GM Bankrutpcy And Free Trade

 

GM is most likely going to be bankrupt with the US government holding 70% of the dead business.  Meanwhile, Japan demanded and got to force the US to give financing for Japanese research, in Japan, on ‘green’ [sic] auto technology.  Free Trade is so cool, isn’t it?  I examine the dying US auto industry and how we lost WWII and how the only way we can kill competition here is to kill our own economy so badly, no one can make any money, no how, no way.My little village is very fond of their vehicles and often lavish a lot of attention on them.  This business of loving their wheels is very closely associated with patriotism, waving the red-white-and-blue and support for wars with any countries that pump oil.

It is rather touching, actually.  The Japanese have seen auto ownership decline steadily for the last 10 years until it is now lower than in 1982.  All their might and main has been mainly aimed at building cars for motor-mad Americans.

 

GM is on its deathbed.  We hope to get someone, anyone, who can save it for us.  We know who this is.  It is NOT the Japanese.  It is most likely, the Chinese.  The Chinese are as potentially motor-mad as the US.  Gradually, year by year, the two cultures, the communist Chinese and the US capitalist cultures are merging.  This is most interesting since we are becoming more like the despotic system in China while they are liberalizing rapidly.  Talk about cultural exchanges!  Heh.  Not one that many here expected when Nixon flew to China.  

 

It’s the End of GM as We Knew It | U.S. | Reuters

 

In about a week, we will witness the darkest day in American business history. That’s because on or about June 1, General Motors (GM) will likely file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. 

 

OK, it’s not like GM hasn’t been in a sort of quasi-bankruptcy for the past few months, with the government providing the billions in financing the company has required to forge deals with the UAW, the Canadian Auto Workers union, the taxpayer (who will end up owning a majority stake in the new GM), and …

 

Oh yeah, it’s déjà-vu all over again. We’ve got bondholders. We’ve got lots and lots of GM bondholders. Thousands, in fact, who are refusing to accept a debt-for-equity swap that would ask them to relinquish $27 billion in debt in return for a 10 percent stake in the new General. We were here last month with Chrysler’s creditors, but there were far fewer of them and, after Obama brought out the big stick of his massive approval ratings, the “rogue hedge funds” who were holding out caved and cleared the way for Chrysler to execute an alliance with Fiat.

 

All of our systems are bankrupt.  The US is bankrupt.  The only things keeping us afloat are all our trade partners studiously pretending, we are not drowning.  Of course, the plan of some of these entities is to have us drown!  This is why understanding people’s strategies are so very important.  Not to be ignored!

 

For example, I squeezed a shot yesterday, waiting for the parade, which captures this neatly: a stop sign, a bankrupt Bank of America sign, Elm Street named for the extinct trees that used to line this street before a viral disease was brought in and killed all, yes, all the trees.  During my childhood, no less.  There is a Landmark Baptist Church sign.  And the historic sign designating this as one of the very first toll roads in America.  This is not a main drag, either, it is a little road that used to run all the way to Boston 100 years ago but the part over the mountains turned wild in the last 60 years.  So now, it just runs past my mountain here.

 

The US has decided to abandon the ‘We are the worlds #1 automakers.’  Instead, it even abandoned the concept of ‘We are AUTOMAKERS.’  Instead, we are now going to be content to be the lower-tiered, non-union workers for alien powers.  Whatever pittances we eke from this, we can use to buy foreign-owned production.

 

U.S. Expected to Own 70 Percent of Restructured G.M. – Wheels Blog – NYTimes.com

The Treasury Department will receive about 70 percent of the new G.M., while the United Automobile Workers union will hold 17.5 percent through its retiree health care fund.

That is less than half of the stock that the U.A.W. originally was slated to receive under plans drafted earlier this spring. The 17.5 percent figure was outlined to union leaders in Detroit, who met on Tuesday to consider a new agreement between the U.A.W. and G.M.

 

1957 restored Chevy

So, am I a share holder?  Heh.  What are my voting rights?  Reminds me that I wish we had real elections in America.  I still remember when I bought my first Chevy, a ’55 back in 1969.  Tooled all over the USA and Mexico in it.  Had many interesting adventures like the time it dropped a piston in the pan in Death Valley and I drove it downhill to Needles which is right on the Colorado River which had water and other survival stuff!  As I drove into town, since we took off the hood so the flames could shoot upwards, it really was on fire!  The fire department loved this as I tried to avoid hitting a gas station.

 

Being a hippie, this freaked them out.  The police actually gave me an engine, as a gift, to get rid of me.  I kid you not.  I said, ‘I have no money so I might as well live here for a while.’  Maybe I should travel more.

