HAHA ITS A TRAP!!

↓↑report

No Star Wars characters @ Chrysler... AB is talking about ex-Toyota exec. Jim Press

↓↑report

Please tell me you're not taking advice from a union-owned debt consolidation website. First they rape you on union dues so you can be lazy and keep your job, and now they're raping you by "consolidating" your debt and paying them interest on what you already owe because you spent more money than you had.

You can take advice from them all you want... but if you're visiting that site, I don't think you're in a position to give anyone advice... especially financial advice.

↓↑report

Where do you see that this is union owned? It's a financial company...

↓↑report

"Japan is in a kind of economic war against us [Yen! p31]. Their objective is for them to win and for us to lose. Through the use of cartels, price fixing, government-corporate 'anti-foreigner' tactics as well as adversarial trade and predation strategies, Japan is greatly weakening much of America's strategic industries, standard of living and national security."

This is exactly what China does.

If Japan thinks it can win an economic war with China, it's totally screwed.

As soon as companies like Chery fix their reliability and quality issues (and mark my words, they will--China is huge and incredibly powerful, with lots of engineers and an extremely cheap workforce) it will kill Toyota. Americans will begin buying their cars in droves, leaving Toyota, Honda and Nissan in the dust.

Any way you look at it, Japan will lose the economic war it started, either to China (likely) or India (likely). What will happen to America will depend on America's ability to mind its own business. However, I think America is more likely to win an economic war with China than Japan does. The United States has a higher population and more natural resources. American workers may be paid much less than they currently are to fight China, but America has a better chance of economic survival than Japan.

↓↑report

Jason, you think with your wallet and fail to see the big picture. Unfortunately you have a lot of company. The US way of life is doomed and idiots like you are at the root of it.

↓↑report

Its pretty sad that we've come to rely on FUD articles to explain why the Big 3 are failing, and the reason why Toyota are selling well in the US.

The fact is, regardless of what blame you put on unfair trading practices, it has little to do with the reason Americans aren't buying American cars. Quite simply, its the fact that the Big 3 haven't invested in fuel efficient cars and relied only on SUVs and light-trucks while gas prices were low, now that the economy has sunk, and oil prices have risen, the lack of investment in passenger cars have caught up with them. Add to fact that there are high labor costs and union contracts that don't allow the Big 3 to quickly change production between plants to products that the market demands.

Toyota has a dramatic decrease in sales and profits this year just like the Big 3; the difference is that they have very large selection small economical cars to fall back on.

There comes a time when people need to take blame for their own mistakes instead of blaming others and making excuses for their own misfortunes.

↓↑report

"As soon as companies like Chery fix their reliability and quality issues (and mark my words, they will..."

We have been hearing this for decades. Its getting old. Real old. Its not really a US/Japan issue, its a quality/reliability issue. If the Big 3 could ever get rid of the unions so they can start putting together some quality cars, people will start buying them. Until then, their death is likely.

People need to stop pointing at the Japanese for unfair this and BS that. They make a better product. People buy the better product. Market forces, econ 101.

↓↑report

gmooney:

Where did I say that Japan was being unfair? I'm saying Japan can't win an economics war against a nation with something on the order of ten times its population and much more land and natural resources. I hardly think Japan is unfair.

Get this: Mesopotamia was the cradle of civilization--it invented language and writing, not to mention agriculture. Europe and China both took these ideas, and refined them. China invented gunpowder, which Europe used (took) to make guns. These guns were sold to Arab states, creating what are known today as the "Gunpowder Empires". Europe used this money to finance trips to the Americas, where it mined silver, which it sold to the Chinese, who used it as currency. Chinese currency became overinflated because it was silver-backed, leading it into deep economic crisis throughout Europe's colonization phase. Europe stole America from the Native Americans.

Europe, by then, had used its economic advantage to create the powered weaving loom, ushering in the Industrial Revolution. The United Kingdom specifically kept this technology a secret from its colonies, until an entrepreneur smuggled a blueprint to the United States and began America's rise to dominance industrially. It became the world's biggest superpower around 1920.

Japan was falling apart by the forties, and Ford invited Toyota execs to check out its plants. Not by stealing, but by simple observation, Toyota improved upon Ford's assembly line manufacturing process. That's why their reliability is better today.

Which brings me back to your comment.

"People need to stop pointing at the Japanese for unfair this and BS that. They make a better product. People buy the better product. Market forces, econ 101."

I don't believe the Japanese did anything unfair. They did precisely what Americans did to the U.K., and what the Europeans did to China, and what the Chinese did to the Mesopotamians. They're taking foreign ideas and improving based upon them. And that is exactly what China is doing now, this time to the Japanese, because the Japanese currently have the best ideas.

