Goodwill and intangibles don't even exist in the real world. If you tried to sell a company's Good Will for 10 dollars in a bankruptcy auction, people would be rolling on the floor laughing. However, they are evidently worth quite a bit to a few companies. Hundreds of billions of dollars, in fact.

Ever wonder how so many companies, especially banks, gained SO MUCH stockholder equity over the last 5 years, despite the fact that the economy hasn't really been doing all that well? We're talking about the real world, not the  Bush Administration fantasy statistics that keep "proving" we aren't really in a recession and inflation is really under control?  When the government leads the pack in accounting practices that would make Enron proud, could the wolves of Wall Street be far behind? Let's take a look at the balance sheets of the Dow Industrials.

Verizon only believes that it has $5.2 billion in goodwill.  However,

it believes that its intangibles are worth $65.4 billion, and that

their value has increased by $10 BILLION dollars in the last THREE

MONTHS!!!  No wonder the competition was making jokes about how

valuable that name is, in the TV ads.  I didn't get the joke until I saw just

how much they think their name is worth.  WOW!  Unfortunately, the company has

total equity of $50.9 billion.  That means that their name is worth

more than everything else that they own.  It must be, since the fact is

that once you subtract it from the balance sheet, you can see that the

real value of the company is NEGATIVE $19.7 billion, up from negative

$10.6 billion just ...bet you can guess...3 months ago.

To AT&T, Good Will is worth a LOT.  $71.5 BILLION dollars, in fact!  And intangibles are worth another $65 BILLION!  AT&T lists its net worth at $112 Billion dollars.  In other words, if you subtract the things that don't really exist from its balance sheet, AT&T currently has NEGATIVE equity of $24.5 BILLION dollars.  Compare that to total goodwill of just $1.6 billion in 2003.  Back then, it had REAL equity of $36 billion.  I would be REALLY careful about investing in this puppy.  I would have thought that the previous assessment would have been about

a million times the actual value of the non-existent item, but I will

defer to the expertise of their highly-paid accountants. 

Kraft has $30.5 BILLION in goodwill and $13.8 BILLION in

intangibles.  It has total equity of $28 billion.  If you subtract

everything that doesn't exist, you get a total REAL shareholder equity

of NEGATIVE $16.3 Billion.

Procter & Gamble is living up to the latter part of its name.

It has $$60 billion in good will and $34 billion in intangibles on its

books.  Meanwhile, it just has $69.5 billion in shareholder equity.  In

other words, if we don't count the stuff that doesn't exist, it has

NEGATIVE equity of $24.5 BILLION.  It has been in the hole for a while,

though.  It had real negative equity of over $5 billion 5 years ago.

GM,

on the other hand, only thinks that it has $1 BILLION in good will. It

REALLY needs a new accountant, especially since it only has $136 billion in real assets, but has $193 billion in liabilities.  In other

words, it has a MASSIVE NEGATIVE equity.  It owes $57 billion dollars

more than it owns.  And most of the stuff that it owns isn't worth

nearly as much to anybody else as it is to GM.  If it goes bankrupt,

every share holder will be wiped out and every vendor who sold them

anything and didn't get paid in cash is going to lose the vast majority

of their investment.  Fortunately for GM, hope springs eternal.  I keep

hearing about the government bailout.  Unfortunately, that $25 billion

bailout is about like spitting in the ocean of red ink for this one.

GE believes it has accumulated $84.4 BILLION in good will, and has another $16 billion in intangibles.  It claims that its shareholders' equity is $118.4 billion.  Once you subtract the things that don't exist, it's only worth $18 billion.

To Bank of America, good will is worth $77.7 BILLION dollars!  Intangibles are worth another $10 BILLION!  Wow! Out of a total net worth of $162.7 billion dollars,  $87.7 billion doesn't even exist in the real world!  Somebody needs a reality check.  BOA  is worth $75 billion in the real world, IF the rest of its balance sheet isn't as faulty as its statement of net worth. 5 years ago, it claimed its good will was worth $11.5 billion and intangibles were worth another $3 billiion.

To J.P. Morgan, good will is worth $46 BILLION dollars.  That looks like a lot, but it is really pretty conservative in an industry where it's not unusual for good will to be the most valuable asset in a bank's entire portfolio.  Intangibles are worth another $6 BILLION.  Out of a total net worth of $123 billion dollars, $52 billion doesn't exist.  JPM is worth just $71 billion in the real world.  Compare that to 5 years ago, when it thought it had accumulated only $8 billion in good will. 

Citibank believes it has accumulated $41.2 BILLION dollars' worth of goodwill, and that its intangibles are worth another $22.7 BILLION dollars.  Make believe assets account for nearly $64 billion out of a net worth of $113.6 billion in shareholder equity. In other words, over half of their net worth is about as tangible as Santa Claus, and worth about as much as his fabulous, but imaginary, toy factory.

Some other Dow Industrials: (All numbers in BILLIONS!)

3M:  $6.7 out of $12.5

Alcoa:  $5.2  out of $16.7

AMEX:  NONE.  Total equity: $12.3 billion

Boeing:  $5.5  out of $8.6

Caterpillar: $2.4  out of $9.5

Chevron:  $4.6 out of $82 

Coca-Cola:  $13 out of $23.2

Dupont:  $4.9 out of $12.9

Exxon:  NONE.  Total equity:  $124.8 billion

HP:  $26.5 out of $38.5

Home Depot:  $1.2 out of $18.6

Intel:  $4.8 out of $40.4

IBM:  $23 out of $28.3

Johnson & Johnson: $29.2 out of $46.4

McDonald's:  $2.4 out of $14.6

Merck:  $2 out of $20

Microsoft:  $14 out of $36.  It accumulated all of this goodwill but $4.7 billion in one year.  Something smells fishy.

Pfizer:  $41.6 out of $66.6

United Technologies:  $19.5 out of $21

Wal-Mart:  $16.4 out of $66.8

Walt Disney:  $24.6 out of $32.8

Just 6 years ago, practically none of these companies padded their books with MASSIVE amounts of "Goodwill", in many cases so much of it that it calls the accuracy of their entire balance sheets into question.  But today it has become common practice to just dump more and more losses into "goodwill" and let them fester, hoping that they will be long gone before the house of cards that they built in the name of fat bonuses, comes crashing down.  And they will; this disaster is going to expose the soft underbelly of many companies whose investors thought were rock solid through and through.

I had thought that the Dow Industrials had been stacked with recession-proof titans.  I feel like I have just received a slap in the face, which has awakened me to the reality that a dozen of these companies are barely surviving now; they can't survive a hard recession, and  have a snowball's chance in hell of surviving a real Depression.  The Dow could look much different 5 years from now, as several major brands either bite the dust or become part of another company.  One company's $65 billion dollar name might be the only part of it that survives.   I had been predicting a low of 7,000 for the Industrials.  I have changed my mind.  They may dip below 5,000 by this time next year.  The number posted in the average may be meaningless to current calculations by 2011, because several of of those old, familiar names will be gone, to be replaced by the current darlings of Wall Street at the time.

To hear McCain talk, this sounds like a tremendous waste of money like Palin's Bridge to Nowhere.  Unfortunately, while she changed her mind about the bridge and scrapped the project once it became a political hot potato, she had little enough sense that she still built the Road to Nowhere that would have connected the bridge to the mainland, even after the bridge project was scrapped. She spent more to build that useless road than it would have cost to renovate every auditorium in every planetarium in the country.  The "$3 million projector" really isn't that kind of a stupid boondoggle, though.  The truth is that the $3 million was for the renovation of the Adler Planetarium Auditorium, a 78 year old facility whose equipment is 40 years old, and the companies that made it no longer make spare parts.  Over 10 million students have used the auditorium, and it has had 30 million visitors. But the benefits it bestows to the local economy and its use as part of the Illinois educational system aren't the reason why those of us who don't live in Illinois should think of it as an investment instead of a boondoggle.  The fact is that it is a part of the entire nation's educational system.  Adler provides teaching materials and interactive displays that are used in astronomy classes throughout the country, not just in Illinois. The renovation of the auditorium would help teachers and students alike. It's one thing to criticize something that really is useless, like that road to nowhere.  It's another to criticize something that your own child is going to need in order to learn about science and astronomy.  The same people who complain that our children are falling behind the rest of the world in their science education are now saying that spending a pittance in relation to the total budget in order to improve the quality of their education is a waste of money???

http://www.adlerplanetarium.org/education/distancelearning/index.shtml

Secondly, the "overhead projector" that is part of the renovation isn't even close to the item that McCain described.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeiss_projector

Also, even though all of the members of Congress from Illinois supported the renovation of the Adler Planetarium auditorium, including several Republicans, the earmark didn't survive long enough to come to a vote.  There just wasn't enough money; the 12,000 million per week for the Iraq war was much more important than spending 3 million for something that would be used for our children's education for the next 40 years.

We've all heard about Acorn employees registering dead people and cartoon characters.  But the truth is that they won't influence the election, because cartoon characters and dead people CAN'T VOTE.  The employees defrauded ACORN when they turned in invalid registrations, but it won't affect the actual election by a single vote, barring the Return of the Living Dead.  LOL However, there is a REAL threat of possible election fraud.  In 2004, Diebold machines recorded 80% of our votes nationwide. Diebold has since changed its name, because of bad publicity.  It is now Premier Election Solutions. Here's a look at their senior management back then.

Diebold director W. H. Timken raised over $100,000 for George Bush's 2004 campaign.

Diebold's CEO, Wally O'Dell, organized a fundraising party for Vice President Dick Cheney on June 30, 2003, raising $600,000 for the 2004 campaign.  He was rewarded with a trip to Mr. Bush's ranch.

Shortly after the 2004 election, Mr. O'Dell resigned as CEO.  There were rumors that he was facing criminal charges due to insider trading.  After Mr. O'Dell sent several friends letters that stated that he had promised to guarantee a Bush victory in Ohio, many Democrats argued that there was a conflict of interest when the person most directly responsible for making the election machines was clearly biased in favor of the Republican party.

