or to Grandma's a few states away. Or picking up the Little League team, or hauling plywood home.
Not much has changed since other than more activities to haul kids of both genders to.
But, like Studebaker, DeSoto, Plymouth, Oldsmobile and scores of other great American marques now relegated to museums, the station wagon was pretty much killed by the oil embargoes of 1973 and 1977. The demand, however, never died, although it was tempered severely by their 8-12mpg fuelishness when the price of a tank of petrol quadrupled. But when the price of gas stabilized for long enough, SUVs, with their roominess, and the one thing a station wagon never had, increased visibility due to their higher stance, emerged as the peoples' choice. Especially when they were (under)powered by V-6s that got double the mileage of their ancestors. Everybody, including the Japanese and Germans, jumped to cash in on the success of the Ford Explorer. Why? Large people movers (not to mention large-people movers) will always be around. They are just too useful.
Furthermore, the U.S. is not Asia or Europe. For better or worse, we have geography - and lots of it. Our cities, especially in the West, are new and designed to be car-friendly. Do you like to fly anymore if you don't have to? I don't. Have you ever gone grocery shopping and tried to get frozen food home before it thaws using public transportation? In the summertime? In the desert? Or had to grab an overcrowded bus that takes an hour and a half to make the same trip that is less than half that in a car? Public transit, like the poor, will always be with us, even though it makes very little sense compared to subsidizing electric/hybrid taxis in most, if not all western cities. Plus, there hasn't been a car built in the last 30 years capable of pulling a horse trailer. At least not one with a horse or two in it.
Then there are the jobs at stake. Creative ones in design and engineering. Laborious ones in production, repair and maintenance. Worthless ones in sales (kidding, sort of). Plus the jobs from the myriad suppliers, from glass and rubber to electronics and steel. With the economy shedding jobs like a truck full of Christmas trees headed to the recycling chipper, how many jobs do we want, or can we afford, to lose? Do you want to take the gamble on a new Depression? I don’t.
Let's face it, folks. We need a new generation of greener cars and trucks. We can do it. We must do it. The market for cars and trucks worldwide is only going to grow. Think of it as "Car Wars" instead of "Star Wars." We need a Manhattan Project to develop the new technologies, whether they are electric batteries or carbon-neutral sustainable biofuels. If we don't do this, rest assured someone else will and we will then be forced to buy it from them at their price. Haven't we learned this lesson yet? Wouldn't you rather have us selling it to them?
Finally, I don't see bank CEOs who have their hands out for money willing to work for $1/year like the Big Three chiefs have promised to do to save their companies. This is passion, folks. You have to have it in your job if you want to succeed. Especially when you produce a product that packs a lot of emotional appeal, like cars and trucks. Henry Ford had it. So did Walter P. Chrysler, and Soichiro Honda. Let's get this done and let's do it now.
Friday, December 05, 2008
China's Economic Advice to U.S. Defies Logic
© 2008, Creators at Large, LLC
By YleXot
For the past couple years, it appeared to me that the Chinese government may have had an inside line on the new economy. Spectacular growth and a stable currency – albeit artificially so – over an extended period of years made me wonder whether they were on to something worthy of our attention. My mistake.
Today, these same Capitunists (capitalist-communist opportunists) suggested that the U.S. needs to reign in both fiscal and monetary spending, start saving more and curb its consumer appetite. Unless I am missing part of the equation here, every bit of this "advice," if heeded, would be the functional equivalent of the captain of the Titanic adding ballast to correct the mighty ship’s iceberg-inflicted list.
China’s continuing economic growth – estimated at a still-stunning 9 percent in 2009 despite the near-global contraction – has been fueled by our appetite for cheap consumables. Barring a total meltdown, we are, have been, and probably will continue to be China’s biggest trading partner. In fact, our desire for bargain-priced merchandise will most likely grow stronger for at least the duration of the current recession as millions of American households are forced to make do with less cash.
I have never been comfortable with the notion that consumer spending comprises two-thirds of our economy. Yet, there it is. If we were to follow the Capitunists’ advice and put $75.00 in the bank instead of replacing, say, a broken DVD player or microwave oven, we would be hastening the demise of our economy. And China’s economy. And Britain’s economy, and Belgium’s economy and so on ad infinitum.
