Word: chryslers
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Last month, before Chrysler struck its self-sacrificing pose, its lobbyist Tommy Boggs sat for a photographer at his sprawling desk. Boggs asked him not to take any pictures of his walnut bar stocked with the best scotch and whiskey, gin and vodka...
Boggs and the Chrysler lobbying contingent indeed deal in facts--very selectively. The responsibility for Chrysler's failure, according to its own fact sheets, rests squarely on the federal government. Boggs says that the massive expenditures required to meet the government's pollution, safety and fuel economy standards have hit his client harder than its larger competitors, General Motors and Ford, and will eventually put Chrysler out of business...
Boggs says that the person who objects to federal aid on the grounds that Chrysler has not made enough sacrifices or because the company bears much of the blame for its own downfall "is a much less difficult problem than someone who has a philosophical objection" to a federal bail-out of a particular company. "We'll just show them the consequences to the government if it doesn't choose to help Chrysler," he said...
...Chrysler seemed to think it had the government coming and going. If the legislator or bureaucrat, ignorant of Chrysler's history, accepted the blame for Chrysler's failure, then it would seem that the government would have little choice but to bail the company out. If not, Chrysler points to the plants in your state that would shut down, citing the hundreds of thousands of workers who would be unemployed...
...Chrysler's pitch was based on a "worst-case analysis"--a tactic the Pentagon has honed to the finest degree. Few financial observers predicted that Chrysler would actually have to liquidate all its operations simultaneously. Assuming that it did continue to decline, Chrysler would more likely continue to lose its share of the market to GM, albeit at a faster rate than it has for the past decade...