 

 

U.S. may loan Nissan ¥100 billion

Nissan Motor Co. is likely to receive more than ¥100 billion in low-interest loans set up by the U.S. government to promote the development of and transition to electric vehicles and other fuel-efficient cars, sources said Friday. 

Nissan is the first foreign automaker that is close to winning approval for the direct loans, which would enable Japans third-largest automaker to research the production of zero-emission electric vehicles in the United States. 

Left out of the fierce competition between Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co. over low-priced hybrids, Nissan apparently hopes to boost its green-car technology with financial support from the U.S. government. 

So, we will go even deeper into debt so Nissan can develop vehicles to compete with the shattered remains of our own industries.  And we own 70% of GM? Eh?  What is ailing everyone?  This happens to be the result of ‘free trade’ rules which is utterly freaky.  As I never tire pointing out, free trade has been an utter, total, screaming failure for the US.  It has trapped us inside a system that is disemboweling our entire nation, our ownership of ourselves and nearly everything we hail as ‘American’.  Good grief, do we need more proof of this?

 

2009/05/27 03:12 – Mazda Delivers 1st Of New Hydrogen-Gasoline Hybrid To Iwatani

 

Mazda Motor Corp. (7261) said Tuesday that it has delivered the first of a new hydrogen-gasoline hybrid vehicle to industrial gas trading company Iwatani Corp. (8088).

The Premacy Hydrogen RE Hybrid is based on Premacy minivan and lets the driver switch fuels with the push of a button. The lease costs 420,000 yen a month. Mazda has been working to develop hydrogen hybrids using its proprietary rotary engine.

 

Obviously, there is roaring competition IN JAPAN for research and development of new technologies.  Not here.  Of course, we could wait passively for them to come up with solutions.  Americans with engineering degrees have scant job offers here.  We should package all our engineering degree requirements with ‘learn a foreign language’ requirement. Then, they might get jobs, working for aliens.  Except for one immense problem: these aliens have to sell to Americans, in America!

 

Porsche on the financial brink – Telegraph

Porsche’s shares fell 3.1pc in Frankfurt on Monday after it emerged that the company had obtained a €700bn loan from Volkswagen as long ago as March. A Porsche spokesman said the group is negotiating bridging finance with a variety of banks, including the state lender KfW.

It is understood that Porsche is also in talks with the Bank of Tokyo for a €750m loan, and is seeking help from the regional government of Baden-Wurttemberg. The crisis is yet another headache for the German authorities as they put together a rescue deal this week for Opel, most likely with Fiat.

 

A group of Japanese automakers still open across the street from abandoned Chrysler dealer

German Porsches are the cars of choice for the lower levels of the Manhattan Financial Computer Geek market.  This market has been very hard hit by layoffs.  Küss Aufwiedersehen, Porsche.

 

In Deal With Chinese Investors, Cavaliers Are Adding a Major Player – NYTimes.com

The deal that may give a group of Chinese investors a minority stake in the Cleveland Cavaliers and its arena signals the first significant investment in a major American sports franchise by investors from China.

If the sale is approved, it may be the most ambitious yet inan American sports landscape full of leagues, teams and players striving for a foothold in the expansive and largely untapped Chinese marketplace. The N.B.A. has been aggressively expanding its presence in China with exhibition games and a joint venture that aims to develop a Chinese basketball league and professional arenas.

 

HAHAHA.  Next, they buy up all the NFL.  Now, an editorial from the NYT yelling that we need more ‘free trade or else we will see disaster, how can the Chinese buy up all our sports teams, if we refuse to do business with them?

 

Editorial – Trade and Hard Times – NYTimes.com

Foreign trade has been a potent force for good over more than half a century. It propelled Japan’s emergence from the ashes of World War II and helped it become an industrial powerhouse. It is the cornerstone of development strategies from China to Brazil. It is what links countries all over the world in a network of production that underpins global prosperity….

Yes, it certainly rebuilt Japan and China and Brazil…. and left the US a wasteland.  Thanks a million, NYT.

 Protectionism also remains a serious danger. With voters insisting that politicians protect their own, many countries have already imposed new restrictions on imports. —God forfend, voters vote to protect their own nations!  Very forbidden!  Not allowed except in one glaring exception in the Middle East!—So far they have been relatively modest. But as unemployment continues to rise, the temptation — and the pressure — will grow. Yes, demand to stop the incursions of world trade will rise as people lose their jobs and homes.  Duh.  Earlier this year, the Global Monitoring Report by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund noted that “a pattern is beginning to emerge of increases in import licensing, import tariffs and surcharges, and trade remedies to support industries facing difficulties early on in the crisis.”

Not only should the Federal Reserve be destroyed, ditto the IMF.

