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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SilentZ who wrote (563018)	4/26/2010 7:34:13 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1574439

But do you really think those are the biggest reasons for the financial difficulties of the Big Three? I happen to think that the largest reason is the economic crisis -- people just bought fewer cars for a while, and now they're buying more again. Even the Japanese companies started losing money during the crisis.</.I> Yes, but they didn't file for BK. They weren't even close to going under. If you read the history of the Big Three, two things stand out: they were outmaneuvered by the Asians and to a lesser degree, the Europeans. That stemmed from a corp. culture that had become both insular and arrogant. They fell behind in terms of innovation and quality. Secondly, mgmt was so weak it allowed the unions to dictate the terms of operation. That was like the tail wagging the dog. For years, fleet sales and pickups saved their butts even as they became more and more indebted. The Great Recession was the final straw. This is a guy who knows GM and gives some of the background as to why the company got into trouble: siliconinvestor.com msg.aspx?msgid=25276884 Any industry where being #2 is horribly disastrous is not a very sustainable industry. Nothing wrong with second.........Honda is second to TM and does fine. Audi is third to Mercedes and BMW and does fine.

To: SilentZ who wrote (563018)	4/27/2010 11:17:16 PM
From: combjelly	Respond to of 1574439

" I happen to think that the largest reason is the economic crisis --" That certainly is a factor now. But, the Big Three have been in a decline since the 1970s and the Gas Crisis. Since then, every time gas prices have gone up, they lost more market share. They had convinced themselves that they couldn't make money with smaller, more efficient cars, mainly because the only smaller cars they could conceive of were stripped down, bargain basement cars. Even after the Japanese companies showed that they could sell smaller, yet upscale cars.