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Friday, May 15, 2009

GM and Chrysler leave thousands of destroyed lives in their wake

Chrysler dealer closures rip at fabric of communities

Redford - At Bruce Campbell Dodge, the voice mail of owner Bruce Campbell greeted callers thusly:

"It is a thrilling Thursday here in remarkable Redford."

On a day that Campbell and 38 other Chrysler dealerships in Michigan learned they were no longer wanted by the company, the greeting may have been the only positive note.

And it wasn't just the sellers of autos who were hurting.

Communities where the dealers have been fixtures, some for more than a half century, wondered how they will fill the holes that will be left when the businesses close.

Source

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Can you hear the doors slamming America?

Did you hear that first shoe fall?

This is a signal that will reverberate with unemployment across the country.

And Why?

The PT Cruiser sold so many units that you could hardly turn your head without seeing one on the road, that was just a few short years ago.

GM was the largest automaker in the world.

How bad of a CEO/COO/Etc., do you have to be to get from prosperity to bankruptcy?

I can tell you why in one two words. I can summarize what all the analysts and commentators cannot encapsulate with hours jabbering about what if, and should of, could of, would haves....what the top 1% of executive talent could never seem to fathom.

Two words.

Incompetence and Greed.

Both words practiced ad nausea by every major auto companies' upper echelons for decades while Detroit and the country were squeezed for every dollars' worth that faulty products, lack luster design and shoddy manufacture could muster.

They sold millions of cars, MILLIONS, the US auto companies had a virtual monopoly on the automotive market for nearly a century across the entire planet and what did they accomplish?

Nothing.

No energy advances worth mention, no remarkable advances in any of the technology involved. The advent and incorporation of computers into cars did more than any automaker did to change the face of the industry.

All the auto companies did was incorporate other advances and others' inventions into a 100 year old business model that remained unchanged during that whole time.

Black ink and profit margins for shareholders were their only concerns for decades.

And now they fail.

The auto companies are falling apart at the seams and they want the very customer and employee base they took advantage of for nearly a century to pay for it.

I say let them fail.

Let incompetence and greed reap what it has sown.

The collapse of the US auto industry will be felt across the country with slow reverberations of unemployment and economic despair for decades.

But we should just take this bitter pill and get it over with.

Let new companies with forward ideals and justifiable business ethics take their place, it is economic evolution in motion and it shouldn't be stopped.




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