Of particular concern are attempts by governments — including in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Switzerland — to ensure that banks bailed out by taxpayers favor domestic borrowers. While the Obama administration has not imposed similar requirements, there is pressure from Congress and the public to make American banks that receive TARP money lend primarily, if not exclusively, to American borrowers. That would be a mistake. One of the sure ways to prolong the global recession is to create even more barriers to global trade.

OK: the apex of free trade was… 2006.  Then, for the very first time, the Doha Rounds began to collapse as the world’s entire banking/monetary/trade system crashed into this huge wall called ‘popping of credit bubbles from hell’.  That’s it!  The end.  Instead of saying, ‘Geeze, when we won all we wanted, everything evaporated into a huge mess!’  No, the NYT wants more of this.

 

World economy stabilizing: Krugman | U.S. | Reuters

“In some sense we may be past the worst but there is a big difference between stabilizing and actually making up the lost ground,” he said.

If this is ‘stability’ then what is a collapse?  Are we lying on the ground or are things actually getting worse?  It is obvious, this is not finished at all. And the shift of power from the US system to China’s system continues so this isn’t stable at all, this is a historic economic/power shift.

 

“We have averted utter catastrophe, but how do we get real recovery?

We poured money over a credit collapse. History is quite clear about what happens next: hyperinflation. Gold markets are betting on this, too.

 

“We can’t all export our way to recovery. There’s no other planet to trade with. So the road Japan took is not available to us all,” Krugman said.

Dummy.  The road always was to Japan: we had to force them to TRADE, not do one-way business.  Instead, they turned and bribed the President of the US and then, everyone under the sun, to get an necklock on us.  So now, we can’t throw them and they control us. Trade is very much one-way in manufactured goods!  

 

Global recovery could come about through more investment by major corporations, the emergence of a major technological innovation to match the IT revolution of the 1990s or government moves on climate change.

I wish Krugman read my blog. He might learn how the world works. But then, the Free Trade goons who own the NYT and seem addicted to hiring chiseling reporters who steal money from banks while reporting about finances or rob the Californian taxpayers of $74,000 for one goof-ball flat earth speech…yeah!  Say anything that is anti-free trade or suggest…. horrors…PROTECTING America—and they kick you out.  So Krugman will play stupid to the bitter end.

He is a very brilliant man.  He knows, his finances depend on lying and deceiving people.  So he lies about trade.  No shock here.  I would be rich if I supported free trade.

 

“Legislation that will establish a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gases’ emissions is moving forward,” he said, referring to the U.S. Congress.

In other words, the way out of our finances is to….hang on to your Chevy keys here…..TAX ENERGY SYSTEMS!  HAHAHA.  But they can’t say that out loud, can they?

 

“When the Europeans probably follow suit, and the Japanese, and negotiations begin with developing countries to work them into the system, that will provide enormous incentive for businesses to start investing and prepare for the new regime on emissions… But that’s a hope, that’s not a certainty.”

HAHAHA.  Wait until the Third World finds out, they have to use expensive systems made in Japan so they can avoid international pollution taxes?  I bet they can’t wait.  Wait!  Maybe this is part of that super-secret Rockefeller meeting in NYC last week, the one about controlling world populations and reducing it to a lower level?  

 

A light turns on.

 

http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/may2009/bw20090514_058678_page_2.htm

More than one major transportation-based industry in America besides Detroit is on the ropes. For the fourth time in our history the ethanol industry has come undone and is quickly failing nationally. Of course it’s one thing when Detroit collapsed with the economy; after all, that is a truly free-market enterprise and the economy hasn’t been good. But the fact that the ethanol industry is going bankrupt, when the only reason we use this additive is a massive government mandate, is outrageous at best. Then again, the ethanol lobby and refiners have a solution to ethanol’s failure in America: Hire retired General Wesley Clark as your point man and lobby the government to increase the amount of ethanol in our fuel to 15%. The problems with that proposition are real—unlike ethanol’s benefits.

Third, all fuels laced with ethanol reduce the vehicle’s fuel efficiency, and the E85 blend drops gas mileage between 30% and 40%, depending on whether you use the EPA’s fuel mileage standards (fueleconomy.gov) or those of the Dept. of Energy.

 

I used to get nearly 50 mpg on my small cars.  No more.  Ethanol is not the solution.  The EPA ratings on cars is for cars using gasoline, not ethanol mixes.  And we have a hidden tax here, too.  Not to mention, this is ruining forests as various nations cut them down to grow various grasses like sugar cane, for example, or corn, which is also a grass.  Civilization is based on grass.  

 

First, grass-eating domesticated animals going back 12,000 years.  Then, cultivation of wheat, barely, corn, sugar, rice, rye, etc.  We will end up with a planet covered with grass, cows and very small cars for a handful of people.  Or we just might simply nuke the whole place.  Then, try driving a car.

 

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