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The
Rest of the Story....
Patrick Michaels is a senior fellow in
Environmental Studies at the Cato
Institute and the editor of the forthcoming Climate Coup: Global
Warming's
Invasion of our Government and our Lives, as well as the author of
several
other books on global warming.”
His Forbes column* on the Chevy VOLT is a case study in the nexus
between big government corruption and big business rent-seeking.
*It's easier to read on CATO
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Michaels
notes that "sales are anemic: 326 in December, 321 in January, and 281
in February." There seems to be a trend here . . .
Michaels adds that GM has announced a production run of 100,000 in the
first two years and asks what appears to be a rhetorical question: "Who
is going to buy all these cars?"
But wait! Keep hope alive! There is a positive answer to the question.
Jeffrey Immelt's GE will buy a boatload of those uneconomic GM cars.
Here the case study opens onto the inevitable political angle:
Recently, President Obama selected General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt
to chair his Economic Advisory Board.
GE is also awash in windmills waiting to be subsidized so they can
provide unreliable, expensive power.
Consequently, and soon after his appointment, Immelt announced that GE
will buy 50,000 VOLTs in the next two years, or half the total produced.
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thor
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...and is it coincidence that GM was reported calling for higher gas taxes yesterday??
ReplyDeleteI think not.
http://detnews.com/article/20110607/AUTO01/106070368/1148/rss25
On a much smaller scale, this is the sort of thing Michael Milken went to prison for.
ReplyDeleteA lot of people think, me included, that Milken was a victim of Rudy Giuliani's ambition more than anything else.
ReplyDeleteIt is all atlas shrugged for sure, boss. When do we take them down?
ReplyDeletethoR
Gotta ask: What in H is GE going to do with 50,000 Volt autos?{could be a pun there, but I skipped it}
ReplyDeleteDo they have a need for that quantity? If not, doesn't the board of directors have some say? Shouldn't the fiduciary duty to their stock owners over ride their paying tribute to their liege?
I don't see how this can sell if it is ever publicized to all the bible toters and gun clingers of the red states.
Detroit had a real problem selling iron, having to put money on the hood of almost every vehicle in the form of rebates, and then low interest rates. They have gotten past those days by cutting their workforce and assembly plant fixed overhead. {and also their UAW fixed overhead to a lesser degree} Now, they will have to start the same dam thing on the Volt after the GOVERNMENT{YOU!!!} provided $2.5k kickback ends... Blech.
Get in bed with the government, and you deserve whatever you have in the AM when you try to get out...
tomw
Oh, BUY A FORD PRODUCT, starve Fiat and ObamaMotors.{just sayin'} They at least are paying their bills on their own dime.
My Volt rebate $ figure was wrong. The CATO article sez $7,500.00 is the proper figure.
ReplyDeleteYour money. Just like Cash for Clunkers was YOUR money. To pay someone else to buy a new car, when the only people in the new car shopping mode were those with money already, and in a buying mood... IDIOTS.
tomw
We have 2 older Dodges and 2 newer Toyotas. While I certainly would NEVER buy a Chrysler product again, I would get another Toyota. The way these things are built, compared to their UAW counterparts, I may never need to.
ReplyDelete