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Diebold_CEO_resigns_after_reports_of_1212.html

Jeff Dean, former Senior Vice-President and Senior Programmer for GES,  now Global Election Management Systems, the wholly owned subsidiary of Diebold, and the person who originally created the software that the Diebold machines use, was convicted of 23 counts of felony theft for planting back doors in

software he created for ATMs. He formally resigned from his position at the company in 2002, but remained on staff informally as a paid consultant. His software made use of Microsoft Access software without requiring a password, which made the machines extremely vulnerable to the possibility of vote tampering.

Other top management during that election cycle included a cocaine trafficker named John Elder, a man who conducted fraudulent stock

transactions and a programmer who was convicted or falsifying computer records. 

Also, while there have been several TV reports about people physically breaking into Diebold voting machines, leaked internal company memos note that there is no need to bother with actually physically breaking into the machines to rig the vote; it can be done over the phone. And the company intentionally sold Georgia, California and Maryland machines that they knew to be defective.

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2003/12/61243

SAIC analyzed the Diebold voting machines for the state of Maryland and concluded “the system, as implemented in policy, procedure, and technology, is at high risk of compromise.”  Diebold fixed the machines.  Below is the new security analysis.  The conclusion was that "On a scale of one to 10, if the problems we found before were a six, this is a 10. It's a totally different ballgame".  Great fix, huh? 

http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2006/05/12/1647862.htm

Think that's ancient history?  Well, it just so happens that, after the 2004 scandal where the officials in Cleveland, Ohio were convicted of elections fraud for rigging the recount in President Bush's favor, nobody bothered to fix the machines. However, since the new, improved version of their election machines won't be available until after this year's Presidential election, Chris Riggall, a Premier spokesman, said “there has not been a single documented case of a successful

attack against an electronic voting system, in Ohio or anywhere in the

United States.”  I'm guessing that the people sitting in jail for committing elections fraud wish they had convinced a judge of that. But the truth is that he's absolutely right: Since they don't leave a paper trail, there is no way to actually document a case of voter fraud.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/15/us/15ohio.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Lucky me. I live in Georgia.  Our whole state uses the Diebold paperless voting machines.  :(

Just last month, Superior Court judge Michael Johnson denied a petition to require that the machines would be scrapped or altered so that there is a paper trail that can be used to validate the results. The assistant DA stated that the 2002 vintage Diebold machines are "State of the art" and are secure, so there is no need for a paper trail.  The following link is from a local newspaper article about the decision:

http://news.mywebpal.com/partners/680/public/news924138.html

Let's hope that our votes are counted correctly this time.  After the fiascos that we called the 2000 and 2004 elections, we need to change the way that voting is conducted in this country.  Electronic systems are great, BUT they should be required to have security, transparency and a paper trail.

I'm going to assume that you have won your bid for the Presidency.

1.  We need to fix our crumbling infrastructure.  That is going to cost about $200 billion dollars per year for 5 years. Do you plan to fix our roads, bridges, electrical grid, etc.?  If so, which programs do you plan to cut to finance this expense?

2.  You have said that your health care plan will cost about $50 billion per year.  It may cost `much more than that.  Again, which programs do you plan to cut to finance this vital expense?

3.  When Hillary Clinton attempted to fix health care after the 1992 election, the insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, the AMA and Humana ran ads 24/7 and spent millions of dollars lobbying to defeat any attempt to fix the massively overpriced mess that we call health care in the U.S.; how do you plan to pass any health care initiative in the face of the inevitable onslaught by the health care industry?

4.  You will inherit a national debt of $11 trillion dollars and a real budget deficit of about $1 trillion, maybe even more, if you include the "off-budget" expenses like the wars and the CIA budget.  Meanwhile, the recession is probably going to mean that even less taxes will be collected.  How do you plan to reduce the deficit?

5.     The government is expected to collect TOTAL income taxes of about $1.5 trillion dollars this year.  Total military spending is about $1 trillion dollars per year.  The remainder of income taxes collected are used to pay the interest on the national debt.  The big ticket items are:  Defense department: $636 billion, supplementals for the wars: $180 billion, Homeland Security: $58.2 billion, Veteran's Administration: $93.7 billion, CIA about $15 billion, and hundreds of other military related items that cost less than $10 billion each.  Most of the remainder of the revenue collected by the government is FICA payments, which are SUPPOSED to pay for social security.  Our government spends ALL of our income taxes to pay for our military and interest on the debt, which leaves NOTHING to pay for any of the necessary services that government is supposed to provide, like health, education, infrastructure, etc.; since the gov't insists on at least pretending to provide some minimal amounts of these services, doing so requires our government to borrow nearly a third of the money we contribute to the social security trust fund each year AND increase the national debt by an average of over $600 billion dollars per year. Nobody in Congress seems to understand that "off-budget" spending is still spending, so they official budget has a much lower deficit than the real amount of debt that is accumulated each year. How do you justify such an irresponsible increase in military spending from the level of $290 billion per year in total military spending in 2000, at the expense of vital domestic programs, especially considering that using the FICA surplus to keep the government operating in the face of the military build-up has prevented larger cost of living increases for old people on fixed incomes, many of whom can no longer afford to buy food and gas for the winter, in the face of huge increases in the cost of basic items that they need to live?

Sorry that #5 is so complex, but it REALLY needs to be addressed.  We should be using that social security surplus to increase the social security checks for our elderly, who have seen their utility bills, food prices and mortgage payments double, and  transportation and heating fuel prices triple, while their social security checks increased by just 2 or 3 percent per year over the last 7 years.  Instead, because the current Administration has considered the military to be his only priority, our grandparents' spending power has eroded to the point that their social security income is often less than their basic living expenses. Then the Medicare copayments are set up so that they often cost a large percent of that meager income.  Do we really want to force our old people to live in poverty to pay for our military-industrial complex?

We've been hearing a lot about becoming a socialist country.  I hate to tell you, but we're already one, and have been since the end of World War II.

Our government redistrubutes over one third of our GDP and employs 18% of our work force. 

I'm talking about the ENTIRE government, not just the federal government.  The state and local governments have always charged more total taxes than the Fed.  They have several tools to tax us with, from sales taxes to property taxes to income taxes to the tag on your car or the fine for speeding that you pay the local police department.  Please note that the GDP is Gross Domestic Product, the total value of everything produced in the entire country. 

Let's look at some of the numbers.  To save confusion, all numbers are in billions.  One billion is 1,000 million dollars.

Last year, total government revenue was $4,776 billion dollars out of a GDP of $13,743 billion, or 35% of GDP.  Over 1 dollar out of every 3 that this whole country produced went to the government.

How did our government become so large, while our factories and the real industries that made us into the economic powerhouse that we used to be have slowly died?

Prior to World War II, the government spent about 17% to 20% of GDP each year. 

1940:  Taxes: $17.8 billion, GDP: $101.4 billion, 17.5% of GDP

That changed as the government needed massive amounts of money to pay for WW II.

1945:  Taxes: $67.4 billion, GDP: $223.1 billion, 30% of GDP

Government spending did decrease after the war ended. The result was that the 1950s were prosperous.

1950:  Taxes: $66.7 billion, GDP $293.8 billion, 22.7% of GDP

But it didn't last.  Pretty soon, governments began to increase taxes again. By 1060, the government was taxing us almost as much as it had during the height of WW II.

1960:  Taxes: $153.1, GDP: $526.4 billion, 29% of GDP

Then the Vietnam War happened, forcing the government to raise taxes to pay for the new military spending.

1970:  Taxes: $321.1 billion, GDP: $1,024 billion, 31.4%

During the Vietnam War, total taxes climbed to a high of 31.8% of GDP, while unemployment rose from 3% to 8.8% before it ended in 1975.

1975: Taxes: 496.1, GDP: $1,560 billion, 31.8% of GDP

After the war ended, taxes went down a little, but nowhere close to the levels in the 1950s.

1976: Taxes: 545.8 billion, GDP 1,737 billion,  30.9%

But not for long.  Despite the fact that we weren't at war, high inflation and bracket creep allowed the government to increase taxes substantially during the late 1970s, contributing to the recession from 1979-1982.

1980:  Taxes: $885.6 billion, GDP: $2,727 billion, 32.5 %

Reagan continued Carter's policy of high taxes during the first two years of his Administration.

1982: Taxes: 1,078 billion, GDP: 3,228 billion, 33.4%.

in 1983, he changed tactics.  Our axes were decreased.

1983: Taxes: $1,104 billion, GDP: $$3,441 billion, 32%.

This trend toward lower total taxes continued until the Bush 1 Administration.  Taxes suddenly began rising again.

1990:  Taxes: 1,927.4 billion, GDP: $5,735.4 billion, 33.6% of GDP. 

Despite the recession in 1992, taxes remained high.

1995:  Taxes: $2,464.6 billion, GDP: $7,232.7 billion,  34% of GDP.

And our taxes just kept rising. By 2000, government taxes had hit 35.5% of GDP.

1998:  Taxes: $3003.8 billion, GDP:  $8,679.7 billion, 34.8% of GDP

  2000: 3,457.8 billion, GDP: 9,749.1 billion, 35.5% of GDP

Then Bush 2 took office and reduced taxes to about the level that they were at the end of the Carter administration.

2002: 3,388 billion, GDP: $10,398.4 billion,  32.6%

2005: Taxes: 4,017 billion, GDP: 12,347 billion, 32.5%

Unfortunately, those lower taxes didn't last.  By last year, taxes under Bush 2 were just as high as they were under Clinton and Bush 1, and much higher than they were under Reagan.

2007: Taxes: 4,776.4 billion, GDP: 13,743 billion, 34.8%

Our government is the socialist part of our economy.  And it has steadily increased its share of our country's income just a little more each decade for the last 60 years, until it has become the festering pool of pork that exists today. 

Besides the political arguments for reducing the size of government, there are several economic ones. 

I believe that any time that the government collects more than 30% of the GDP in taxes, it damages GDP and causes higher unemployment and a recession.  The fact is that during Clinton's Administration, Federal, state and local governments were able to charge higher taxes without causing a recession for a few years as the internet, online sales and software industries exploded.  Once they matured, those taxes caused severe damage to the system, resulting in the extremely low GDP growth in 2000-2002.

