A new guard

There is now talk of the car companies going to the Fed to get "help," just as did Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac.

There has got to be a way to changed this system. Has to be a new way to measure if a company is doing well, not just for it's stockholders, but for the long-term health of the country.

Stockholders want profit, thus CEO's need profit and are given great incentive to "cook" the books when they're consistently given millions of dollars.

Perhaps there's some way to establish a base salary for each big CEO of a company as such. Then put any "bonuses" they may get into some type of escrow account where they cannot have meaningful access to it for say...5 years, to give some proof that what they did, the steps they took bore out in the end. Or if they didn't, some type of monetary penalty can be deferred from this escrowed balance and a check can be cut after this supposed 5 years.

It's almost like they do in construction. Have the building built, on budget, within a given time frame, with all the inspections done, and you get a big bonus at the end. However, as we are seeing with the new Redskins' football stadium, there is now a pending lawsuit between the contractor who said he earned the bonus cash, and the owner who apparently is being a tight-wad jackass and refusing to pay.

But, then who would be the judge(s) of such a system, and how would they not be subject to being bought off (eg: mobsters)? And what would be to stop the next CEO from tanking the company just to screw over the guy he replaces. Not normally a problem, I suppose. But in the situation over at Disney between Eisner and Iger (I believe it was, Eisner's potential successor who left Disney) was so bitter one got the feeling that they'd rather stab themselves and the other in the back than to give any credit to the other.

There has to be a way. It's a damn shame to screw autoworkers who were "guaranteed" lifetime coverage by the company and to have that stripped away, and then adding insult to injury, the company comes to the Fed for a payout?...I think not!

Any American car company seeing a bail-out should be laughed out of the office. I apologize to those people who will SERIOUSLY be economically hurt by this, but I suspect most of the real damage has already been done. I am fine with picking up their health-care tab, as I assume we basically are already.

But, to the American car-makers who insist, in fact, persist, to make shitty cars, with shitty gas mileage...fuck 'em. Their product has been shit for going on 20 years and if they are too myopic to see that, then that's their problem.

Honda, Toyota are two of the most selling cars in America now? Why? Because they are cheaper?...hardly. It's because they are damn good cars that can be counted on by-and-large for a good 200,000 miles. Moreover, they don't build 50 different cars over 10 different brands, they do what they do and they do it well.

Why are Mercury, Buick, Dodge, Chrysler even brands anymore? How much money is wasted building Mercury's that never sell? No matter how popular Mr. Woods may be, he doesn't make me want a frickin' Buick either. The entire brand of Dodge is a complete farce, they in and of themselves are a complete joke. And Chrysler is so bad, even Mercedes couldn't save it.

Just like the airlines. They got to big for their own good. Their service went to shit, their planes went to shit, and now their companies are going to...you guessed it...shit.

Good riddance.