Early March sales figures said to be down around 40%
While there are folks predicting a turnaround in car sales and general economic fortunes by the end of this year, for now the status quo remains, and it can be summed up as: "Ouch." J.D. Power has put the early returns for March sales down 40% compared to the same month last year. It predicts sales of 633,000 cars to retail customers and another 165,000 to fleet customers for March of this year versus a March 2008 total of 1.07 million total sales. That would be an annualized rate of 9.2 million vehicles.
J.D. Power thinks "improvements on Wall Street and a boost in consumer confidence will help to bring the market back." We are not experts on the economy, but we don't know where such predictions come from, especially seeing that jobs are still being shed in the tens of thousands and boisterous Wall Street "improvements" are what got us here in the first place. For now, we'll light another candle for the car industry and hope things turn around for everyone soon.
[Source: CNN]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Sanders 6:37PM (3/26/2009)
...and boisterous Wall Street "improvements" are what got us here in the first place.
And don't you forget that for a second.
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jc 7:23PM (3/26/2009)
Yeah,duh,blame Wall Street.It's all their fault.
Mr.Oak 8:50PM (3/26/2009)
JC, in reality, the economic $hit hole that we are currently in, actually was caused by Wall Street.
notYou 7:17AM (3/27/2009)
Mr.Oak : "JC, in reality, the economic $hit hole that we are currently in, actually was caused by Wall Street."
No, it wasn't. Sure, Wall Street traded in exotic financial instruments (derivatives, credit swaps, etc.) but those were packages of loans that were worthless.
Who created the rules for and sanctioned those inflated and/or worthless loans? Congress did, and it tacitly backed them up via GSEs (Fanny Mae, Freddy Mac, etc.) Of course Mr Fwank (sic), Dodd, and Obama (then a member of Congress , and erstwhile supporter of the CRA) never thought the defaults would outrun Wall Streets ability to absorb the losses until - viola! - implosion.
At worst, you could say that Wall Street ran wild with the paper. But it's paper that Congress printed. If I came to you and said you brought down your family because you're spending fake cash - that was minted, printed, and sanctioned by the Fed - would that be your fault or the fed's?
Cheers! "Welcome to the New America!" - The Late, Great USA.
Sea Urchin 10:32PM (3/26/2009)
I couldn't care less about Wall Street.
I saved, i have money, i have great credit score, i CAN get a loan.
But those losers who purchased huge houses and cars that they never could afford are the losers, blame them.
The weaklings who wanted V8, Body on frame, 4x4 SUV that gets 2 MPG........they had their fun, now its our turn, people who drive what they could afford are now looking and laughing.
hahahahaahahah
jsjs 4:17AM (3/27/2009)
notYou didn't really come close as to what actually happened.
The person most instrumental in the collapse of the economy was Phil Gramm - who pushed for the deregulation of the finance and commodities markets.
Lobbyists for derivatives and energy traders ("Enron Loophole"), aside from writing the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, made sure that Gramm slipped in the provision into the Senate's version of the 2000 omnibus budget bill, in the dark of night right before Congress adjourned for their Winter break (it's no coincidence that Gramm served as Vice Chairman of UBS and that his wife was on the Board of Enron).
As for all the bad paper - much of that was a result of Wall St. firms going wild pumping up (sliced-up) securitized mortgages as investments (just as they had done w/ tech companies during the dot.com boom).
B/c Wall St. firms were making a mint selling the securitized paper to investors, they bought mortgages left and right and didn't particulary care that they were buying bad paper w/ the good (the immense demand from the Wall St. firms also was the impetus for many banks and other mortgage lenders to either not check a borrower's income or even fraudulently write in a false income).
As for Fanny/Freddie - yeah, they deserve their share of the blame - but Fanny/Freddie came relatively "late to the party" and didn't really start buying up riskier paper until firms like Countrywide threatened to completely bypass them if they didn't buy the "bad" w/ the "good".
Anyway, the damage, while bad, would have been more on par w/ the S&L crisis of the 1980s/90s if Wall St., the large commercial banks and insurers (AIG) hadn't leveraged themselves up the wazhoo in extremely risky bets.
It's one thing if a financial institution is stuck w/ a bad loan, it's another if a financial institution placed bets on margins as high as 35:1 on those underlying loans.
Note - the vast majority of small to mid-sized local banks did not (1) engage in bad lending practices and (2) gamble heavily on risky derivatives - and thus, are stable or even thriving today.
Mr. Oak is right - Wall St. turned what would have been a big economic mess (think S&L crisis, but on a little larger scale) to something approaching the Great Depression.
notYou 10:43AM (3/27/2009)
jsjs: "Anyway, the damage, while bad, would have been more on par w/ the S&L crisis of the 1980s/90s if Wall St., the large commercial banks and insurers (AIG) hadn't leveraged themselves up the wazhoo in extremely risky bets."
Exactly, but you're missing my point: _nobody_believed_they_were_extremely_risky_ because Congress and the Fed created the rules of the game.
Think about it: all those no credit check/no verify/no down payment type loans, many mortgaging more than 100% of the current alleged value - who created the rules that allowed loans like that to take place? Congress and the Fed.
Why do you think Countrywide said to the GSEs: "you _are_ going to eat this paper"? Because all those loans were perfectly acceptable - even desirable - by Congress and the Fed due to CRA and other social outcomes based legislation. Not to mention that Countrywide would have been punished (via CRA, etc.) if they hadn't made those loans.