Does it matter who pays the taxes?  Corporate America paid almost 50% of all taxes from the early part of the century through the 1950s. They paid about 20% of income taxes under Reagan.  They currently pay 12% of all income taxes collected.  There is no evidence that reducing corporate taxes even more will do any good whatsoever.  When they paid higher taxes, the country didn't go into a recession; they  paid much high taxes during some of the most prosperous periods in history. 

The rich paid much higher percentages of taxes at various times, as well. Far from causing the system to crash, it has generally done about as well as when the poor pay a larger percent. Raising or lowering taxes for one segment of the population bears very little weight on the health of the economy as a whole. What HAS mattered is the total amount of taxes collected as a percent of GDP.  Higher taxes can cause a recession. Less taxes may not cause a booming economy, but they generally herald good times, with the single exception to the rule being Clinton's presidency.

The health of the economy depends on keeping ALL governments, Federal, state AND local, small and efficient instead of the bloated barrels of pork that they have become.

By the way, we do want some socialism. There are a few cases in which pure capitalism isn't possible or desirable. I don't think anybody wants a for-profit educational system which denies service to children whose parents can't afford to pay, 15 competing power companies running electric lines all over the place, a dozen companies running competing water pipes, companies making the highways, each installing tolls for profit every mile or so, or a privately-run military.  Some services are both necessary and cannot be allowed to be run as free market businesses.  But the government has a hard time figuring out which services it should provide and which ones that are best left to our free enterprise system. 

I believe that our government has a social responsibility to provide all of its citizens with the following:

1.  Our military, keeping everybody in the country safe

2.  Our educational system, giving everybody a chance to make themselves into a success

3.  Our infrastructure, to give everybody access to electricity, clean water, sanitation and our highway system.

4.  Our judicial and legal systems, allowing everyone to have equal access to police and the court system.

5.  Our regulatory system, to insure that unscrupulous companies and individuals don't pollute the environment, provide unsafe working conditions, and to provide reasonable safeguards for everybody's health and savings.  Regulatory agencies from the FDIC to the FBI, from the local beat cop to the food inspectors are necessary to our safety and security.

6.  Our health care, to insure that everybody has access to basic health care, even if they don't have the money to pay for it.  

7.  Social Security for our elderly and disabled and, to a lesser degree, charity for our poor.  We have a great responsibility to provide a reasonable standard of living for our old and disabled, who are no longer able to work, and, as a mostly Christian nation, we have a moral responsibility to provide some basic charity and compassion for the poor, especially those who are willing to try to help themselves, and those who are unable to care for themselves, like poor children and the mentally disabled.

8.  Our postal system.  This may not be necessary, but countries which have tried to turn them into competitive systems have generally had major problems.  And it isn't an expensive item; it generally makes a small profit.

Other than those necessities, the government shouldn't try to be all things to all people.  It has a few defined social responsibilities, to insure the safety of the country and provide equal access to health care, education, the country's infrastructure and the legal system. I would consider anything above and beyond that to be unnessary. If its total size could be cut back down to 20% of GDP, the entire nation would be happier.

Politics makes strange bedfellows. The Republican party has had a marriage of convenience between the smart, urban professionals, business owners, executives and highly-paid white collar workers who could care less about legislating morality, and are the best customers of casinos, escort services and the local pot dealer on one hand, and the Far-Far out there, radical fundamentalist NeoCon wacko nut-jobs who have turned the teachings of Christ into a doctrine of fear, loathing, hatred, war, persecution, intolerance and sheer ignorance on the other.  The two segments of the party often hate each other almost as much as they do the Liberals.

Let's get a divorce, kick the Fundamentalist nutjobs out and let the

NeoCons form their own quasi-religious, anti-evolution, anti-freedom,

pro-war, anti-education, anti-health care, anti-environment party of

fear and hatred.  If we don't, their brand of politics will slowly

poison the Republican Party until we are so far out of the mainstream that we will be

marginalized.

I believe the Fundamentalist NeoCons should have their own party and give the GOP back to the people who believe in:

1.  Personal Freedom.

2.  Small Government.

3.  Lower Taxes.

4.  The job of the courts is to interpret the Constitution, NOT to legislate the NeoCon version of morality.

5.  Strong defense, but NOT pre-emptive war, except when there is imminent danger to the U.S.

6.  A strong industrial base equals a strong economy.

7.  Low immigration means lower unemployment and  better jobs for Americans.

8.  Free enterprise is the mortal enemy of monopolies and oligopolies.  Instead of "Too big to fail", many companies are too big to exist.  The Anti-Trust laws should be used to break up all of the monopolies, duopolies and oligopolies into competing businesses.

9.  Fair and sensible regulation of business is as necessary as a police force, for the purpose of ensuring that businesses are moral corporate citizens and those that break the law should be punished severely.

10.  The purpose of free enterprise is for the benefit of the people.  Businesses do NOT have the right to strip the land of its vital resources, pollute the water supply, and contribute to global warming for the purpose of short-term profit.

11.  Energy independence is a matter of both our economic future and national security, and should be a high priority.

12.  To remain competitive in the world market, all American children should be insured the right to a quality education.  The top 20% of students should be given free tuition to the college of their choice, if they are willing to complete 2 years of government service upon graduation.

13.  The government has no business trying to legislate morality.  It is time to call an end to the drug war, and treat drug addicts as victims, not criminals.  It is time to legalize prostitution and regulate it, for the health and safety of the population.  It is time to legalize gambling, with severe restrictions.  The government should separate itself from making moral decisions for the populace.  The people should have the freedom to make their own mistakes.

14.  Health care should be the responsibility of the government, not a free enterprise system.  There are certain services that the government should provide, like schools, hospitals, fire fighters, police and the postal service.  That doesn't mean that private enterprise can't maintain their own private schools, hospitals, security guards, etc. for those of us who are wealthy enough to be able to afford them; it just means that the government has a responsibility to provide them for the rest of us.

15.  Bigotry and hatred have no place in the Political arena.  Our party should be the party of freedom and small government, not the party that takes away peoples' rights, spends massive amounts of money to finance the occupation of other countries, and tries to rule the world by force and intimidation.  We should lead by example instead of forcing other countries to bend to our will.

16.  We should fight for a constitutional amendment that forces the government to balance the budget, except for times of war.

17.  We should be in favor of reducing the size of government enough to reduce the national debt back to pre-Bush League levels.

18.  We should be in favor of keeping the Social Security system financially strong.  It should have the right to invest in AAA rated corporate and municipal bonds, as well as Federal Government Treasury Bills.  That way, it won't just be used to pay for a massive deficit at the expense of the senior citizens, whose social security checks often aren't enough to pay their bills anymore.  The additional income could be used to increase their pensions.

If we have to sell our soul to the devils who call themselves the Fundamentalists and NeoCons, and have to mirror their fear, hatred and bigotry just to win an election, we aren't worthy of  being called the Grand Old Party.

Sarah Palin represents the last, best hope of the Fundamentalist hate-mongers.  Her message resonates with her base.  Let's hope that, like a group of lemmings, they follow their pie-eyed piper OUT of the Republican party.  Let them drown in a sea of their own hatred, but don't let them take the Grand Old Party down with them.

As I am writing this, Senator Obama hasn't won the election at this point, but he is the leading candidate.  He has an excellent chance here in Georgia, part of  the Republican Deep South Bible Belt. 

Bill Cosby was probably the single most important reason why us White, Anglo-Saxon Protestants abandoned racism and began to think of the black, hispanic and asian people as just people.  As we watched the fictional Huxtable family grow, we saw our own families.  While King and Malcom X were important to the cause of racial equality, they were polarizing political figures, who did nothing to quell the fear of the unknown among people who had been raised in an era of racism.  Cosby showed us that our fears were unfounded, that people were people, no matter their color.  He tempered racism, and moved us much farther along the path toward racial equality.

But nobody thought of Cosby as presidential.  The truth is that when the movie Deep Impact premiered 10 years ago, few people would have seriously considered the possibility that the U.S. would have a black president in our lifetimes.  Morgan Freeman's performance as a noble, intelligent, moral leader who kept his head in the face of one of the worst catastrophes to ever befall the human race was so powerful that it made many of us wish that we had such a noble President, instead of Monica Lewinski's boyfriend, Bill the Clown in full midlife crisis mode.

Then President Bush won an election on the idea of family values, low taxes and smaller government, and used a "Mandate" of a couple of hundred votes to make the government even bigger, show a complete lack of any sense of morality as he ran roughshod over our freedoms and the very Constitution, and used lies, intimidation and scare tactics to get his way.  He made Hitler and Stalin look human in comparison, using torture, abandoning the Geneva Convention, which even Hitler agreed to, holding political prisoners, aspiring to turn America into an empire by attacking countries that were no threat to us but had oil and were in strategic positions, using illegal phone taps to monitor the private conversations of our own citizens and soldiers, allowing covert CIA operatives to be exposed for his political gain, appointing political allies to important positions that normally go to real professionals, corrupting the court system by forcing partisan politics into it, manufacturing an aura of fear, hate, loathing and distrust.  But he wasn't even competent at turning the USA into an effective police state; unlike Mussolini, he couldn't even make the trains run on time. AND he wrecked the economy, giving tax breaks and favorable rules to his rich friends and firms which had made multi-million dollar donations to his campaigns, like Lehman, AIG, etc., and did nothing for the other 99% of the population, while he put pro-industry people in charge of the very industries that they were supposed to regulate, fouled the water and food supplies by hampering the ability of the inspections agencies to do their jobs. The list of Bush's scandals, corruption and incompetence goes on and on and on and on AND ON.  He did such a horrible job that just 7 years after 9/11,  we, the people were willing to elect a black man named Hussein to replace him.

After this scandal-filled, incompetent excuse for a Presidency, practically any change from the status quo would be an improvement.  No NeoCon Fundamentalist cut in Bush's cloth would have had a chance in a general election.

