Word: auto
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...year of reckoning for GM and the rest of the domestic auto industry, if not the economy as a whole. The GM crisis is raising once again the issue of how far the government should go in rescuing banks, insurance companies, mortgage holders, credit-card issuers and now carmakers. GM has no doubts about it. "Immediate federal funding is essential in order for the U.S. automotive industry to weather this downturn," GM president Fritz Henderson admitted to investors during a conference call in which GM announced a third-quarter loss of $2.5 billion...
...carefully planned, prepackaged bankruptcy would still be troublesome, she says. Throwing 479,000 GM retirees onto the rolls of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., for instance, could overwhelm it. And GM's agreement to fund the United Auto Workers' voluntary employee beneficiary association (VEBA) - thus getting a $50 billion unfunded liability off its books - might then be in jeopardy, as would the union's health benefits. The VEBA has already saved GM nearly $5 billion in the past quarter, and still greater benefits lie ahead...
...were to go into a free-fall bankruptcy and didn't pay its trade debts, then the entire domestic auto industry shuts down," says Rodriguez. The system - the domestic auto plants and their interconnected group of suppliers - is far bigger than GM. It includes 54 North American manufacturing plants and at least 4,000 so-called Tier 1 suppliers - firms that feed parts and subassemblies directly to those plants. That includes mom-and-pop outfits but also a dozen or so large companies such as Lear, Johnson Controls and GM's former captive Delphi. Beyond those are thousands...
...Shutting down plants and cutting labor are costly - it's one of the ironies of the auto business. Deutsche Bank estimates that GM would have to spend $12 billion to chop labor costs and compensate dealers who lose their franchises. That would lower GM's North American operating costs from the current $31 billion to $25 billion annually, says Deutsche Bank. (See pictures of the global financial crisis...
...most of “Thr33 Ringz” trying to convince the listener that he is the “ringleader” of R&B, T-Pain does little to push the envelope on his third album. I wasn’t expecting his signature use of Auto-Tune to be abandoned in an attempt to expose a hidden, Nas-like flow or a melodious, Usher-like voice. I was hoping for an album of infectious tunes on par with previous hits like “Buy U a Drank (Shawty Snappin?...