Posts Tagged ‘auto industry’
Surprise, surprise — GMAC needs more money. As you may recall, GMAC was the one institution that got a C- on the stress tests this spring that were impossible to fail. I imagine the analysts at the Fed really wanted to give it an F, but they couldn’t. In any case, it seems that GMAC [...]
Back in December, when people actually had debates about whether or not Chrysler and GM would go bankrupt, one of the claims made by the anti-bankruptcy camp was that 80% of people would not buy a car from a bankrupt automaker. That number came from a CNW survey; here’s a summary from Motor Trend (hat [...]
Those following the Chrysler bankruptcy know that the final holdouts are a set of Indiana pension funds, who have appealed the bankruptcy judge’s approval of the restructuring plan, attempting to force the company to explore other alternatives under a trustee who is independent of the government. They were lustily cheered on by The Wall Street [...]
Many discussions of auto company economics include the assertion that SUVs and pickup trucks are more profitable than small cars, and so a shift from the former to the latter – as discussed by Felix Salmon, for example – will not be good for the auto companies, particularly GM and Chrysler (since they are in [...]
In the same post I discussed yesterday, Keith Hennessey cites the same NHTSA report – the Final Rule governing CAFE standards for model years 2011-15, issued in January 2008 – to make this point: “The proposal will have a trivial effect on global climate change.” (It’s point 5 in his post, and was also picked [...]
Note: There are two somewhat significant updates at the bottom, just before the Appendix. CAFE stands for Corporate Average Fuel Economy – the average fuel efficiency that is calculated annually for every manufacturer that sells cars or light trucks in the U.S. and compared to standards set by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, part [...]
Keith Hennessey, the last head of the National Economic Council before Larry Summers, has a blog post out (hat tip Alex Tabarrok) reviewing yesterday’s announcement by the Obama administration on their proposed new CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards. It links to a very informative report that I’m still digesting. (I was planning a post [...]
I was talking to an old friend last night about the Chrysler bankruptcy and, in particular, whether Chrysler (and Treasury, and the UAW) will be able to get around the order of priority of creditors in bankruptcy – which ordinarily would favor the senior secured lenders who are trying to block the proposed plan. I [...]
This post was written by my friend Ilya Podolyako, an occasional contributor here and a third-year student (though not for much longer!) at the Yale Law School. In the last couple of days, a few disparate news pieces attracted my interest. First, as I mentioned in my last post on industrial policy, an accelerating, worldwide [...]
My Yale Law School colleague Ilya Podolyako comments on the Obama administration’s plan for the auto industry and the tension between public goals – preserving jobs, increasing fuel efficiency, etc. – and private goals – profitability. By now, the dust seems to have settled around Obama’s rescue plan for two-thirds of the long-ago “Big 3″ [...]
Back in the early days of the Clinton administration, James Carville was credited with saying something like this: I used to think that if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the President or the Pope or as a .400 basball hitter. But now I would like to come back as the bond [...]
Robert Siegel gave GM a priceless gift today: a feature segment on All Things Considered, with a bunch of softball questions and a paean to the Chevy Malibu (which was, to give credit where credit is due, the 2008 North American Car of the Year, which includes foreign imports). Then Bob Lutz, GM’s vice chairman, [...]
I’m a little late to the GMAC bailout story, but after reading all the newspapers and blogs I usually read, there are still some things I don’t understand. I’m particularly confused about the announcement that GMAC will start lending to anyone with a credit score above 620, down from their previous minimum of 700. (The [...]
I’m probably misusing the word, but I just think it’s incredibly ironic that, thanks to the Senate Republicans who blocked the compromise worked out between the White House and the Democratic majority to extend short-term loans to the automakers, the Bush Administration has now reversed its position and is open to using TARP money to [...]
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The Ballad of GM
March 29, 2010 in Commentary
Tags: auto industry, business, GM, Toyota
By James Kwak Once again proving that they do in-depth business reporting as well as anyone on the radio, This American Life did an episode this past weekend on NUMMI, the auto plant in Fremont, California that is jointly operated by Toyota and GM. Well, since the GM bankruptcy it’s been operated by Toyota. And [...]