Special Bulletin

I’m a little bit late on this comment, but it is still pertinent.

The Fed has declared it will drop the prime in order to stop the recession.

If dropping the prime has the power to stop the recession –

then it is an obvious fact that raising the prime is what caused the  recession.

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First we bailed out our friends.  That won’t cost US anything; taxes won’t even go up.

Okay, next we bailed out the banks.  That isn’t going to cost US anything either.

Now we are bailing out the auto industry.  That isn’t going to cost US anything either.

That’s the same logic my wife used on me last week.

“Honey, i just bought a new car and it won’t cost us a penny because our monthly payments will remain the same.”

Please note that I only danced in the freezing rain for one second before realizing something was rotten in Denmark.

Guess what!  Our new president says it will cost a trillion dollars to bail US out of this mess.

Ah well, as long as it won’t raise my yearly taxes, I’m all for it.

I went to work in 1950. The man I worked for had six tractors and all of them had to be cranked by hand; one still had iron lugs instead of rubber tires. We were driven to our assignments in a battered old Studebaker pickup.

Just 45 years later I was working on the Internet, from the comfort of home. It was a good time to start, with modems sizzling through space at 9.60 then 14.4 baud. I remember taking my first computer back to the dealer because every time I tried to connect it began crackling and sizzling and I would shut it down before it blew up – makes me wonder if there wasn’t some truth to the chainsaw (“What’s that sound?”) story.

We paid for our connections by the minute back then. I planned every second in advance. If anyone put 3 little graphics on a page it bogged the system down and set up a wail of protest from here to kingdom come. Making a graphic that moved was left to experts. Now, if you don’t have streaming video you are old fashioned.

I can remember working my fingers to the bone to get my first month of 1,000 visitors. I don’t even remember passing the 10,000 visitors per month milestone. 100,000 visitors per month is getting to be pretty regular now. Of course, I’m just a little one man operation. Toyota information sites expect 1.2 billion impressions for2008 with half a million leads going to its dealers.

Since just about anything in the world can be sold over the Internet now the big dogs are determined to drive us out of the markets us little guys created and slaved over. For example, it is hard for me to imagine anyone wanting a vehicle that is certified used but now they are selling regularly online. In fact, they are big business. Toyota alone says it sold 253,855 of them this year, through November. The CERTIFIED PRE-OWNED vehicles — CPOs for the rest of this post — are now listed on over 300 Web sites like Autotrader, Cars.com, and Automart.com It was therefore prudent for Ebay to launch a virtual CPO Showroom last summer and immediately cut a deal with Chrysler and Toyota. See the bargains at http://www.motors.ebay.com/

Buyers find their bright and shining bargains online and are directed to the dealerships in the area where they want to purchase from. Dealers with Toyota Certified Used Vehicle (TCUV) programs can showcase their vehicle inventory on the eBay Showroom floor and drag business right to their door.

Now that is really cranking up the sales. Progress, is awesome.

General Motors ran a full-page ad in yesterday’s Automotive News: “While we’re still the U.S. sales leader, we acknowledge we have disappointed you.  “At times we violated your trust by letting our quality fall below industry standards and our designs become lackluster. We have proliferated our brands and dealer network to the point where we lost adequate focus on our core U.S. market. We also biased our product mix toward pick-up trucks and SUVs. And, we made commitments to compensation plans that have proven to be unsustainable in today’s globally competitive industry.”

Okay, 10-15 years, late the apology is good for clearing the air, but it is hardly worth $14,000,000,000.00 and the little carrot dangled with the bill that WE might now have part ownership in GM and Chrysler — if they survive — is a very little carrot.  2% of a rotten apple still stinks and isn’t worth eating.

Appointing a car czar is the worst kind of stupidity.  Has our government EVER done anything that didn’t cost twice as much and get in the way of recovery besides?  If GM and Chrysler couldn’t find a good leader to get them back on track what makes US think the gov can pick someone any better?  Putting a czar over both these companies without firing the entire hierarchy already entrenched is asking for more trouble sooner.

Mitsubishi, Rolls-Royce, Land Rover, Ferrari and Suzuki have previously indicated they have no desire to participate in the 2009 show in Detroit. Porsche was not part of 2008 show and is not returning for ‘09. Now — now Nissan is pulling out of the 2009 North American International Auto Show in Detroit and just to make sure the message gets across, Nissan is also shunning the 2009 Chicago Motor Show. Once upon a time the show generated about $500 million in tourist dollars for the Motor City.

Joe Serra, senior co-chairman of the North American International Auto Show, says. “I think it’s crucial for them” to be there.  Crucial? To whom? It looks to me like Detroit is admitting there is nothing worth seeing unless Nissan and the others are there. For the pas decade Detroit has been so wrapped up in preserving jobs it has failed to realize the car buying public has moved off and left it for distant pastures that have proven to be more verdant.