All That Is Necessary

Tag: Auto Industry

  • The Unholy Union of Automakers and Financing

    Time to smack the auto industry and the UAW again. From a column in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal: The collective bargaining agreement with the UAW is a heavily negotiated document the size of a small telephone book. It is virtually identical for each of the Detroit Three, owing to “pattern” bargaining, but it doesn’t exist […]

  • A Golden Opportunity for a Higher Gas Tax

    Charles Krauthammer burnishes his credentials as a member of the Pigou Club with a cover story in the January 5, 2009 edition of Weekly Standard, titled “The Net-Zero Gas Tax: A Once-in-a-Generation Chance.” (Hat tip: Jonah Goldberg.) The Pigou Club Manifesto was Greg Mankiw’s call in October 2006 to increase the gasoline tax significantly, thereby […]

  • Bush Punts Auto Bailout to Obama’s Team

    Color me unsurprised. The Bush administration said it would lend $17.4 billion to General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC, buying them a few weeks of financial relief but leaving the biggest decisions about the industry’s future to President-elect Barack Obama. Another WSJ article suggests, contrary to the opinion flagged by my new BFF Mickey Kaus, […]

  • Ford CEO Alan Mulally Enters the Twitterstream

    To be precise, Mulally was Tweeting by proxy yesterday, via Scott Monty. It only lasted a few minutes, but it’s still fairly cool. No great revelations on weighty policy matters, but I learned that Mulally makes a point of driving a different auto every day, including competitor models, to stay close to the public experience […]

  • Autoworkers: “I’m Sticking to the Union… Till the Day I Die”

    (Welcome, Corner readers, and thanks to Cornerite Iain Murray for his continuing support. Thanks also to Mickey Kaus for linking, with a permalink no less — sorry about the crack below about the Kausfiles template!) In an article on Slate, Mickey Kaus explains why the Detroit automakers are in trouble: There are some obvious culprits: […]

  • More Eavesdropping on Ford’s Social Media Guy

    (Saturday morning update at the bottom.) Whatever Ford is paying Scott Monty, they oughta pay him more. He’s been Tweeting all day. Earlier today I described how Scott, the head of social media for Ford Motor Company, had his feet held to the fire by a recently formed virtual organization called Top Conservatives on Twitter. […]

  • Lobbying in Plain Sight: The Auto Bailout on Twitter

    Welcome, Twitterers, Diggers, Cornerites, readers from Social Media Today, Dalton’s Briefs, Northwest Indiana Politics, Kicking Over My Traces and others. If you enjoy this post, I hope you’ll take a look around the site. In addition to the auto bailout, I post a lot about the adventures of a red voter in a blue state, […]

  • "We simply cannot ask the American taxpayer to subsidize failure"

    You go, Mitch McConnell! Here’s hoping enough GOP Senators stay in line to filibuster the auto industry bailout. From another MM: The so-called “Wall Street bailout” was different — rather than being focused on particular companies, it actually was a rescue of the entire economy. (Ask somebody from Lehman Brothers if they feel “bailed out.”) […]

  • Congress May Have a Spine on Auto Bailout

    Here’s why Congress ought to hold the line and refuse to bail out the automakers (emphasis added): Requiring car companies to meet corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards forces them to lose money on small cars that people don’t want so they can sell big cars that people do want, at least until gas prices […]

  • Mr. Obama: Declare War on Rube Goldberg

    In today’s Wall Street Journal, Holman Jenkins identifies the key culprit in the current economic woes. It’s not Hank Paulson or Hank Greenberg or Stan O’Neal or even George Bush. The most formidable enemy of the American economy is Rube Goldberg. Jenkins starts by discussing the complex set of rules that have enabled autoworkers to […]