Which led the Republican party to nominate somebody who wasn't really a NeoCon.  Quite a few people would have liked to see the noble old warrior McCain as president, if he hadn't made one of the worst selections of a vice president in modern history.  Palin makes Dan Quayle look smart and the KKK and Jerry Falwell look like moderates. Her hate-filled rallies managed to work the people who attended them into a frenzy of hatred, but they caused millions of people to turn away from the party of angry mobs and lunatics acting like a lynch mob hunting witches during the Spanish Inquisition. Palin played to her base to perfection.  The only problem is that her base is a very small percentage of the population.  Even some of the most conservative members of the Republican party fled from her brand of NeoCon Fundamentalist rhetoric designed to stir the same fear and loathing that allowed Bush to be re-elected.

If Obama does win the presidency, much of the reason will be his own intelligence, hard work, organizational skills, tenacity, his considerable oratory skills, his ability to convey his plans for the future effectively, and his calm Presidential demeanor.  However, he can also thank the NeoCon Fundamentalists who hijacked the Grand Old Party and probably greatly influenced McCain's choice of VP, the total incompetence and lack of any sense of morality or even human decency of George Bush, and Morgan Freeman's performance, which showed us that a black man can be an effective, noble leader, for this opportunity to lead our great country through the host of economic and foreign policy disasters that the Bush and Clinton Administrations left behind.

Alright, you had a whole 8 hours to bask in the joy of becoming President.  It's a bright new day. The honeymoon's over.  Now, the hard work of the marriage of the President to the Country begins .We have high expectations.  We expect for you to fulfill all of the promises you made during your extended courtship of America, and even more.  Now GET TO WORK!

We need JOBS.  Around here, all those "Help wanted" signs we used to see have been replaced with "NOT hiring. Don't waste your time or ours by trying to apply." signs.  And, unlike under Bush's idea of "job creation", just any $6 per hour, 25 hours per week job won't do.  We want GOOD jobs that pay enough to buy a car and pay the mortgage, not just enough to buy a pound of beans and a loaf of bread.  Many of us were making $25 per hour, working 40 to 50 hours per week and had health care and retirement benefits when Bush took office.  Now the former construction and factory workers are pushing carts at Wal-Mart 30 hours per week for $6 an hour.  Just because they changed the way unemployment is counted doesn't mean that the people whose unemployment ran out, or the people who are working part-time for minimum wage because they can't find a real job,or the people who just completely gave up looking aren't still unemployed.  U6, the REAL unemployment rate, and the way unemployment was counted during the Great Depression, is now over 11%.  That's WORSE than in 1930 and part of 1931, the first 2 years of the Great Depression.  The Bush League philosophy that "A job is a job" won't work.  Replacing a $1,250 per week full-time job with benefits with a $150 per week part-time job just doesn't work for us anymore.

We need HEALTH CARE.  And not a system that costs $1,000 per month for insurance through a HMO whose deductibles and copays will stick us with enough of a bill that we will still have to go bankrupt if we get sick and  won't allow us to pick our own doctor or challenge them when they say we really don't need to be treated for congestive heart failure or kidney disease.

We need to feel SAFE.  That means killing Bin Laden and breaking the Taliban.  Who cares if Iraq is run by the Sunni or Shia?  Let them figure it out; they had nothing to do with the bombing of the trade center, and we are much better off buying their oil than making enemies on both sides by taking it.  Iraq was never a threat, and our soldiers shouldn't have to die for the sake of Maliki and his propped-up governmnent.  The Shia and Sunni have been fighting for over 1,400 years. They won't play nice with each other if we stay there another 100 years. They are a threat to each other, not us.  But there are plenty of REAL threats out there. And most of them have one thing in common:

We need to stop depending on imported oil.  This really should be our #1 NATIONAL SECURITY concern.  That is the reason why we are in the mideast and terrorists worldwide all have a bullseye on us. The $15 billion you're proposing to fix the problem is like spitting in the ocean, when we buy $700 billion dollars' worth of foreign oil each year, mostly from countries that hate us, and whose governments we have to keep propped up in order to keep the oil flowing. It's one of the biggest drains on our economy, too.  We are going to spend more than $1 TRILLION dollars on our military this year:  $636 billion for the defense department, about $180 billion for the wars, $93.7 billion for the VA, $58.2 billion for Homeland Security; there are a few dozen other programs that cost less than $50 billion each, and I don't feel like listing them all.   If we spent half that much on energy independence, we could build enough wind and solar power plants to provide the entire nation's power supply for the next 100 years.  Cheap, renewable energy for everyone without polluting the environment vs. trying to maintain a world empire and continue an unpopular war halfway across the world and having to spend $700 billion dollars per year buying oil from countries that hate us, like Iran, Iraq and Venezuela, all just because we need their oil .  We really have to think about this one?

We need to fix our INFRASTRUCTURE.  Over the last 8 years, TOTAL military spending has increased from $290 billion per year to over $1 TRILLION.  Spending all of our money on the

military for 8 years has allowed our roads, bridges, levees and

electrical grid to go to hell.  The netherlands have levees that can

withstand a once in 1,000 years hurricane.  The levees here can't

withstand a once in 10 years tropical storm.  If we want to remain a

world power and an industrial powerhouse, our roads and bridges have to

be world-class, not third-world jokes.

And, speaking of industry, our INDUSTRIAL BASE has been falling apart since Reagan.  We need to rebuild our industries; a service economy is a NOT healthy in the long run.  We need to build things that we can sell to each other and the rest of the world.  If we don't rebuild our industrial base, we won't be a world power in 30 years.  We need to encourage factories to return to America instead of encouraging them to outsource their production facilities to the third world.

We need to BREAK UP THE MONOPOLIES that have caused many of the problems in our economy today.  Monopolies and oligopolies are the antithesis of free enterprise.  Paulson talks about them as "too big to fail".  In reality, they are too big to survive.  Instead of letting a moron like Paulson convince the sinking banks to buy more banks and make themselves even bigger, we should be breaking any bank that becomes that large into several smaller, competing banks which can't do massive damage to the entire system when they fall. No business should be allowed to become large enough that if it fails, it can destroy the entire economy.  The deregulation that allowed banks, insurance companies and investment firms to intermingle may very well force the entire nation into another Great Depression, and maybe even to the brink of bankruptcy.  And even massive duopolies like ATT and Verizon, Coke and Pepsi, etc. whose failure wouldn't destroy the entire nation are not good for customers; without competition, there is very little reason to reduce prices and create newer, better products.  The consumers are hurt badly by these non-competitive industries.

That's enough for one day.  After you fix those, we can get started on education, global warming, the homeless, 1/3 of whom are disabled veterans, the housing and mortgage crisis, banking regulation, raising the minimum wage, stopping illegal immigration and making a fair, responsible path to citizenship for legal immigrants, the drug problem, fixing Bush laws that destroyed our rights, like privacy and free speech, against illegal search and seizure, etc.

By day 3 you might be asking for a recount.  I can guarantee that this is going to be one of the hardest jobs in the world, and the country hasn't had this many problems at once in the last 70 years or more, if ever.  Bush left you with a real train wreck, at least as bad as that which Hoover passed on to Roosevelt.  Let's hope that you are worthy of Roosevelt's mantle as a transformational figure in American history, and capable of taking this country into a bold new direction and facing great challenges with determination and confidence in the future of this great country.

When we subtract the social security surplus from the budget, we can see just how badly the Bush administration has mismanaged our national budget.  Bush has made it common policy to keep Social Security cost of living increases down, so that the Social Security tax surplus can be used to finance our military and pork barrel spending.  The 2009 U.S. budget shows us something about the state of the Social Security system in the USA today.

Social Security Taxes Collected:  $949.4 billion

Social Security expenditures:  $644 billion

Social Security surplus:  $305.4 billion

While many of our old people are forced to eat dog food, can't go to the doctor because they can't afford to pay their Medicare copays, and can't buy heating gas for the winter, the Federal government takes that extra $305 billion dollars, which would equal an extra $470 per month for every Social Security recipient in the U.S., and uses it for such wasteful nonsense as bridges to nowhere, to studying the DNA of bears.  It just issues new Treasury Bills to the SS trust fund, which it has no intention of ever actually redeeming. LIke the banks, our government is selling us a bill of goods while ripping off our elderly.

We need to separate Social Security from the Federal budget, and we need to spend the social security taxes that our government collects on our seniors, not for financing pork in the budget.  I would prefer a pay-as-you-go type system, in which the taxes collected are divided between the senior citizens now, rather than keeping the cost of living increases below the actual amount that their bills have risen, and spending the extra money on pork barrel politics.  That $305 billion dollars per year is basically just stolen from our seniors every year by a government that has become so bloated that it can't collect enough taxes to pay for its largesse.

Under Bush, if we subtract the Social Security surplus and add in the off-budget spending, he has averaged spending about $650 BILLION dollars more each year than our government has collected in taxes, at the expense of our Senior Citizens, the part of the population which is the least able to defend itself, while lowering taxes for corporations and the rich, and subsidizing the losses of the banking industry, all at the expense of those who have worked hard all theri lives and earned the right to live without hunger or in fear of freezing to death in their declining years.

President-elect Obama wants to make health care a priority.  However, the money has to come from somewhere. He hasn't really said much about what specific programs that he would cut or eliminate to pay for it.

Obama's health care program will cost us about $50 billion per year. What programs can we cut without causing chaos throughout the land?  I'm not a politician, so I can call the drug problem a health care problem and talk about eliminating some spending that would be political hot potatoes.  Here are a few candidates for McCain's Hatchet and Obama's Scalpel.

Why do we spend a TOTAL of just $543 million dollars on food inspections, but the Agruculture department has a budget of $20.8 billion dollars, mostly subsidies for large farm corporations? The Agriculture dept. spends more on executive salaries than the government budgets to make sure that all of the food in the country is safe???  This turkey is the #1 target for some serious pruning.

The failed "No Child Left Behind" act, which left about half of our children behind, costs $21.2 billion dollars per year.   I think we can safely leave it behind.  However, we still need to spend money on other, better education projects, so we can't use all of the money that we save there.

