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this isn't really my wheel house, but i've been reading up on it. from what i understand, the immediate problem is not the quality of product. the problem is that the big 3 are not lean companies. i read that a normal car market is like 18 million cars per month sold across the industry. in october there were less than 12 million sold. a healthy company can hunker down and withstand a severe drop in cash flow. however, the big 3 have a huge cash burn rate so they can not. all a bailout will do is kick the can down the road in hopes that the car market bounces back and the big 3 can go back to financing their debt/legacy costs/pension/health care obligations etc etc with revenues from sold cars. the way i see it, they need to restructure and get out from under all of these stifling fixed costs that years of poor mgt and union negotiations have left them with. unless these get wiped out i can not support a bailout. with that said, there has to be a way to get them into bankruptcy and ensure that they can still operate.
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