Skybird welcome to the fun....

[AVGWarhawk]

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/17/america/gm.php


Could not resist

[jpm1]

as an european citizen i wanted to say something i've noticed that many of european cars designs were taken from US cars so on the design and creativity point of vue i don't think the US should scare anything from Europe

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by jpm1

as an european citizen i wanted to say something i've noticed that many of european cars designs were taken from US cars so on the design and creativity point of vue i don't think the US should scare anything from Europe

As a matter of fact GM owes Opel plenty of money for design and developement work done by Opel, that found it's way into GM's production.

[Graf Paper]

Much of the troubles the German car makers have had was because they bought into the American companies thinking they could make them into profitable subsidiaries.

Nobody put a gun to Daimler's collective head and forced them to buy Chrysler.
Then again, greed and stupidity are traits found worldwide.

As for outdated or flawed economic models...

All economic models are inherently flawed because commerce is founded upon the basic human failing known as...greed.

You could try to eliminate greed, but finding places to bury roughly 6 billion bodies would prove problematic at best.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Graf Paper

Much of the troubles the German car makers have had was because they bought into the American companies thinking they could make them into profitable subsidiaries.

Nobody put a gun to Daimler's collective head and forced them to buy Chrysler.
Then again, greed and stupidity are traits found worldwide.

As for outdated or flawed economic models...

All economic models are inherently flawed because commerce is founded upon the basic human failing known as...greed.

You could try to eliminate greed, but finding places to bury roughly 6 billion bodies would prove problematic at best.

I can't object to anything you said.

[Frame57]

I actually owned an Opel kadett once and the rear axel actually came apart and my rear driver side wheel came off. Great Car! NOT!!!

[Skybird]

Pah, we should feed GM directly so that they would help Opel - they claim? are they kdding us? and this after we just have had Opel itself asking for help from the tax payer? It already was said by Merkel that if they would allow that money being given or guarantees for credits being given, it must be made sure in any way that the money of German tax payers does not get sucked up by Opel's mother company General Motors. Daimler lost billions while cooperating with Chrysler, BMW lost also much money for cooperating with - who was it? Was it Rover, I think? Or Rolls Royce? and now german tax payer should directly pay subsidies to foreign nation's companies sufferig from their planning failure and not selling their archaic product palette anymore?

Ihr spinnt wohl!

I question in general if public taxes should be wasted to compensate for failing private business. I also do not see it functioning. The crisis roots much deeper, and is a problem of the system design itself. the system needs to be changed, not just some symptoms of it'S disease cooled with ice. the ice will be gone sooner or later, but symptom and desease will still be there.

Ocassionally I read essays in the past weeks arguing that we need nothing less than a revolution of our business and finance models. Trying to save the old ones just kills ressources, but does not get us rid of the problems basing in the very design of the current system.

I agree with those voices saying that classical economic theory has failed, and more or less completely. It's not just a series of wriong decisions form the past couple of years, it is a most fundamental, basic design flaw of the system itself, like a plane without elevators and ailerons. The example it sets especially in america, only worked by cheating, by consuming ridiculous ammounts of money from foreign econmies, and global private savings. It has lived beyond it's means so totally and completely that I wonder how anyone could dare to claim that the model "functions". A functioning model is one that allows a civilisation to live by what it produces, and that does so without taking more than what it gives back, or is being replaced by nature, and that secures the chances for a living of future generations - not annihilating these chances. The current model just consumes and burns the better part of private wealth from around all the globe. It lives several hundreds percent beyond what it could support by it'S own means and capacity. It takes several hundred percent more than what it gives back. A functioning system...? In the end it has turned like a cancer that overcomes the whole body and kills it: and by acchieveing that, cancer kills itself.

GM and Opel today - who raises hands and want tax money tomorrow? If you allow it today, you cannot deny it to any other tomorrow. Siemens has a loss in profits? Give them taxes! Porsche not selling as many 911 as usual - compensate with pulic taxes! Airbus or EADS suffering from order cancellations? Give them taxes to compensate!

All this while this year boni being payed to top banker and CEOs again will exceed the many hundreds of billions of taxes being pumped into bailout packages and programs to save banks here, and help economies there, and... and...

Crisis, people say. since two or three weeks I started to realise that we are not already in the crisis, but that we are just watching the first clouds on the sky, predicting a storm to come sometime later. The crisis to unfold maybe will be so revolutionary and all-embracing that it compares to the news of our contemporary present like a hurricane compares to a usual rainy day. Our current discussions about bailout packages and financial aid probably are not more like discussions about what colour an umbrella must have to fight off a hurricane. Add to all this global population growth, growing industrialisation, decreasing ressources, and a general decline of democracy that is falling back in the face of growing totalitarianism in various kinds.

Plenty of fun ahead. If you think the present already is bad, just wait for what still is coming at us.

as usual I am full of good news.

P.S. could it be that we need to understand that even concepots like market ecojnomy and demicracy are just phases of history, and that they match the needs of a given status emerging from history, benefits it for a given time, and then, when by its mere presence it has caused enough change to the status quo, it inevitably becomes a threat itself and must change or be replaced by something else? We often consider the status of the present to be the penultimate truth, not to be touched, for it is the best of all possible worlds. But maybe we are wrong, and we miust leave old ways we grew fond of behind, for what had served us well in the past, may not serve us well anymore in the future, and may become a threat in itself if we stick to it. Things change, so does the world - so do the needs we must respect if we want to survive. for changed conditions, old ways may no longer be appropriate.