On the other hand, any national health care initiative will include health care for Native Americans, so we should be able to cut the $3.325 billion dollar Indian Health initiative.

Of the $68 billion dollar total Health and Human Services budget, about 1/3 could be combined with the Medicare system easily, saving tremendous amounts of administrative expenses.   H&H can probably save $5 billion pretty easily.

HUD spends $16 billion dollars per year on rent subsidies to tenants, and another $7 billion per year in subsidies to construction companies and landlords. The former could be better used for building low-income housing for the elderly.  The latter is a total waste of money that could be better spent elsewhere.

Does the Department of the Interior really need $10.6 billion dollars to fight wild fires and operate the national parks?  Last time I went to a park, there were so many "Nominal" fees that 2 days in the wilderness cost more than a season pass to Six Flags.  They should be able to cut some costs or cut their prices and make themselves pretty much self-sufficient, like the Postal Service should be.

The Unemployment Insurance Administration should raise its fees if it needs more money, instead of billing the Fed $2.6 billion dollars per year.

I don't have any interest in paying $128 million for the Endowment for the Arts or $144 million for the Endowment for the Humanities.

$764 million for Refugee Immigration assistance just doesn't seem like that great of an idea to me.

I really don't know what the Millennium Challenge is, but it costs $2.22 billion; I need a little description of anything that expensive.

I know Israel is an ally, but it has plenty of money.  Why do we give the Israelis $2.55 billion dollars per year?  While I'm at it, why does Egypt need $1.3 billion per year?  What have they done for us lately?

The Postal Service should be self-sufficient most of the time.  It required a $3.8 billion dollar government infusion this year??

One big-ticket item to cut will be drug enforcement. This should be a local health issue, not a federal crime, to begin with. Drug enforcement is working about as well as Prohibition did at the beginning of the last century. By turning a large percentage of the population into criminals, creating massive corruption among law enforcement, and spending massive amounts of money to keep 3 million people in jail, and arresting an average of 14 million people per year, the government is managing to spend far more trying to enforce drug laws than it would cost to treat the addicts as part of a comprehensive health care policy. Here's just a part of what the new strategy would save:

1.  Department of Justice:  about half of their total spending of $22.3 billion dollars per year is involved in drug law enforcement.  We could save about $10 billion per year there.

2.  DEA: $2 billion.  The states should regulate and enforce laws against recreational drugs, not the Federal government.

3.  Health and Human Services department of Substance Abuse: $3.025 billion. 

4.  Department of Homeland Security: Coast Guard drug interdiction efforts:  $722 million

5.  International Narcotics agency:  $1.2 billion

6. Department of Education:  Department of Drug Free Schools:  $282 million

7.  The Customs department spends a large portion of its $9.4 billion dollar budget on drug enforcement.  Estimated savings:  $3 billion per year

8.  Over half of federal prisoners are non-violent drug offenders.  It should be easy to cut $2 billion or so from the $5.5 billion federal prison budget.

9.  Army, navy, Air Force and Marine drug enforcement efforts combine for several billion dollars per year; due to the intricacy of their budgets, and the fact that at least $45 billion of their spending is classified, it would be impossible to determine the exact savings.

10.  A large chunk of Homeland Security's $5.4 billion dollars per year Customs Enforcement department is used for drug enforcement.  We could save about $2 billion there.

11.   Andean counter-drug Initiative: $407 million

All totaled, we could save about $20 billion per year in federal spending by treating the drug problem as a health care issue instead of a criminal issue.

That's a start.  I didn't touch anything that cost less than $100 million dollars per year, and I didn't mention any of the MASSIVE amounts of military spending that are wasted on bases that should be closed, redundant services, no-bid contracts, weapons systems that nobody wants, outdated systems that should have been canceled years ago, or the $1.1 trillion dollars that the military has simply lost over the past decade, and refuses to account for.   I also didn't mention the war in Iraq, or any of the other military expenses that could be reduced if we withdraw from that war.

Now for a couple of items that need MORE money:  The Consumer Product Safety Commission.  It needs at least a few more million to be able to stop China from killing us with poisoned toys and defective tires.   Ditto for food safety inspections.

I'm not running for any office, so I can suggest cutting some stuff that nobody who can be voted out of office would dare touch.  If anybody else knows of something that the government should cut, or if you want to defend a program that I would slice and dice, please post it.

Let's consider a new direction for the Republican party.  Or rather, an old one.  Too many people have confused the definitions of liberal and conservative, giving up the old ideals of freedom, responsibility, small government and fiscal responsibility, in favor of massive deficits, huge government spending increases, less freedom, not holding the people whose criminal behavior caused the banking crisis responsible for their own actions, wars of opportunity, and trampling of the Constitution under Bush.  We need to remember that Conservative doesn't mean Fundamentalist Evangelist War Hawk. 

A short, simple platform:

1.  Small government.

2.  Low taxes.

3.  Personal Freedom.

4.   Free enterprise.

5.  Mostly Pro-business policies, but which promote a level playing field, not policies which encourage predatory practices, monopolies, businesses becoming "too big to fail" and creative accounting.

6.  High standards for education.

7.   A balanced budget, except in times of war.

8.   Social Security should be separate from the rest of government spending, and surpluses should be spent to increase benefits, decrease payroll taxes, or they may be invested in high-quality municipal bonds.  They should not be used to finance massive government deficits.

9.  Strong defense.

10.  Strict limits to immigration.

11.   Basic family values, NOT an intermingling of Church and State.

12.   A healthy respect for the ENTIRE Bill of Rights, not just the 2nd amendment.

We need two parties which both are viable choices for the majority of Americans, not two parties which cater to the fringes on either side.  The 80% of us that aren't on the far-left and far-right fringes want a real choice between two strong leaders, either of which will be able to lead the entire country. Believe it or not, if both sides actually agree on a few basic concepts, the world won't grind to a halt.

I would recommend a Dachshund.  Besides their loyalty and high intelligence, they have a mischievious quality unlike any other breed.  A short-haired dachshund is hypoallergenic, and they range in size from under 10 pounds to about 30 pounds.  For small children, I would recommend the latter.  One caveat:  Dachshunds are fiercely loyal to their owner.  When they decide who that is, there is no changing their mind.  They are social animals, who love attention, and will do practically anything to be the center of attention.  However, like Britney, Paris, etc. they don't realize the difference between getting attention because they did something good or bad.  Attention is attention to them.  Another problem is that, like a cat, they have more curiosity than is healthy; dachshunds seldom live long enough to die of old age.  As the owner of several dachshunds over the years, I have found that accidental deaths are common to the species.  Such things as climbing up a ladder to the roof and jumping off, tackling a Doberman while at the vet's office because one decided to tear a tennis ball apart and eat the rubber center, digging under the fence and walking to the highway to play in traffic, tackling a rattlesnake, attacking a badger, etc. mean that they generate large numbers of vet bills and short lives.

Another excellent choice would be a Boston Terrier.  Another smart, mischievious breed that is excellent with children. They are highly social, and would think that everyone who comes to visit is there just to visit them. They live for attention, and will really ham it when they think anybody will notice.

I wouldn't recommend a chihuahua.  They are excellent for a private home without children, but they are really frail and delicate, and they have a tendency to have an attitude, and sometimes want to fight much larger dogs, be overly protective of their owners, and bite people who they think are a threat to said owner, all of which seems strange when you consider the fact that they are the size of a large mouse.

The short answer is NO.  Not unless GM can be fixed, not just kept on life support indefinitely.

I'm going to try to do an objective analysis, but I must admit that I have mixed feelings about GM.  My first car was a 1974 Camaro; I loved that old car.  However, in the mid-1980s, my father finally saved the money to buy a Cadillac Cimarron.  He was a veteran, and always bought American, when he could. Having grown up in the Great Depression, he didn't buy anything on credit; if he couldn't pay cash, he didn't buy it.  He saved for years to buy that car.  He had always wanted a new Cadillac. Even though it was just the bottom-of-the-line model, he was so proud that he owned a Cadillac. It should have been painted yellow, the color of lemons.  It was a steaming pile of you-know-what. He tried his best to make excuses for all of its problems, but it was no use.  After his high expectations, he was so disappointed that it would almost make you cry.

But GM's descent from its glory days to the practice of selling high-priced lemons at the cost of their reputation are all in the past. That was then, this is now.

Let's tell the truth here.  GM's lobbyists have been saying the economy

would lose millions and millions of jobs if we allow it to go

bankrupt.  The truth is that while GM has 255,000 employees worldwide,

it only has 72,000 union workers left in the U.S.; the majority of its

work force are based in other countries. IF the lobbyists are telling the truth, and the failure of GM would lead to a chain reaction that would cause the collapse of thousands of busiinesses and cost

tens of millions of Americans their jobs, resulting in a financial

Armageddon that would destroy the entire U.S. economy, then it is "Too

Big To Fail", just like the huge mega-banks, and would cause a death

spiral ending in the end of Civilization if it were allowed to go

bankrupt.  I don't buy the lobbyists' BS, but it really would hurt an already weak

economy for several thousand more people to become unemployed. Let's examine this a little closer.

If GM went bankrupt, not only wouldn't it cause the death of the economy, it wouldn't even put all of its own production workers out of a job. Some of them work in the area of parts;

even if GM never produced another car, AC Delco would still sell parts

for many years. GM's non-union white collar workers at GMAC don't neet to worry; the financial arm is valuable; it would remain open for business.  Besides, Cerberus owns more than half of that division. And many of GM's plants could remain open during a bankruptcy, and even after a liquidation.  Other automakers would buy several former GM plants; they may begin producing Toyotas or Hondas, but they would still be making something.  Out of the 72,000 current GM US workers, about 1/3 would probably lose their jobs.  But they will lose their jobs anyway, as GM tries to cut all of the product lines that cannibalize each other.  Only a complete moron will make 5 or 6 almost identical vehicles, put different names on them and call them different product lines, then say that they won't cannibalize each other's sales. 

