This week the clueless auto execs are before committees for the Senate and House begging for billions. As you all know, their first attempt failed miserably, flitting to Washington in a company jet with no viable plan.
"They don't know what they're doing" my friend Dave said a year ago. At that time he was a white collar techie working for Ford with twenty years of experience.
"The heads keep hiring these so-called experts and advisors. The company is thrashing about with no direction. They've got their heads up their ass. They're going down. I'm going to loose my job."
Fast forward a year, Dave's prediction came true. He now raises chickens in the back yard.
In the must unfortunate of ways, the industries auto styling has so aptly been in step with the times. The doors are larger so as to keep people out, the windows are smaller so we'll see less of what's actually going on in the World, and the ambiance has an imperial Hitler-esque feel that makes you want to take a quick cruise to the Coliseum to check on the gladiatorial combat.
However, despite a decade of mismanagement it should be plain to any citizen with the slightest ability to reflect, that the United States simply cannot afford to lose its auto industry. It's a cruel World of Nation-states out there, and they'll eat the US alive if given half a chance.
What DOES need to happen, is the scrapping of the entire executive tier. The management of the Big Three have for over a decade sat on their haunches, blithely ignoring the fact that oil is becoming a scarce commodity and relying on the very powerful Senator Dingle from Michigan to fend off any attempts to make them improve auto performance.
As to the UAW and affiliated unions, they lost all currency when they put all their cards on the table in an attempt to defeat the Free Trade Agreement outright, instead supporting included legislation for international labor rights. This would have had a far greater impact, not only on the quality of life for labor abroad, but also at home, because companies would have thought twice about pulling up stakes if they knew the same standards against labor exploitation would be awaiting them elsewhere. Granted, this would not have been perfect. Third World countries with less than stellar records on labor relations would attempt to dodge the agreement, and quite possibly would have been successful at it for a while, but ultimately the rule of international law would bring them to heel.
This tragic misstep by the unions has left them having to give away the store, because in the light of the coming deep recession they are of little consequence.
If the unions had taken an outgoing, visionary stance instead of the myopic dead-end path they chose, this might have been a different story. But they didn't and it isn't.
Most of the Hill has at least heard stories about the Great Depression, some are old enough to have lived through it. Is there some kind of misplaced nostalgia loose amongst that esteemed body? Do they want to see what a Depression is like, or to revisit a dark past? Is it some kind of dememted attempt to get back to "old values"?
Unlike the present administration, House, Senate, we must hope that Obama and the incoming crowd will do their level best to save the auto industry. In all likelihood they'll succeed, if only the Three can tread water for another couple of months.
Finally, it is my fervent hope that the investors will take a good, hard look at the heads of their auto companies - and let them roll.
In closing, with the Big Three auto execs in mind, I can't help thinking of Al Pacino's quote in the movie, "Scarface":
"...No, but you wouldn't listen! Well, you stupid f...! Look at you now....: