"the Mooch"

[carnivorous chicken]

GM is in no way failing.  These were one-shift plants, which are unsustainable for any automaker.  They're plants that produce cars out of favor with most Americans, ie. sedans, and it allows GM to restructure half their division in order to move towards electric.  This is similar to Ford moving mostly to their trucks.  It's a plan that's a long time in the making.

Although it's cancelling the Volt. Maybe they'll come up with something better that will sell.

[teazer]

GM is in no way failing.  These were one-shift plants, which are unsustainable for any automaker.  They're plants that produce cars out of favor with most Americans, ie. sedans, and it allows GM to restructure half their division in order to move towards electric.  This is similar to Ford moving mostly to their trucks.  It's a plan that's a long time in the making.

GM has issues, as do all US Auto manufacturers in one way or another.  After the bailout, which saved GM and thousands of workers, they had quite an extensive reorganization and now have a narrow focus on adding shareholder value.  To that end they have bought back around $10bn of shares and that has probably helped the share value to remain static while Ford shares have dropped a long way in the same time.

The GM approach now is to say screw having the greatest volumes hoping that would create more sales and more profits and now focus only on profit. They sold off European operations that were not making a positive contribution and now are down sizing ahead of losing money. That's smart business if the only stakeholders are shareholders, but tends to screw workers. They do have to make a profit if they want to stay in business but profits for shareholders ahead of all else is a symptom of capitalism's bad side.

Seems to me that GM deserves all the good and bad press it will get, but the real villain is cadet bone spurs who made outrageous promises that he has no ability to deliver on.  His tariffs increase raw material costs and his huge tax cut for companies encourages outsourcing overseas. In other words, his policies made things worse and that effect will hit harder in 2019.  And trickle down economics doesn't exist as a real world effect.  All that did was to give working stiffs a few extra bucks that are more than eaten up by inflation and tariffs are big part of that.

[carnivorous chicken]

the real villain is cadet bone spurs who made outrageous promises that he has no ability to deliver on. 

Wait, are you somehow implying that the president doesn't have a deep understanding of international trade relations and macroeconomics?

[teazer]

https://imgur.com/gallery/DcHBUh1

[stroker crazy]

says it all - especially with the oblivious OrangeOaf in the background.

[J-Rod10]

Canada, Mexico, and the US leaders have all signed on for the new NAFTA deal. We'll see if the Dems do the right thing and ratify it next year.

Read a story yesterday, Ford is retooling its US factories for more SUV production, rather than shutting down the plants like GM is. Good on them.

[canyoncarver]

Canada, Mexico, and the US leaders have all signed on for the new NAFTA deal. We'll see if the Dems do the right thing and ratify it next year.

Read a story yesterday, Ford is retooling its US factories for more SUV production, rather than shutting down the plants like GM is. Good on them.

Ford is also considering monetizing customer private data.  That is not cool.

[stroker crazy]

An early present for the OrangeOne!

The fun is in the addendum ...

[carnivorous chicken]

For those who thought Trump was at least accomplishing something with N Korea:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/06/world/asia/north-korea-missile-bases.html?action=click&module=News&pgtype=Homepage

Presumably Kim Jong Un knows that we know (or knows that we can know), and just doesn't give AF. Trump continues to emphasize his great relationship with the dictator.

Dunning-Kruger Effect, anyone?

[Sav0r]

I saw that yesterday and and I actually thought of you... hahaha.

Yeah, he's an idiot. Yeah, he doesn't know what he's talking about. Yeah, he will tell you otherwise.