In other words, a GM bankruptcy would probably cost about 25,000 jobs or less.  And the government could force GM to assure those workers that they would be retrained and given financial assistance for a year or so.  $100,000 per displaced worker would just be $2.5 billion, a pittance compared to just the down payment on the bailout.

Another problem with bailing out GM is that GM's share of that $25 billion initial bailout will probably be about $12 billion. That's like spitting in the ocean.  GM has less than $110 billion in assets and nearly $169 billion in debts.  It lost $43 billion dollars last year, and expects to lose another $40 billion or so again this year.  It lost $15.5 billion between March and June, and it lost another $4.2 billion from July thru September.  In terms of cash flow, it lost $6.9 billion this last quarter.  It had about $16 billion in cash left on September 31, but it had $6 billion in bills due on October 2nd.  In other words, it has about $10 billion left, and it's losing over $2 billion per month.  Unless it sells something big, it will run out of money by spring.  $12 billion just means that it will have enough money to last till the fall, IF the economy improves.  If the economy continues to be as bad as it was during this past summer, that $12 billion will last less than 3 months.  In that case, it will need another $12 billion by mid-July. Unless GM can get its burn rate under control, it's going to need $40 billion PER YEAR, EVERY YEAR just to stay alive, even more if we expect it to keep doing research so it can build those new electric and fuel cell vehicles that it should have been working hard to produce 10 years ago.  And it's just ONE of the Big 3.  It is going to cost $60 billion dollars per year to keep the auto industry alive through this recession. 

But then we have another problem:  if it just keeps doing business as usual, like the current CEO wants to do, will people still want those gas hogs, when some of the smaller, more efficient, more technologically savvy companies from China and Japan, and even here in the U.S., for that matter, begin producing viable fuel cell, hybrid and electric vehicles?  Here are some of the first-gen electrical vehicles that are coming onto the market right now.

GM: Big 3 US auto company.

2010 Volt.  Range:  40 miles.  Performance:  N/A.  Expected to be 0 to 60 in about 15 seconds Top Speed:  100 mph  Price: about  $40,000

Tesla:  U.S. specialty electric auto company. 

2008 Tesla Roadster:  Range:  244 miles.  Performance:  0 to 60 in under 4 seconds. Top speed:  125 mph  Price: about $100,000

This car is produced by Lotus in England and imported to the U.S.

Nelico:  car company based in India.

2008 NEL 4000 XP:  Range:  100 miles.  Performance:  N/A.  Estimated:  0-60 in about 10 seconds. Top speed:  70 mph.  Price:  about $5,000

Wuxi Chituma:  Chinese auto company. 

http://motoctm.en.alibaba.com/product/200055678/203882509/electronic_three_wheel/CTM_B_Electric_car.html

2007 CTM B:  Range:  100 miles.  Performance:  top speed; 65 kph (about 50 mph).  Price:  $5,000

Golden Motor:  Chinese auto company.

2008 4000 W: Range:  100 miles.  Performance:  top speed; 65 kph (about 50 mph).  Price:  about $5,000 

Thunder Sky:  Chinese battery company:  They make electric buses.  VERY nice buses. 

http://www.thunder-sky.com/pdf/6100EV.pdf

2008 6100 EV:  This 40 passenger bus has a top speed of 60 mph and a range of 300 miles.

If Thunder Sky decides to enter the electrical passenger car market,  they could easily dominate the Chinese EV market within a couple of years, if they produced the same quality and range available for their commercial vehicle offerings at reasonable prices.

None of the foreign companies could sell their products here; our auto industry has used our regulatory agencies to pretty much eliminate any competition from smaller companies.  However, several large auto companies will be mass producing practical EVs and fuel cell vehicles soon.  Everything from Toyota to VW will have the millions of dollars necessary to get regulatory approval to sell their offerings here.  Unless GM can compete with the upcoming 2nd generation hybrids, fuel cell and electrical vehicles, its days are numbered.

In short, GM is a bad bet for individual investors.  It might be a good investment for the government, but only if the government actually BUYS the company, fires the management, and remakes it into a company that is focused on research and innovation, until it is capable of competing against the rest of the world by producing technologically superior, fuel efficient vehicles.  If it just keeps making those third-rate gas hogs that it has been pushing for the last decade, as its current CEO seems to want to do, it will fade to oblivion no matter how many times it is bailed out.

We REALLY need a competitive auto industry if we are going to remain a superpower.  If we let China, India and Japan  produce practical, reasonably priced hybrids and EVs while our own auto industry claims that it's beyond their ability, we are going to lose our reputation as a leader in technology and innovation.

While I am in favor of more regulation in the banking industry, my solution for the auto industry would be LESS regulation, a much faster and cheaper method of approving new vehicle models for small companies, and financial incentives for new, competitive car companies to be incorporated, rather than trying to keep this aging titan alive.   If we had 26 small, competing car companies, like China does now, several of them could go bankrupt without causing much damage to the economy as a whole.  The whole US policy of allowing companies to become near-monopolies that are "too big to fail" is preposterous.

Supply and demand.  It's that simple.

The problem with the U.S. auto industry is that they are supplying the U.S. market with massive amounts of huge gas-guzzling monstrosities.  There isn't much demand for those cars.  It doesn't look like they know their customers very well. That's nothing new; they have been losing market share for decades.

When I was young, people would start out with a basic Chevy.  If they had a little money and wanted to look cool and buy a sports car that was still cheap to own and operate, they would buy a Mustang

or Trans Am,

or a Corvette as an expensive sports car, guys bought a tough, dependable Ford truck to work and haul stuff with, and people bought a Cadillac or Lincoln

Continental as they got older and wanted a luxury car. Back then, American companies dominated the field, and they were known for quality, durability, reliability and they were a status symbol.  That has all changed over the last 3 decades. The cars that people think of as the best in each group aren't American made anymore.  In many areas, American cars are at the very bottom of the list. That was then, this is now.

People working with limited finances think of a Toyota or a Honda Civic.  GM killed the U.S. economy car market when it introduced a string of cars that had lifespans of less than 80,000 miles and problems from day 1, while Toyotas and Hondas are known for their long, trouble-free lifespans.

Families want cheap, reliable cars that get good gas mileage and are still large enough to fit a family of two adults and three kids. Think Toyota RAV 4. 

Young adults want cool cars that won't turn off members of the opposite sex but don't cost much to own or operate, since they will have a  low-level salary. Think Mitsubishi Eclipse.

Older, divorced men looking for a trophy wife want a cool sports car that the younger men want but can't afford. Think Porsche.

Older people want a nice, comfortable luxury car.  Think Lexus or Mercedes.

Prestige is one of the biggest factors in buying a car.  Let's face it:  Your car is a status symbol. The "Wow factor" as you drive your new car to your house and show it off to your friends and neighbors is one of the biggest drivers of demand in the entire auto industry.  And that pride of ownership is something that the U.S. auto industry has worked diligently for decades to destroy.  In the early late 60s, a Ford Mustang or a Chevy Camaro was a great muscle car.  Their owners were proud of their cars. So were the owners of Cadillacs and Lincoln Continentals.  Then the car companies mortgaged their names and reputations with things like the Cadillac Cimarron, Mustangs and Camaros with 4-banger engines that were so weak that they would barely pull the car, economy cars that were designed to last less than 70,000 miles before needing major repairs, while their Japanese competitors lasted for hundreds of thousands of miles with practically no repair expenses.  The lack of quality meant that people lost their sense of pride in owning a U.S. built luxury or muscle car; now, the people who are the proudest of their cars are driving a Prius, a Lexus or a Mercedes.  The American brands aren't a status symbol anymore.  If you bought a foreign car 30 years ago, you would be thought of as a traitor or at least a cheapskate who couldn't afford to buy American; if you bought an American car today, you would be laughed at as a fool who wastes his money on high-priced junk.

When the total demand for autos dropped over the last few months, it wasn't just the Big Three that felt the pain.  However, they felt it more than the rest, because they were already on the ropes.  They have been losing customers every year for decades, because they were building massive supplies of cars that people didn't want.  Meanwhile, their foreign competitors were paying attention to the customers' needs and providing cheaper, more reliable, more fuel efficient cars that people could be proud to own.

Fixing the U.S. auto industry is as simple as the companies listening to their customers and making cars that their customers will be proud of, instead of ashamed of. 

But that won't help in the short run; right now, the Big Three have millions of unsold monstrosities sitting at dealerships all over the country.  They desperately need to cut prices and offer some really good incentives to get rid of them before they run out of cash.

It will be very painful for the GM to quit just making the same car and putting 15 different labels on it, and going back to the practice of making cheap Chevys, Pontiac sports cars, luxurious Cadillacs that are each well-designed for their target markets, instead of just sticking different names on the same car over and over again.  But that is the only way that they can survive in the long run. 

We need to remember that the $25 billion is just a down payment.  GM already owes $60 billion more than it has in assets, and it is losing between $30 to $45 billion PER YEAR.  It will take at least $120 billion just to fix the problems that the numbskulls at GM have managed to create, probably much more. And Mr. Wagner thinks that the best way to spend the bailout money is just to continue "business as usual". The U.S. government should require the resignations of ALL top management and install some people who can fix the problems before approving the bailout.  Each installment should require that the new management meets certain goals, like trimming the offerings to a reasonable number, consolidating divisions, technological innovation.  And the government debt should be given first priority over all other debts, if GM still can't survive, which will be a real possibility, even if we shell out $100 billion plus.  We, the taxpayers, should have first priority to get our money back before Wall Street.

I have singled out GM because it is in worse shape than Ford, and Chrysler was taken private by Cerberus, so we really don't know how badly it is doing.  But all three are in pretty bad shape, for all of the same reasons.

GM has a market cap of $1.7 billion.  Ford has a market cap of $3 billion.  Cerberus would probably pay you to take Chrysler off their hands.  $5 billion or so out of the retirees' health care trust fund that you administer would buy the whole Big Three.  Fire the management and run it yourselves.

