Car sales “are growing so fast that Detroit can barely keep up,” according to an AP report published this evening bearing a Detroit dateline. “Three years after the U.S. auto industry nearly collapsed, sales of cars and trucks are surging. Sales could exceed 14 million this year, above last year’s 12.8 million.” The report says that as a […]
**This appears to be incorrect. It was based on a story that CNBC has now updated. It was “Bain Consulting,” not Bain & Co., that advised the government on re-financing the automobile companies. — klh Ah! Mystery Solved! Yesterday,in my post, “Crony Capitalism On A Grand Scale“—the title of the post borrowed from an op-ed […]
by Beverly Mann I Beg to Differ (in Part), Mr. Will A few days ago I posted a post on my blog that responds to George Will’s claim in his weekend Washington Post column that the auto bailout was a privatization of profits but a socialization of losses. The full post, which is at Annarborist, […]
Robert Waldmann This whole post is after the jump as my accounting is not ready for prime time. Scott Sumner thinks he is the first to note that the cost to the US government of bailing out the big banks is more likely to be a profit than a cost. Clearly he doesn’t read angry […]
The lower the fee, the more money raised by the IPO that actually goes to pay back the taxpayer. Doesn’t change that Michael Moore’s analysis of GM is likely much more true than not (especially the likely reasons for the abrupt sidelining of Ed Whitacre), but every little bit helps. In related news, it’s Economists […]
by Tom Bozzo An AP story (via Felix Salmon) based on an analysis of “Cash for Clunkers” transactions is circulating with the non-news that a number of the transactions involved trades of gas-guzzling trucks for only modestely less gas-guzzling trucks. Here’s the lede: The most common deals under the government’s $3 billion Cash for Clunkers […]
by Tom Bozzo Steven Levitt wonders aloud at the Freakonomics blog whether it could possibly be true that the CARS a/k/a Cash for Clunkers is about to run out of money, given the level of new vehicle sales in the U.S.: The program went into place on July 24th. One week later, the program was […]
by Tom Bozzo A Washington Post article suggests that car dealers may be getting a bit more sympathy than other stakeholders in the GM and Chrysler bankruptcy adventures: The dealer complaints have resonated in a way that the objections of bondholders and others have not. Many are leaders in their local communities, where they are […]
Tom Bozzo 1. Well, duh. 2. In the NYT, William J. Holstein’s case for Wagoner should be read as damnation by faint praise. Promoting efficiency and quality improvements is laudable enough, but hardly the sort of vision thing that merits a U.S. CEO salary. Bob Lutz’s product-development record is mixed in part due to Lutz’s […]
Tom Bozzo Notes with approval that Barack Obama has chosen Ed Montgomery, Professor of Economics and lately Dean of the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences at the University of Maryland at College Park, as “Director of Recovery for Auto Communities and Workers.“