The Desperation
GM and Ford will now cover your car payments if you buy a car and then lose your job. Ford is offering to make your car payments for up to one year, up to a maximum of $700/month. Provided, of course, that you lose your job through no fault of your own. GM will offer up to $500/month for up to 9 months.
Even if you don’t keep up with the economic news, you can see from the offerings that one company is doing better than the other. What is trully sad is that GM is offering a shittier deal while using the bailout funds. Ford is still burning their own cash, and have not asked tax payers for a dime.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/03/31/financial/f044825D99.DTL&type=autos
The Stupidity
The GM culture of not getting it is still quite strong, and really continues to amaze me. I completely agree with Obama forcing the old GM CEO out. That guy has led his company to ruin over the last couple of decades. The fact that the board hadn’t replaced him already, indicates to me that he had friends on the board. To leave him in place to continue to refuse to make the tough decisions, would have been like locking a fox in the chicken coop. Maybe the board kept him on the job to prevent him from ruining any other companies. In that case, they should be nominated for their outstanding contribution to the American economy. Here is an example of how they don’t get it.
“Gene Stefanyshyn, GM’s vehicle line executive for performance cars, said cheaper gasoline played a role in shelving the smaller engine.” (source http://www.autoweek.com/article/20090323/CARNEWS/903239993)
They made a long term decision to shelve a more fuel economic car, because the gas it too cheap? Can you ever expect anything other than failure from a company that already forgot the fuel prices of last year, and is making a very bad bet on the future of gasoline prices? Maybe the company’s entire management team should be scrapped and new talent hired (by “talent”, I mean fresh ideas, and the ability to look more than a month into the future).
