Word: detroit
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...current debate in Washington over whether to extend a $25 billion lifeline to Detroit's Big Three carmakers has been framed almost exclusively in terms of domestic economic considerations: avoiding massive job layoffs vs. throwing money at possibly doomed companies. But a bailout would have major reverberations abroad as well. Though a bailout may not be the blatant protectionism of the 1930s tariffs introduced by the Smoot-Hawley Act, Europeans warn that a rescue of Detroit amid a major global slowdown could be the first shot in a new trade...
...spokeswoman Renee Rashid-Merem says the money is kept separate from the company's cash reserves under an agreement approved by the U.S. District Court in Detroit, which resulted from a "friendly" lawsuit that was part of the process that created the trust. The money can't be used for anything other than retiree health care. "We can't access it," she says...
...Richard Wagoner. Ford's health-care expenses for both active and retired employees now run $2.2 billion, a figure that will drop significantly thanks to the solution provided by the trusts. Once the retiree-health-care liabilities are removed from company balance sheets, the gap in labor costs between Detroit and its nonunion competitors in the South should drop to $250 per vehicle or even less, according to one estimate by the Center for Automotive Research. (Read "Don't Call It Bankruptcy...
...health care was just a deal between the automakers and the UAW, they decided who would get retirement-health-care benefits and who wouldn't. But now that taxpayers may be asked to finance the automakers' survival, the future funding of the trusts becomes a public issue. As one Detroit insider notes, "On the one hand, [Obama] doesn't want to take health care away from autoworkers, but how can he justify a special deal for UAW members when there are 46 million uninsured in the U.S.?" One possible answer is to lower the age of Medicare eligibility for everyone...
...Detroit Failure for general motors would be a national disaster, as Bill Saporito points out [Nov. 24]. What should GM do in the meantime? Get out and sell its vehicles. I have rented GM compact cars for the past 20 years and find them to be of excellent quality. GM salespeople need to get out of their cushy showrooms and offer to take people out for a demo ride and lunch at the deli. The company could win by a landslide. Perry Munson, Grosse Pointe, Michigan...