Seriously, it may be in the UAW's own best interest to just buy GM, due to the terms of the current collective bargaining agreement and the fact that 73,000 UAW members who work there will be out of a job if it goes bankrupt and is liquidated.  Besides, it's altogether possible that the employees could do a better job of running the company than the morons in charge now.

When the UAW took over the pensions of retirees last year,  a big chunk of the funding was GM stock, which is worth practically nothing today. GM's management got the best end of the deal.  The $30 billion in cash that GM shelled out to the UAW when it turned over the liability of paying for the retirees' health care was just 60% of the amount that they would have had to pay the retirees if it hadn't passed off the responsibility to the UAW.  The only way for that pension fund to recoup its losses would be to buy the company, make it profitable again, and thereby make the shares valuable again.

It won't happen, but it's a thought.  :)

I predicted a low of 7,000 last summer.  I think that it's probably still a good guess, but I'm getting a little more pessimistic lately. I'm beginning to think that 6,000 is a more likely bottom.  Why? It's not GM and Citigroup; anybody who could add 1 + 1 could take a cursory glance at their balance sheets a year ago and know that they were headed for a fall.  The next domino to fall will be a great American success story:  Boeing.  It hasn't fallen nearly as far as I would have expected.  Don't get me wrong; Boeing isn't a dog. In the long run, it will survive and prosper.  It has almost $3 billion dollars in REAL shareholder equity. (The other $5.7 billion in equity is "goodwill and intangibles", which don't exist in the real world.).  That's much better than many other companies in the Dow Industrials, whose balance sheets are so "Holy" that when you remove the "goodwill and intangibles" from their books, they have negative equity. 

The problem with Boeing isn't poor management, like GM, or a gambling problem like Citigroup and most of the financial industry.  Boeing's problem is fundamentals.  The economy is in the toilet, so there will be less demand for commercial aerospace products for the next few years.  The military build-up over the last 6 years has been so costly that it has almost bankrupted the country already. There is just no way to justify destroying the country in order to keep increasing the already bloated military budget. Instead of fighting with Airbus and Northrup about who gets the new $35 billion refueling plane contract, it might be fighting to keep some of its current contracts from being cancelled. Even if all of the Pentagon procurement specialists in the world keep saying that they are going to have to increase military spending by over $350 billion per year, you can't convince me that it's anything other than BS.  Our government can't even sustain the current military budget in the face of declining revenues and a total of $4.28 TRILLION and counting in banking industry bailouts, TO DATE, which will probably keep rising.  Citigroup isn't exactly stable right now, and it really is too big to fail.  I can see another multi-hundred-billion dollar bailout in the near future.

CNBC's running tab of the total bailout cost SO FAR THIS YEAR:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/27719011

Therefore, in the face of declining sales and earnings outlooks, I would think that Boeing's stock will probably fall below $30 per share soon.

And that's just based on the economy in general.

Revenue and Labor problems:  http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/2008/q4/081022a_nr.html

Layoffs may intensify:  http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/2008/q4/081119c_nr.html

Despite the state of the economy, Boeing is a survivor, and it will be worth much more than it is now, in a few years.  However, it can't escape reality:  In a global economic collapse, there will be far fewer people flying, so there will be a much lower demand for commercial aircraft for several years. 

Also, while Bush was able to add an average of $650 billion dollars per year to the National Debt every year, for 6 years running, that massive military build-up destroyed the economy; just paying the interest on a $12 trillion national debt is going to mean that the entire Federal government will be in financial trouble soon.  it will be decades before a President will be able to accumulate that much debt to spend on our military again.

Without massive military spending or commercial airlines lining up to buy their planes, Boeing is going to struggle in the face of rapid declines in revenue.  In other words, Boeing is in for a rough ride.  And it's going to take the DOW with it.

Everybody talks about GM.  But nobody is really talking about Ford much.  Why not?  Well, Ford has $25 billion in cash on hand.  It also has $242 billion in assets, about the same amount as its debts.  At its current rate of cash burn, it can probably last a couple of years, but it isn't likely to keep burning cash at the current rate, unlike GM.  Also, Ford only lost $2.7 billion dollars last year, compared with GM's disastrous loss of $43.3 billion.  In other words, with or without a bailout, Ford isn't in imminent danger of failure.

While bankruptcy and possible liquidation may be the only way out for GM, just because Ford is in the same business doesn't mean that it is on life support.  Its future prospects look much better than GM's; it is fairly well positioned to weather the coming financial storm. When the economy comes out of its current death spiral and the temporary reprieve from ever-increasing oil prices is over, and gas hits $5 per gallon, Ford will be much closer to being able to compete in the fuel efficient small car market than GM.

That being said, the fact is, Ford isn't exactly a great bargain; it  has problems.  It is decades behind the rest of the

industry in terms of innovation, and it has some PR problems due to

poor quality in the past, but it is still light years ahead of GM. If I

was investing in an American auto company, Ford would be the one I

would want to own (Actually, Tesla may not be a bad bet, but it isn't a major manufacturer.  Yet.  Also, it's a private company; it hasn't had an IPO.  Yet.).

Here are a few items to think about:

Ford has been embraced by the "Greenies" to some extent, while the half-baked

attempts by GM to make the vastly underpowered "Volt" to placate them has been met

with more scepticism and often downright contempt.  it is making some real attempts to produce better, more fuel efficient, more technologically innovative products.

The 2010 Ford Fusion hybrid will operate on electric power until it reaches 47 mph.   With decent power and 35 mpg, it should be a fairly attractive hybrid offering at $31,055 MSRP.  It won't be the best in the field, but it should have respectable sales figures because it is made by an American company.

http://www.greencar.com/features/fusion-hybrid-paces-nascar/

It probably has a brighter future than the Volt, but I don't expect that it will dominate the industry; it will have some tough competition from the Prius, but Honda's new 45 mpg, $23,550 Civic hybrid will also hurt sales. 

http://automobiles.honda.com/civic-hybrid/price.aspx

In preparation for the long term, Ford is doing a little research into next-gen technologies:  The Ford Edge fuel cell vehicle is actually in

real-world testing, although it currently costs several million dollars each to make them (Ford doesn't have to spend the money to make them, though; they are paid for by us taxpayers, courtesy of the Department Of Energy). The research is still in its early stages, though.  An actual production model is expected within the next 20 to 30 years.

http://www.ford.com/innovation/environmentally-friendly/hydrogen/ford-edge-hyseries/edge-fuel-cell-hybrid-346p

Unfortunately, Honda is already selling fuel cell vehicles.  This year's Honda FC model is leasing for $600 per month, including full maintenance and collision insurance.

http://automobiles.honda.com/fcx-clarity/?from=fcx.honda.com

Ford Mustangs are among the muscle cars of choice for hobbyists doing total electric conversions.  They're building 600 Horse Power, 125 mile range total electric lithium-ion powered Mustangs: 

http://www.greencar.com/features/ronaele/

Unfortunately, Ford is still using NiMH batteries for its hybrid offerings; it claims that lithium ion technology is too expensive, unsafe and at least 10 years from being feasible. Meanwhile, Li-Ion are the current battery of choice for hobbyists and competing manufacturers alike. Ford expects to be able to produce a lithium-ion battery that is capable of powering a car within the next two to three decades.

In other words, Ford needs to take a serious look at its research and development department.  It may need to clean house and bring in some really smart scientists whose ideas of innovation weren't obsolete when Nixon was president.

On another front, Ford has a very expensive labor force in comparison to its competitors.  Foreign companies whose governments pay for health care have much lower costs for those benefits, and, in many cases,  hourly wages are much, much lower than in the U.S.  However, Obama may institute "fair trade" policies which can be used to offset the difference in wages.

Ford has some real problems.  The future for Ford is probably pretty bright, though.  A government bailout of GM would mean that it can survive through April before needing another bailout to last through June, then it will need another one, etc., etc.; in the long run, I just don't see an end to GM's problems short of either firing all of its top management, slashing production and becoming a much smalller, more efficient company, or filing for bankruptcy. GM's board will do neither, until it's too late.  When GM is either ultimately liquidated and the new owner (s) close down all of the superfluous and unprofitable divisions, or the judge appoints a new management team to trim it down a manageable size, Ford will be in an excellent position to dominate the U.S. auto market, despite the technology gap, the reputation gap, the quality gap and its higher cost of labor in comparison to foreign competition.  I would guess that Ford's stock will be above $10 per share within a few years.

If GM falls, we might actually have a boom in domestic auto

manufacturing, as the smaller, more agile companies step up to create a

new, more efficient, more innovative, highly competitive auto industry. Like computers in the 1990s, innovation may mean that people would want to buy a new car because it was vastly superior to last year's model, not just because the head lights were slightly different.

The future is looking increasingly green, electrical and fuel efficient, with no emissions to contribute to greenhouse gases. $4 per gallon gas spurred a wave of innovation and literally dozens of start-up companies with some pretty good ideas.

Here's a list of some of the more promising Zero Emission Vehicles and their manufacturers: 

TESLA, a start-up based in California, and ran by some of the creators of Google, PayPal and SpaceX, just received a $40 million loan, and it expects to receive another $250 million in financing next year to build a manufacturing plant in California to begin production of the Model S family sedan, its second line.  Its first offering was the Roadster, a high-end luxury muscle car that sells for $109,000.  Both the Roadster and Model S have something in common:  They don't burn any gas.  They are total electric, zero-emission vehicles.

Tesla is well past Tucker's record of 50 cars; as of the first of the month, they had just started production of Roadster #137. Sharp looking cars, too.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3233/3006740292_69dfd2c156_b.jpg

The Tesla Roadster is pretty impressive, 0 to 60 in under 4 seconds, and a 244 mile range at highway speeds, but very few people can afford $109,000 for a high-end sports car. Only 1,250 customers have been willing to pony up the "nominal" $60,000 fee to be put onto the waiting list so far.  At the current rate of production of 10 per week, that's only a backlog of a little over 2 years.  They are hoping to triple production, in order to shorten the wait time to just one year or less.  Even if we could afford a Roadster, most of us don't feel like waiting a week for our new car, much less two years.  Besides, it's fun, sleek and sexy, but not very practical for a family.