I am saying Japan doesn't have a chance, not that what they did to Americans was unfair.

As for your reliability statement: Yes, that's true. Reliability was the principal reason that America's automakers collapsed. But that reinforces my point that innovation and improved quality is the key to success.

Why will Americans eventually defect to the Chinese? Because the Chinese will eventually have better products than the Japanese do, at lower prices. America will find something new to do with its large workforce and sizeable natural resources.

As an aside: America's carmakers' problems are not because of the unions, they are because of American management. Factory workers at Toyota who assemble cars in America don't have problems assembling them correctly, because the machinery was designed correctly in the first place. American carmakers' engineers often work on a budget imposed by their managers, and are allotted a certain amount of time to make a vehicle and correct problems. Hence, engineering problems find their way into vehicles' machinery, and by then it's too late to fix the cars.

↓↑report

gmoney: I just realized you don't get what I'm talking about.

Chery is a Chinese company. I did not misspell Chevy, I'm talking about Chery, the Chinese manufacturing company that currently has reliability, safety and quality issues.

↓↑report

I wasnt saying that necessarily in response to your comment. There are other comments in the string that refer to the actions of Japanese makers as "unfair."

But yes, I do understand what you are saying.

↓↑report

That's right friend! Totally right!

The failure in our own Government to make certain that as a country, we have a future in the USA is a failure of our own as well! We do the voting. We stick to the two parties that we think are going to help us as citizens. It's unfortunate that the two party system has failed for too long. A non party system and individual ballot count system should be in place.

Heck it's our fault but yet it's not at the same time. We're all groomed to buy stuff, want stuff, need stuff and buy more stuff on credit so we can get rid of our old stuff, then we build a bigger house for all our stuff (kinda like Carlin said). Then we spend our lives paying to house our stuff in houses and storage only to realize when we're 65 years old that we wasted our lives protecting our stuff and our retirement plan was lost by a company that didn't make either by scandal or by our own Government failing to protect US business interests.

Then we are all left with very little time to do the due diligence on selecting the correct leader(s) for our country. I mean who can afford to take days off of work to picket in front of the state house or the white house! If we do, we'll miss our shows, be late for work, not spend time with our kids with the few moments we have.

So with this ladies and gentlemen, I state... we've been bread to believe we are free, when in fact, what are we free to do? Vote? For who? One of two people that have been preselected by two parties and the media (which is owned by foreign companies) and so called public opinion? That's not a choice! Especially when we can only vote A or B and actually make it count.
By voting A or B we are always in a state of unbalance, four years we move to the left, four years we move to the right. Always offsetting the last good deed. And then any good deed that needs votes from the other side (other party) gets amended with stipulations that make it so the opposing side gets to push one of their own agendas that have nothing to do with the matter at hand. Thus always causing imbalance, even when bipartisanship is at it's best.

I dream of a free America. One without party constraints, without "if you do for me I'll do for you" it should be "I'LL DO BECAUSE IT'S GOOD FOR THE PEOPLE"

Sigh... A Country Once Marveled will Soon Be Marbles

Thanks for reading! - Randy D

↓↑report

Amendment: I recognize other freedoms (religion, talking, arms, etc) but they are only free if we continue to have a country that can sustain itself. No money = no tax = no military = no defense = foreign occupation. Sounds nuts huh! It was only 50 years ago that Japan occupied US territory! Didn't know about that? Look it up!

Alaskan Historical Society
http://www.alaskahistoricalsociety.org/index.cfm?section=discover%20alaska&page=FAQs&viewpost=2&ContentId=12

↓↑report

@Randy
I'll vote for you if you go for a president. Americans need great mind like you.

↓↑report

@Randy: That was magical.

↓↑report

This condition isn't mutually exclusive to the personal automobile. Far more jobs in the past decade have left the American shores in the IT world than in the automotive world.

I about laughed (ok, balked) at Ford, the so called Tiffany of the Detroit 3, asking the federal government for a free handout to re-tool their factories to be able to stay competitive in the global market. It was like, "excuse me, sir, may I have some more?"

I like Chrysler's styling, but not their track record in making a reliable product. And now its a foreign car company, isn't it? And GM just is too big with too many iterations of the same idea that it dilutes its own creativeness.

But, as the saying goes, to be able to control your enemy you first have to know your enemy. I doubt the Detroit 3 can lay that claim.

And would it really be all bad if, as an example, Toyota and Chrysler became one?

↓↑report