The Chump Company that Anchored the Big Three

Pimp'd Out Hummer Limo
Originally uploaded by Phalanx

So GM final sailed down the river... and who is really surprised? I mean since the first oil shock in the 1970s, the major US automakers have had no answer to the basic, fundamental business question of, "what do consumers want?"

Back in 2002, I read this book called HIGH AND MIGHTY, written by the NYTimes Detroit bureau chief, it's an scathing indictment of the SUV segment of the auto industry. Here's what I learned from that book... that the US automakers LOST MONEY on every car that they made. Every car! They only made money on the light trucks, and that's because they had cheated the fuel standards through effectively lobbying in Congress over the decades.

Now it stands to reason that if you lose money on something -- regardless of how vital it is supposed to be to the core of your business -- you subconsciously won't spend the money, mental resources and creative thinking to actually figure out how to make a profitable car. Ousted, good-for-nothing CEO Rick Wagoner said the pernicious killing of the EV-1 was the biggest mistake of his career! No shit, ya dumb fuck! Uh, back in 1976 it should have been apparent that oil was in the hand of crazy bastards who jockeyed camels and that oil was a finite resource who's price wasn't really subject to normal supply & demand theoretics, so to find a way to make a fuel efficient automotive vehicle or a non-fossil fuel vehicle should have been job one! (Ford's bitch-ass slogan of Quality is Job One, should have been innovation is job one! Not just 25!)

Imagine if back in the early 1990s, GM decided to subsidize the EV-1 and subsequent electronic car technology with the outsized profits it was raking in on shit like the Hummer and Escalade?

More shortly... 'cause The One's ability to control the bankruptcy is going to be a major discussion point for the next 90 days...

But suffice to say the THREE CHUMPS have shown the pink of their ass far too often... and now the Japanese and German and ITALIANS have the run of things.

But GM also squandered any and all profits on shit like dividends and stock buy-backs and even playing around in the internet space.