Moving on to government spending as a stimulus, it bears noting that Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman has just gone on record as saying he fears that the incoming administration may get the cure wrong. He said that it would be a major mistake to confuse budgetary restraint with prudence right now. He favors massive spending to lift the economy back onto track to taking a chance on half-measures. Spending too much to do so at this stage of the game is virtually impossible, according to Mr. Krugman.
Which brings us to the final remedy: China says we need to balance our budget. This, even according to those in the public eye whose politics are only slightly to the left of Genghis Khan, would be ultimate folly and have immediate and disastrous consequences. This suggestion flies in the face of every reasonable expert’s opinion on the current crisis.
If there is any logic to be found in these recommendations to restore our economic health, it is of that type so long imputed to the Far East: inscrutable. Adopting any of these measures, according to the prevailing wisdom, would doom not only us but the entire global financial apparatus. To what end? Are the Communist leaders looking for a way to turn back the tide of capitalism while their piggy banks are bursting at the seams with the wealth their little experiment has generated? Are they subtly suggesting they might just be inclined to dump the $600 billion of U.S. debt they already own? Do they think their own newly minted middle class will gladly forsake the upward mobility to which they have quickly become accustomed to return to the purity of class struggle?
I highly doubt that any of these scenarios are the correct answer. I doubt even more whether the Chinese economic theorists and political leaders have any more clue about what the correct answer to the current situation is than we do.
–30–
By YleXot
For the past couple years, it appeared to me that the Chinese government may have had an inside line on the new economy. Spectacular growth and a stable currency – albeit artificially so – over an extended period of years made me wonder whether they were on to something worthy of our attention. My mistake.
Today, these same Capitunists (capitalist-communist opportunists) suggested that the U.S. needs to reign in both fiscal and monetary spending, start saving more and curb its consumer appetite. Unless I am missing part of the equation here, every bit of this "advice," if heeded, would be the functional equivalent of the captain of the Titanic adding ballast to correct the mighty ship’s iceberg-inflicted list.
China’s continuing economic growth – estimated at a still-stunning 9 percent in 2009 despite the near-global contraction – has been fueled by our appetite for cheap consumables. Barring a total meltdown, we are, have been, and probably will continue to be China’s biggest trading partner. In fact, our desire for bargain-priced merchandise will most likely grow stronger for at least the duration of the current recession as millions of American households are forced to make do with less cash.
I have never been comfortable with the notion that consumer spending comprises two-thirds of our economy. Yet, there it is. If we were to follow the Capitunists’ advice and put $75.00 in the bank instead of replacing, say, a broken DVD player or microwave oven, we would be hastening the demise of our economy. And China’s economy. And Britain’s economy, and Belgium’s economy and so on ad infinitum.
Moving on to government spending as a stimulus, it bears noting that Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman has just gone on record as saying he fears that the incoming administration may get the cure wrong. He said that it would be a major mistake to confuse budgetary restraint with prudence right now. He favors massive spending to lift the economy back onto track to taking a chance on half-measures. Spending too much to do so at this stage of the game is virtually impossible, according to Mr. Krugman.
Which brings us to the final remedy: China says we need to balance our budget. This, even according to those in the public eye whose politics are only slightly to the left of Genghis Khan, would be ultimate folly and have immediate and disastrous consequences. This suggestion flies in the face of every reasonable expert’s opinion on the current crisis.
If there is any logic to be found in these recommendations to restore our economic health, it is of that type so long imputed to the Far East: inscrutable. Adopting any of these measures, according to the prevailing wisdom, would doom not only us but the entire global financial apparatus. To what end? Are the Communist leaders looking for a way to turn back the tide of capitalism while their piggy banks are bursting at the seams with the wealth their little experiment has generated? Are they subtly suggesting they might just be inclined to dump the $600 billion of U.S. debt they already own? Do they think their own newly minted middle class will gladly forsake the upward mobility to which they have quickly become accustomed to return to the purity of class struggle?
I highly doubt that any of these scenarios are the correct answer. I doubt even more whether the Chinese economic theorists and political leaders have any more clue about what the correct answer to the current situation is than we do.
–30–
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