That's why Tesla plans to introduce the Model S as a production model; they hope to be able to make them as fast as they can sell them:  

http://www.roadandtrack.com/article.asp?section_id=10&article_id=7201

This sleek and sexy 4-door family car is all-electric, with a top end over 100 mph, 0 to 60 in less than 6 seconds, has a range of nearly 300 miles, and has been designed by some of the top engineers in the business. It has been compared favorably to the Porsche Panamera.

THINK:  Formerly a Ford company. Ford spent over $150 million developing the Think solely as a way to comply with California environmental laws, but abandoned it in 2003, after GM managed to kill the California laws concerning zero-emissions vehicles. The car was never supposed to be anything more than a PR ploy.  However,  an entrepreneur in Norway named Willums bought it for $15 million, and has received $78 million in investment capital after turning the "horrid" little electric car into something that people would actually want to drive. Located in Norway, and powered by

Tesla Li-Ion batteries, this little economy car just might make the

phrase "Have you driven a Fjord lately" popular.  It will cost about

$15,000 and should be available in the U.S. market by 2010. It is expected to have a range of about 125 miles.

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2007/08/01/100138830/index.htm

It has also developed a neat little minivan:

http://gas2.org/2008/06/23/thnk-ox-an-electric-car-with-style-and-smarts/

MILES EV:

This American start-up company has received an initial round of financing of $15 million, and expects to receive substantial additional financing once it has completed its safety crash tests.  Unfortunately, while the engineering is American, the cars will actually be built in China.

http://www.milesev.com/index.asp#

The unimaginative name "Highway Speed" describes this car pretty well:  This car is the opposite of the Tesla; it's NOT sleek or sexy; it is

designed as a reasonably priced alternative for middle-class families.  It will cruise at 80 mph and has a range of just over 100 miles.  After rebates and tax credits, it will sell for about $30,000, depending on options; it will have a 100,000 mile warranty and should appeal to commuters who need a dependable car to drive to work and run errands every day.  A full charge will cost less than $2.  The price is still a little steep, but it will probably become cheaper if it sells enough units to get some volume discounts from its suppliers.

MICHELIN:  That's right, the tire company.  It designed a very innovative electric motor decades ago.  Now, a French auto company  has decided to build an electric powered car using Michelin technology.  The 2012 VENTURI VOLTAGE will travel 199 miles on a charge, and have a top speed of 93 mph, far beyond the speed limit in that country. Don't expect the U.S. to approve them for import anytime soon, though.  Also, if you think U.S.wages are high, the Voltage will be assembled in Monaco!

http://www.luxury-insider.com/Current_Affairs/post/2008/10/Venturi-Voltage-EV-Unveiled-in-Paris.aspx

PHOENIX MOTORCARS:

This company is located in California now, but kept the name Phoenix.  They produce total electric 4-doored trucks and SUVs.  Their vehicles will only travel a little over 100 miles on a charge, though.  Also, at about $45,000, they are a little pricey for a pickup truck.

http://www.phoenixmotorcars.com/vehicles/phoenix-sut.php

The really neat item about these is that they can travel over 100 miles on a 10 minute charge.  The time required to charge the batteries has been a major reason why people prefer the convenience of a gasoline engine.

CHEVY VOLT:

30 years ago, this car would have been 10 years ahead of its time.  Unfortunately, at $40,000 plus options, probably making a fully-equipped model close to $50,000, it's a 4-door compact with the look of a slightly modified Cobalt.  It only seats 4, because it has a battery compartment in the middle of the back seat, and with a range of just 40 miles, it's not exactly the king of the hill today.  Its small gasoline motor will extend the range to about that of the rest of the pack.  However, its 0 to 60 in just under 10 seconds performance at a full charge is distinctly subpar; if it's that slow with a full charge, you can imagine how badly it would perform once the battery is depleted.  i haven't seen any data about the top speed.  Also, it's really just an overrated gas/electric hybrid, which should really be classified with the Prius and Civic hybrid, NOT a zero-emission vehicle. 

Chrysler:  Evidently, they think that their "green" customers don't know the difference between a golf cart and a car.  I doubt that they will be competitive in the next 50 years.

http://www.gemcar.com/

Ford:  Nothing in the works, as far as I know. However, some Mustang enthusiasts have been doing their own total electric conversions, like this 600-hp, 0 to 60 in under 4 secs, 125 mile range powerhouse.

http://www.greencar.com/features/ronaele/

FOREIGN COMPETITION:

BMW:  MINI-E:

http://carscoop.blogspot.com/2008/10/mini-all-electric-plug-in-mini-cooper.html

This

is a cute little car.  It goes from 0 to 62 in 8.5 seconds and has a

range of 150 miles, both on the low end.  It has 204 horsepower, but

the ECM limits it to a top speed of 95 mph.  I'm sure that if it

becomes popular, somebody will produce an after-market ECM that will

allow it to bybass that limit.  They are currently accepting lease

applications at $850/month.

LIGHTNING: A London company which plans to compete with other high-end corporate commuter cars.

http://www.lightningcarcompany.co.uk/economical.php

A lithium battery manufacturer in China called Thunder-Sky is currently producing 40-passenger commercial buses with a range of over 300 miles at 80 mph. It is entering the electric powered motorcycle and scooter markets.  It is considering entering the auto market.  As a manufacturer, with low production and labor costs, it could be a real game changer.

THE X-PRIZE:

The X-Prize for space exploration managed to stimulate innovation in that field. Now, it has decided to offer an X-prize for automotive innovation. It is giving away $10 million to the inventor of the best new "green" car technology this time.

http://www.progressiveautoxprize.org/teams

A few examples of the caliber of the competition:

WRIGHTSPEED:  the X-1 is 0 to 60 in 3 seconds and tops out at 112 miles per hour in first gear.  Probable top end in high gear should be well over 200 mph.

http://www.wrightspeed.com/x1.html

VELOZZI:  http://www.velozzi.org/ 

FISKER: http://www.fiskerautomotive.com/vehicles/features/ 

FUEL CELL VEHICLES:

HONDA US FCX:

http://automobiles.honda.com/fcx-clarity/?from=fcx.honda.com

The FCX gets 72 MPG and has been in production since 2005.

http://corporate.honda.com/press/article.aspx?id=4651

Honda currently offers the FC for three-year leases at $600 per month, including maintenance and collision insurance. 

Honda is playing with some neat concept cars.  It is designing some really FAST fuel cell powered vehicles for its next-gen FC technology.

http://carscoop.blogspot.com/2008/11/la-show-honda-fc-sport-fuel-cell-design.html

KIA FCEV:

http://carscoop.blogspot.com/2008/11/la-show-kia-borrego-fcev-with-fuel-cell.html

Kia's fuel cell SUV gets an impressive 54 mpg.  For a 5,000 pound SUV, the 0 to 60 in 12 + seconds isn't all that bad.  It has a range of over 400 miles.

GM:  The 2008 Equinox fuel cell car looks horrible, but it does the job.  It did win a few awards despite looking like the Wicked Witch's uglier sister.

http://www.greencar.com/features/vision-award/

FORD currently has a fuel cell model in testing; it claims to be the "world's first", although I don't know what fantasy world it may be talking about.  The U.S. Department of Energy is paying the production cost, which is "several million dollars" each.  It expects to have a street-ready model in approximately 20 years. 

http://www.ford.com/innovation/environmentally-friendly/hydrogen/ford-edge-hyseries/edge-fuel-cell-hybrid-346p

TOYOTA:  Like Ford, it's behind the 8-ball, but it does have some pretty far-out ideas.

http://www.toyota.com/concept-vehicles/fines.html

HYBRIDS:

HONDA:

They are producing the CIVIC HYBRID and the 2010 INSIGHT HYBRID appears to be a really great economy car:

TOYOTA:  With its 45 mpg fuel economy and leadership position in the hybrid market, I have to mention the PRIUS, even though it is getting a little long in the tooth; the next generation of hybrids will have more power, more distinctive design and even better fuel mileage. Of course, the new Prius will be introduced in less than 2 months, and Toyota may be able to keep its leadership position in the field.

GM:  They are offering hybrid models for their larger vehicles, like the Tahoe and Malibu.  The Volt will be their first real economy car hybrid, to be launched in 2010 amid great fanfare.  The fuel economy and performance of the vehicle AFTER the 40 mile electric charge is exhausted will make or break this one.

When gas rose toward $5 per gallon, many of us who had never even thought about fuel economy before suddenly had to decide whether to fill up the tank or pay the bills.  Now that gas is back below $2 per gallon, just twice what we were paying in 2000, we may forget about the idea of buying fuel efficient cars.  But the innovation by the start-ups who saw the opportunity to launch new electric and hybrid cars has started a chain reaction that is likely to give us better fuel mileage and lower emissions, whether we want them or not. 

The truth is that as long as the dollar remains strong, we will have cheap gas.  When the dollar takes a nose dive, like it did from 2002-2008, we pay more for everything that we import, including oil.  During this panic, foreign investors have flocked to the dollar for safety, but that won't last; the dollar will be devalued again after the panic is over, and oil prices will rise to new highs. 

Our country used to be an industrial powerhouse.  Now, we import most of the items that we use every day.  We received a short reprieve when our software and computer technology was the best in the world, but that was a fleeting advantage.  They are catching up, and even surpassing us in technology.  Unless we can rebuild our industrial base, over the long run, the dollar will begin to erode again, and high gas prices will force us to drive either electric, fuel cell or hybrid vehicles.  GM, Ford and Chrysler aren't leading the pack in innovation; they are so far behind the leaders that they may never catch up. 

Let's hope some of those start-ups can get the financing to build a new, competitive U.S. auto industry out of the ashes of the Big Three.  After all, all of them combined could build the factories needed to build their cars for less money than GM will need to make it through the winter. 

When GM's CEO, Rick Wagoner,  goes before Congress with hat in hand, begging for a bailout, and it's laying off thousands of U.S. employees, is that really a good time for GM to announce that they are going to spend $1 billion of that bailout money to expand operations in Brazil???

http://www.argentinanews.net/story/431820