Word: gm
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...talks with Opel owners General Motors back on track, Merkel is reportedly ready to abandon her previous plan to force GM to sell a controlling stake in its European business to a consortium of Canadian-Austrian car-parts maker Magna International and Russia's Sberbank. According to the German tabloid Bild, the German government has told GM's chief negotiator, John Smith, that Berlin will consider GM's preferred investor, the Belgian industrial group RHJI, as long as it teams up with a partner from the automotive industry. (See TIME's photo-essay "GM's Eight Great Hopes...
...German government has been negotiating with GM over Opel since March. The U.S. automaker wants Germany to provide state guarantees for Opel of up to $6.4 billion. In return, the Germans wanted GM to agree to sell a 55% stake in Opel to the Magna-Sberbank consortium. At first GM seemed to be playing ball. It spun off Opel into a trust to protect the Rüsselsheim-based manufacturer from GM's Chapter 11 proceedings in the U.S. (Read "Ron Bloom Monitors GM - and Eyes the Exit...
...benefited from the program? From the manufacturers' perspective, everybody except for the luxury carmakers. Hyundai, Kia, Toyota, Honda, Nissan, as well as Ford and GM's small-car lineups all experienced sizable sales increases. The perfect vehicle for the program was the sub-$20K midsize compact car. You will have a tough time finding any inventory that fits that description in most dealer lots today...
...manufacturers like GM, Hyundai and Ford wise to boost production at this point in the economic cycle? Yes, as long as the production increases are done for the right type of vehicles - such as high-demand, low-supply, gas-efficient cars and crossovers - and for the right price point. Recently announced production increases are modest and fit this description; therefore, I'd agree with them. The worst-case scenario for dealers - and the manufacturers - is to have qualified buyers on your lot and not have the inventory to sell. (See the most exciting cars...
...economy, and without reform they'll devour one-third of our economy by 2040; the average family's annual premiums are on track to exceed $45,000 in 2008 dollars. They're already destroying businesses small and gigantic; unaffordable health-care liabilities are one of the main reasons GM and Chrysler went bust. And since half of all health care is paid for with tax dollars, these exploding costs are a fiscal, as well as an economic, nightmare. Medicare and Medicaid spending is on course to increase from about 5% of GDP today to about 20% in 2050 - the size...