By Noah Graff Thanksgiving and the Friday after is when companies like to release elite news that they don’t want people to pay attention to. For instance, despite begging the U.S. government for a $25 billion bailout, Ford’s CEO Alan Mulally doesn’t want to lower his salary (he made $21 million last year). This stance was a definite public relations gaff after he was asked by congress if he would work for a dollar like the CEO from AIG, Edward Liddy. Also, news was released that GM doesn’t want public tracking of its private jet, which it had been criticized…
Author: Noah Graff
By Lloyd Graff What a day for Detroit. Old John Dingell, the pugnacious congressman from Motown lost his Jewel, the chairmanship of the Energy and Commerce Committee.Dingell is 82, he succeeded his father in 1955 in the House — so the Dingells have been in Congress, virtually forever.He lost his job to Henry Waxman of Los Angeles who is Mr. Environmental in Washington and a headline-hunting pain in the ass to the Detroit automakers.The odds of the Big 3 getting a Washington rescue package were fading anyway, but the Waxman ascendancy was a dagger for the rust belt. Waxman’s defeat…
By Lloyd Graff I talked to Paul Eisenstein, TMW’s resident auto guru in Detroit. He is pessimistic about a bailout for the domestic car builders. He sees the legislation caught in a food fight between the lame duck Republicans and the Democrats who find themselves defending a bailout for big business.I asked Paul if he thought a Chapter 11 bankruptcy approach would work for General Motors. He felt the stigma of a filing would kill the sales of GM’s vehicles for years. He also says that Rick Wagoner, GM’s president, does not accept the fact that he is part of…
By Noah Graff General Motors, Ford and Chrysler have asked for $25 billion in government loans to survive the economic crisis — that’s in addition to the $25 billion Congress approved in September to foster fuel-efficient technology (NPR.org). CNBC’s Dylan Ratigan, host of “Fast Money” and “Closing Bell” says the automakers don’t deserve another handout from the government.He says that capitalist economics should resolve their situation, not more charity from the government. He argues that the big three have a union problem that’s not sustainable and incompetent management, so instead of another handout from the government you say, “We’ve got…
As everyone knows, GM and Ford are suffering big time – burning billions every month, desperately begging the government for bailout money – but you might be surprised that Toyota, the “intelligent” auto company that has been showing up the Big Three for almost two decades is also in its own house of pain. Its stock dropped 20 percent last week when it announced that it will make almost no money during the second half of its current fiscal year and expects full year profit to drop by 68 percent. Much of this pain of course is the result of…
By Lloyd Graff About five and a half years ago my son Noah and I went to the Big Ten basketball championship at the United Center in Chicago. It was an early round and the stadium was pretty empty, but seated a few rows beneath us were a couple of guys I recognized – David Axelrod, and Rahm Emanuel. It is no huge leap of faith to believe that these smart young politicos were discussing how they were going to put Barack Obama into the White House.Today Axelrod is considered the genius behind the masterful Obama campaign and Emanuel is…
By Lloyd Graff Today is an exciting day for me and an exciting day for America. I voted early this morning, and the line forced me to wait more than an hour to get a ballot. I live in a beautiful southern suburb of Chicago named Olympia Fields. I’ve lived there for 30 years. I’ve never waited more than 10 minutes to vote. This election is different. The waiting line was comprised of almost all black people – probably 90 percent, but who’s counting. When I moved to Olympia Fields you would have seen the reverse number. And I could…
By Noah Graff Chicago Public Radio discussed a study today showing that employees giving gifts to bosses generally improves their treatment at work, even if bosses know they are trying to kiss up.Ron Deluga, Professor of psychology at Bryant University in Rhode Island, surveyed 150 people and their bosses. Bosses graded their employees on a scale of one to five on a variety of ingratiating behaviors like giving compliments, gifts, agreeing with opinions etc. The employees also graded themselves on that same behavior.Even though both the supervisor and the given subordinate agreed on the extent to which that subordinate would…
Apple recently released their new MacBook notebook computers. The company put out an excellent video which spends a great deal of time discussing the machining of the computer’s unique one piece design composed of aluminum. Apple set out to create the lightest, thinnest, most robust and sexy notebook of its kind. Aluminum was chosen as the material because it has a great strength to weight ratio and potential for a high quality finish. The video shows the extensive precision machining involved in the computer’s production, from the extrusion process to produce single blocks of aluminum through the 13 separate milling…
Eighty-year-old, billionaire, oil baron T. Boone Pickens believes that America’s oil era is over. He is now going full speed into the alternative energy business, building filling stations for CNG cars around the U.S. and spending $2 billion out of what he hopes will be $10 billion to build an enormous wind farm. This is the beginning of his “Pickens Plan,” the goal of which is to reduce the country’s dependence on foreign oil by 30 percent within 10 years. The plan will require $500 billion more in private investment and $150 billion in government subsidies. He wants the next…