The Times shares its
business wisdom with the Auto Industry.
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TOYING WITH CARZ
Today’s
New
York Times’ Op Ed, “So Far, So Good”,
addresses (its Olympian wisdom) to the auto industry bailouts. { LINK http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/18/opinion/18mon1.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper
}
The piece ends with this three paragraph collection of bromides and one revelation.
“Even assuming G.M.’s likely bankruptcy ends felicitously, the automaker will have to pull off the trick of becoming an entirely different company — one that can make fuel-efficient cars to serve a future of expensive energy and environmental strain and then persuade American consumers to buy them. It has little experience with either.
“Culling the Hummer and launching the Chevy Volt won’t be enough. G.M. must swiftly pare its gas-guzzling truck and S.U.V. lines, which last year accounted for 11 of its 20
top-selling brands. It must accelerate development of gas-electric hybrids and
other higher-technology cars. Pulling this off successfully could well
require further help from
“Fortunately, the government, the U.A.W. and G.M.’s new leadership all seem to get it. They share a broad vision of where the company needs to go. Pulling it off won’t be easy.”
Good grief. This is either staggering
naiveté or code. Won’t be easy? A guy is teetering on the ledge of a
skyscraper and, just as he starts to fall, you throw him a weight belt. Saving him won’t be easy.
Business advice from one failing business to another can look a parody, a joint suicide note or air-headed, cluelessness on a public display, much like Ms. Pelosi’s energy policy remarks did last year when she revealed her ignorance of the fact that natural gas is a fossil fuel.
So I’m going to allow the NYT editorial writer credit for more intelligence than first appears. Maybe, just maybe this little editorial gem was code for the following:
“This misguided, ultimately doomed, wasteful bankruptcy & bailout policy needs to be remembered as a quixotic gesture of the brave new administration that we support. Therefore we have gracefully chosen to praise the good intentions of the administration. But at the same time, we must to convey our “told-you-so” superiority in a cleverly worded, double-meaning exercise in self-protective, well edited prose worthy of the Great (though economically failing) Newspaper that we are.
Am I being too harsh? Consider the overriding principle: When one politically imposes save-the-world policies on any profit-making commercial enterprise, the effect is to pile on a cost burden that, in a competitive market becomes an economic poison pill. Over time this sort of thing can bring any robust business to its corporate knees and ultimately into bankruptcy.
The larger cars and trucks in the GM line have been hugely more profitable
than the “gas-electric hybrids and other higher-technology cars” that the Times
and its pet administration seek to mandate.
So the liberal, “save-the-world-AND-GM” crowd is going to attempt the
impossible: Rescue a formerly profitable car
manufacturer by forcing it to produce unprofitable, possibly unreliable vehicles. In the post-bankruptcy rescue plan, effective
control of
JBG