NEW YORK – General Motors sold fewer cars globally than Toyota last year, as the Japanese automaker passed the Detroit company for the first time. GM says it sold 8.356 million cars and trucks in 2008, falling about 616,000 vehicles short of Toyota's total of 8.972 million. General Motors Corp. posted an 11 percent drop for the year, while Toyota's sales fell 4 percent.
Obviously we didn't give enough "hundreds of millions" of "no accounting necessary" piles of money to our stodgy U.S. auto industry, or they would have more effectivly outsourced their factories. (shaking head)
You think this is news? Just wait until general public sees the new Prius on dealer lots. It's gonna make historians turn their heads.
What was once said about the correlation between the united states and GM? Hmmmmmmm................... Both are broke literally and figuratively. Both have been looted by foreign countries.
The U.S. did this to itself with idiotic corporate and government policies for the past decade (and more.) Ironically, I think the foreign countries are the ones who have been looted. They've loaned us money and invested in us and will get little in return. We've bought a lot of stuff (most of it personal rather than productive or infrastructure unfortunately...wasn't a wise use of the resources, but we got the stuff and they got IOU's.) Many of the financial instruments have proven to be worthless ($3.6 trillion is the current estimate, half of that held by foreign entities) and once the deflation from these write offs begins to ebb we are likely to kick into hyperinflation because we are borrowing way beyond our means. That will devalue our currency so that the other "safe" holdings will produce negative real income as well.
I have been on here for 4+ years saying we were about to run off an economic cliff. I guess consumer choices are more important than having good jobs.
It's called capitalism...look it up. In Cold War Russia the gov't controlled what cars it's citizens could buy...and what colors. Is that a better choice?
There is also no reason to believe that we could have avoided this economic collapse by simply buying domestic automobiles. The banking industry was busy scamming and cheating and creating wealth for a few while robbing the masses. We have been on this path for at least the last eight years, and consumer choice was only a small piece of the puzzle. Tom
First of all I am not just talking about buying domestic automobiles, although they are the largest ticket item. Go and buy anything and try to buy products made in the US. This hasn't been capitalism, this has been poorly managed trade on our side and very well-managed trade in Germany and asia. We have been digging this hole, with some help from our "friends" in tokyo and Beijing for 40 years. Our trade deficit is $3,000,000,000 a DAY!! EVery Day, every week, every month every year. We are flushing our entire economy down the drain once every decade. Is it any wonder that every government is broke?
Good point malorn. See how conditioned we are: you mention "domestic" and we assume autos. Consumers in this country have collectively behaved like a bunch of sailors on shore leave. We have been spending money at an unsustainable rate. Part of the trouble comes from an economic model that only works if you keep growing the economy. The notion that anything finite can keep growing indefinitely has me a confused. Eventually we run out of resources, and then the whole house of cards comes down, as it is presently. Our trading partners have been happy to loan us money, as their economies also function only through continuous growth. So the big question comes down to how we will ever manage to develop a stable and sustainable economy, or will every economy be doomed to fly through an arc like a brightly burning roman candle, only to burn out and fall to the ground. Tom
Like the native American performing a rain dance, he and his tribe know that as long as someone keeps dancing eventually it will rain. See rain dances like Mallorn's predictions always work, as long as you keep dancing.
I am afraid we are finding out that most of our economic "growth" of the last couple decades was paper growth and mostly ficticious. You can only have real growth when you manufacture something.
This economic disaster has been here for 15 years, it was just hidden from view in the US by the dot-com bubble and then the real-estate bubble. The average working man and woman is in far worse shape today financially then they were 20 years ago. Take California for an example(I know it is extreme), how many manufacturing jobs have been lost over the last 20 years? How many government jobs have been added, it is unsustainable. No offense, but the government jobs don;t add any value to the economy.
Agreed... The trade issues are bad, but we have very little that we produce in the US that are fit for export....many reasons, but the cost is a major factor.
Then the imports need to be halted. I disagree about the exports, too many subsidies and impediments to US goods. I watched a movie last night set in the 1980's and televisions, cars, etc all kinds of things were made in the US, how much different shape would the US be in if our manufacturing base was still intact.
California has had some of the only growth manufacturing industries that actually produce tangible things anymore. (Of course Dubya was happy to let Enron sucker punch the state back at the turn of the decade...that didn't help.) If I was going to pick an area with a serious manufacturing problem it would be Michigan. But it is really nationwide as the country has moved from production to importing. Government jobs actually do add considerable value and at least don't work as a siphon to dump money overseas. (I guess there could be some question over what would be classified as a "government job.") If we had been maintaining our infrastructure we would likely be in far better shape because most of the industries that support it are in the U.S. Government tends to buy from U.S. suppliers. The exception is of course the large number of U.S. personnel stationed overseas. That has been dumping 100's of billions a year into foreign economies. Ironically, there are some quasi govt. jobs/projects that we could do without such as turnpike/toll roads. These are essentially parasitic duplications of existing organizations. I have a real problem with the whole economic model for toll roads so its not the workers I have an issue with. But what really matters is whether we produce things that the world will need down the road. Since we went the wrong direction on energy policy the answer has been, "no." We've spent the past several decades acting as if we were preparing for the 1960's instead of the 2010's. We've built the wrong houses and the wrong cars. It's going to take some time to turn this rig around. Another factor has been the Wal Mart commoditization of America where price was king and quality has not mattered. I've seen good companies close plants here to produce crap overseas--some of these have been spoiled rich kids selling their family's businesses. Some of this cheap effect came from what many would put up with in GM, Ford, Chrysler, and American Motors products for too long... (What's scary now is that I've noticed a trend where some of the Chinese manufacture actually is better than what our traditional producers are providing.)
