Is everything made in China?????

[ultraranger]

I always read the ONLY reason Ford didn't go under was they had restructured some debt prior to 2008, in maybe 2005 or so, at much more favorable interest rates, allowing them to avoid the colossal mess. And don't forget, if GM and Chrysler went under, Ford would have as well.

Whatever the reason may have been that Ford didn't go under, the fact remains that Ford took control of their own situation that dictated a positive outcome for their destiny --and it didn't involve receiving any money, to stay afloat, at taxpayers expense. They resolved the issue on their own dime. In a similar economic way, many (smart people) refinance their home mortgages all the time. It makes their payments more manageable, takes them less time to pay off their debt and they end up saving thousands of dollars in the end, giving them more discretionary funds to either spend on something else or, if they're really smart, put that extra money into savings or a retirement fund.

By the same reasoning, IF restructuring their debt is the ONLY reason Ford didn't go under, then it's completely logical to assimilate that both Chevrolet & Chrysler could have also done the exact same thing thus, never involving any of the tax payers dollars to begin with, just like Ford did.

Now that these two companies are 'successful' again, I haven't seen any reimbursement checks from them to compensate the money that was siphoned from my personal paychecks to keep them in business. --In the case of Chrysler, 2009 was not the first time they had received a bailout at the tax payers expense. The time before this last one occurred in 1979. Evidently, Chrysler didn't learn their lesson from 30 years ago. However, I suppose when you know you have a financial backer standing by, you don't have to be responsible for your bad behavior (bad business practices and/or inferior/flawed products). You just hold your hand out and get the money you need to enable you to keep acting irresponsibly. --This again goes back to the consumer should dictate (with their pocketbooks) the winners and losers of business. Not the government.

[psquare75]

"Ford’s View
Ford Chief Executive Officer Alan Mulally last month made similar comments, saying he doesn’t regret testifying before Congress in support of taxpayer support for his competitors.
“We think about that a lot, should we have gone back and testified on behalf of our competitors who were bankrupt,” Mulally told reporters Sept. 18 in New York. “I would do the same thing again today.”
Mulally said he agreed with the assessment of “the economic advisers of the Bush administration and the Obama administration that if GM and Chrysler had gone into free fall, they could have taken the United States from a recession into a depression.”
The U.S. government was the only entity that could save the domestic automakers because no one, including banks that were dealing with their own financial crises, was willing to put private capital into GM and Chrysler at the beginning of 2009, Rattner said."

[averagef250]

A friend of mine who lives in Seattle is close family friends with Mulally. They were neighbors when Mulally headed Boeing. I remember speaking to him (my friend) about Ford and having him explain he knew a little more than the average guy on the street about the situation and where Ford was going. My understanding at the time was that Ford's 2006 asset mortgage was not necessary as Ford actually has a lot more than they let on. The asset mortgage was used to give the allusion of a certain financial situation leading to a more favorable outcome with union negotiations.