The reason why the leverage was allowed to be so high is because the Fed knew if it didn't let people gamble to win big on these things, they wouldn't have any takers and the GSEs would have been sitting on it forever (where these things should have ended up)
You're blaming Wall Street for trading in loans that Congress/Fed/GSEs minted, printed, and sold is like blaming the victim in a product liability case who was using the product as intended and instructed.
Every single "toxic" loan out there today was created by Congress/Fed with their stamp of approval. They essentially counterfeited loans, used GSEs as middle-men, and got Wall St. in on the game to try and mitigate/spread the losses with outrageous leverage offered as an enticement. Without post Enron mark-to-market, it might have worked.
Frank 11:55AM (3/27/2009)
I have to disagree with the whole "let's blame it on Phil Grahm" sthick, because the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act did not deregulate the finance and commodities markets.
The Glass-Steagall Act separated investment and commercial banking. It prohibited commercial banks from underwriting or dealing in securities, and from affiliating with firms that engaged principally in that business.
The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act only repealed only the second of these provisions, allowing banks and securities firms to be affiliated under the same holding company. Thus J.P. Morgan Chase was able to acquire Bear Stearns, and Bank of America could acquire Merrill Lynch.
In other words, it prevented the current crisis from becoming worse.
Nevertheless, banks themselves were and still are prohibited from underwriting or dealing in securities.
Allowing banks and securities firms to affiliate under the same holding company has had no effect on the current financial crisis.
None of the investment banks that have gotten into trouble — Bear, Lehman, Merrill, Goldman or Morgan Stanley — were affiliated with commercial banks.
And none of the banks that have major securities affiliates — Citibank, Bank of America, and J.P. Morgan Chase, to name a few — are among the banks that have thus far encountered serious financial problems. Indeed, the ability of these banks to diversify into nonbanking activities has been a source of their strength.
Most important, the banks that have succumbed to financial problems — Wachovia, Washington Mutual and IndyMac, among others — got into trouble by investing in bad mortgages or mortgage-backed securities, not because of the securities activities of an affiliated securities firm. Federal Reserve regulations significantly restrict transactions between banks and their affiliates.
So, no, Gramm-Leach-Bliley wasn’t the root of the problem.
superman211 3:05PM (3/28/2009)
@ sea urine
You post the most worthless BS ever!
JDMlover 6:36PM (3/26/2009)
Auto Blog tell us something we dont know.....
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jv2k 8:34PM (3/26/2009)
Seriously. At this point it's not even news anymore.
I can give next month's news right now:
SALES WILL BE DOWN!
Gary 6:51PM (3/26/2009)
The open hoods, doors, and trunks reminds me of a person's pockets that are turned inside out to show that they don't have any money.
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LeMuRfArT 7:03PM (3/26/2009)
doesn't help that California is doubling the registration fee and upping sales tax
BAH! i hate this state sometimes. but damn this weather is nice lol
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anthony 7:12PM (3/26/2009)
I guess we could all see this coming.
On a side note, I think it's funny that in this picture the Scions are on the dark gray tile. They are not the same, pay no attention to the mechanicals behind the badge, these are hip and youthful.
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whofan 7:13PM (3/26/2009)
On the news today I heard IBM is moving 5000 US jobs to India for cheaper labor.
The news said IBM is doing this to sustain a higher profit margin despite being profitable during this current financial down turn.
Who do these companies think purchases their products?
How much juice can you squeeze from an apple?
God bless our standard of living. Theres no such thing as enough wealth for those who are already wealthy.
If a bum on the street corner has a few dollars in his pocket then we all do good.
Time to get a little national pride back and invest in ourselves.
Lets root for the auto industry because we love our cars.
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Mr.Oak 9:03PM (3/26/2009)
WhoFAN, most people here don't get it. I called this current situation back in '03. If you send all of the jobs overseas, who the hell is going to buy what you have to sell.
As much as folks cry about Obama's agenda, he is our best bet at putting America back to work. The only way out of this quagmire, is to create new industries. We have exported most of our technical and industrial jobs. Most companies now have their Help-Desk operations in Mumbai.
BigWill 10:50PM (3/26/2009)
Obama is our best bet ... you talking about the same Obama that has filled his administration with lobbyists and ex-pats from Goldman Sachs and AIG? The same Obama who accepted $101,000 from AIG? The same Obama who sent Hillary Clinton to China to beg like a crack whore for the Chinese to keep buying our massively increasing debt? ROTFLPIMP!
Polly Prissy Pants 10:27AM (3/27/2009)
"On the news today I heard IBM is moving 5000 US jobs to India for cheaper labor."
The solution is simple. Don't buy anything from companies that fire Americans and push jobs overseas. People have the power to fix this, it's just that we all say one thing and then do another. See Walmart/China.
Johnny Spirit 8:31PM (3/26/2009)
And yet I've been shopping both new and used and every dealership that I go to the sales staff won't even get out of their chairs to move a car into my hands. And I've given all sorts of scenarios at various dealers to make it easier: Showed up with financing already in hand; or had Ford A/Z plan pricing all ready to go (i.e. no work needed by the salesman); or offered a great price for both of us on a used car. Nothing. These people deserve to go the way of the buggy whip if they aren't going to take their future into their hands.
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Conundrum 9:46PM (3/26/2009)
@J Spirit...
Where in the world are you? Do you have bankruptcy? No income? The plague?
I just helped my parents get a new car in March. Dealers from all brands in the northeast were falling all over themselves trying to close a deal. Definitely a buyers market for cars where we were shopping. It was also fun to "school" some salesmen who know less about the cars they sell than us autoblog readers do ; )