Obama: Auto bosses should adapt or go

[SemiCharmedQuark]

CHICAGO — President-elect Barack Obama fired a warning shot today at the top executives of the Big Three auto companies, saying that they should either agree to drastic reforms or be sacked.

“If this management team that’s currently in place doesn’t understand the urgency of the situation and is not willing to make the tough choices and adapt to these new circumstances, then they should go,” Obama said at a brief Sunday afternoon news conference here.

...

Obama, who warned during an appearance on Meet the Press earlier today that the economic news "is going to get worse before gets better," expounded at length upon the jobs and economic growth package he began to outline in his Saturday radio address.

Citing his plans to spend money on energy efficiency, school construction, broadband and medical information technology, he explained why he was proposing infrastructure investment beyond the typical fare of roads and bridges.

Mixing job growth and technology upgrades, he said, was aimed at getting people back to work now and benefiting them again down the line.

“All of these things are designed to have long-term payoffs for taxpayers, not just for individual businesses,” Obama said.
...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20081207/pl_politico/16287

[jpak]

1. Yup

:thumbsup:

[BeatleBoot]

2. That's his political stance, anyways.

He isn't dumb, that's for sure.

But the statements made today were for show.

He understands the importance of loaning them the funds.

The alternative would be political suicide.

It is what it is.

[Arctic Dave]

4. Maybe so. But giving them the smack down in public is good showmanship.

[BeatleBoot]

6. I agree.

Because all he was doing was appeasing the base.

[Arctic Dave]

7. Maybe, did he tell you this?

[BeatleBoot]

8. No.

I just assume that he is smart.

And that is a safe assumption.

[Arctic Dave]

9. Yes he is.

[NYC_SKP]

3. Yep, we should have kept up the pressure with CAFE standards all this time.

I think I read where the highest average fleet economy year was in the 80's and it's gone downhill since then.

Breaks were given, exceptions made, for light trucks and SUVs and it's just an embarrassment.

Sad, sad, sad.

The automakers marketed their more profitable SUV's and the public bought it hook, line, and sinker.

Shame on everyone.

[BeatleBoot]

5. Automakers don't market their product in hopes

that the public "buys it - hook line and sinker".

It is exactly the opposite.

Demand drives their marketing.

Believe me, if the demand was there to make smaller vehicles, they would be happy to buy less raw material to make them.

Problem is: the demand isn't there.

Everyone thinks the demand is there, but the numbers do not hold up.

[NYC_SKP]

10. It's both, consumer demand AND marketing.

That's why I wrote shame on ALL of us.

The profit margin was much higher for SUV's and trucks, not so high on hybrids.

The fucking idiots, when they did do domestic hybrids, started with a small SUV, then put them in the Escalade and other large vehicles.

To their credit, there is the Malibu Hybrid.

But all too little, too late.