Wednesday, January 30, 2002 |
17:38 - Must be an interesting day in the GM and Ford boardrooms...
http://money.cnn.com/2002/01/30/economy/economy/
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So it seems that our little recession is already just about ready to turn around, according to Greenspan-- and we can chalk that up in large part to the fact that lots of Americans bought cars in the past three months, taking advantage of those 0% financing offers that the auto makers put forth after September 11.
I'm told, first of all, that while this car-buying atmosphere has buoyed consumer confidence (the really important thing to watch when it comes to gathering economic intelligence), the car makers are still in danger of collapse-- because without the finance charges that they normally get to collect, they're losing money on each sale. Cars are being bought in record quantities, but the car makers are in danger of going under.
I wonder how true this is. Have they maybe raised MSRPs a little bit to cover their costs since then? Did they release the 0% financing offers of their own free will, or under pressure from lawmakers?
And what I really want to know is, what must it be like to be an executive at the head of one of the automakers right now-- knowing that this program has in large part saved the US economy, but at the expense of his own company's health?
Do the auto makers get to play this PR card now-- they're big generous philanthropic bodies who put the health of the economy above their own, according to the publicity that they could run. They could even possibly get away with it. I don't know how well Americans would take to such a thing. Knowing how much we respect some Big Business, we might eat it up. Or it might get lost in the noise, just as likely.
Hey, thanks for Keeping America Rolling, guys. You can stop now, though. We don't need a repeat of the airline industry here, or of the 80s...
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