Ford: Biggest Loss Ever
January 25th, 2007Via: CNN:
Ford Motor Co. reported the largest annual loss in company history Thursday, as the embattled automaker posted a fourth-quarter loss that was worse than analysts’ expectations and the company warned of worse showings ahead.
Weak sales of its key pickup trucks in the quarter and $9.9 billion in after-tax charges resulted in $12.7 billion loss for 2006. That works out to a loss of just over $24,000 a minute throughout the course of the year, or about the price of a Ford Mustang.
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Ford Sucks
Britain used to rule the world, until the financial interests moved their investments to greener pastures in the US, and opened up ‘free trade’ as an excuse to de-industrialize the UK and start selling them cheap imports from their factories in the US.
Now the exact same thing is happening to us here in the US. Financial interests have moved their investments to China, set up a ‘central bank’ there, and promoted ‘free trade’ in the US to provide a market for their factories in China.
I thought this would take another 20 years, but if Iran is a trap set up by Russia and China to pull in all our aircraft carrier assets and give them a tanning with their ‘sunburn’ missiles, our goose could be cooked in no time.
With our oil supply cut off, carriers sunk and military exposed in the middle east, we become a quaint cowboy town attraction to the Chinese tourists.
http://www.peakoilstore.com/forum/index.php/topic,1534.0.html
I’m not sure where to go with this, but it occurs to me that when a company pisses away $1B or more, it’s coming out of all of our hides.
IIRC, the GDP of the U.S. is about $10 trillion. The median household income is about $45,000. $1B of GDP disappearing is like somebody swiping $4.50 from the median household. Not earthshaking, but kind of a “dammit” moment.
These turkeys just misplaced $60. You’d notice that!
Put another way, they just cost every man, woman, and child in the US about $42. I think your blood pressure just might inch up if $42 was missing from your wallet.
Just a small critique of capitalism, I guess, but we all really do only have so many Billions to work with.
What is happening to Ford speaks volumes about the mindset of the american elite:
I remember a few years back american automakers’ high execs and their free press court writers in msm extending their scorn and their ridicule onto japanese automakers who were consenting to lose 4 ks per hybrid car sold…. “this testifies of nothing else but the japanese’ automakers ability to absorb losses” they said. Followed a steady stream of msm bull about how the “technology was unproven” the gas mileage was not all it was supposed to be…etc, etc…
All the while the japanese kept quiet, and were pioneering the next wave of the auto market, while their american counterparts counted beans (excuse me: “created share holder value”), remote controlled congress and msm into denying global warming and peak oil, refusing better gas mileage regulations, rolling back the Clean Air Act, and offering lavish cash rebates and tax deductions if you bought their dinosaurs; because the return on investment in corruption beats industrial returns any day of the week…
Result: a few years later, after all their efforts spent in denying the obvious and administering their dinausaurs to the american market at tax-payers’ expense, Ford fires 30,000 workers, posts its heaviest losses ever, its share price circles the drain.. The japanese are on their way to kick american automakers out of their own market, there is a 18 months waiting list for hybrids, and Ford’s own much-touted half-baked hybrid suv has the essential components of its power train MADE IN JAPAN…Where is the scorn now?
If this is not total industrial discomfiture, what is it? Where is the attitude now?
Next: GM stock relegated to junk bond status. Just wait…
I also remember EXACTLY the same stuff 25 years ago, before the japanese automaker not only gobbled up 40% of the american market but also set up factories in the south for the same reasons they do it in Indonesia: cheap land, cheap and docile workforce, practically no work laws to speak of, little environmental regulations, no social system, access to a big market and local politicians bending over backwards to get the jobs (after having called for boycott). Do you believe they would have learned something? Arrogance and stupidity….
Another example: the euro…Do you remember how the euro was dismissed as a ludicrous, doomed and preposterous attempt to compete with the dollar. “It will fail”,”will be confined to an obscure regional role”, “bureaucratic creation” was the regular motto of financial america…. A few years later the euro draws circles around the dollar, with the promise of more to come… Where is the scorn now?
Arrogance and stupidity…
Before the “liberation” of Iraq, the french government says the eye-piercingly obvious: #1 it’s illegal, #2 you’re behaving the the rogues states you claim to fight, #3 you are opening Pandora’s box: you will not be able to control the process and the consequence are incalculable”. The 12 year-olds with a sense of entitlement who run the imperium throw a tantrum: the american response is throwing fine bordeaux down the gutter and “freedom fries”. Pathetic.
A few years later…(you know the refrain by now) Arrogance and stupidity…
The point I’m getting at is: there is something seriously wrong with the culture of the american elites. WHEN WILL THESE GUYS SHUT UP AND LEARN?
Sadly, the answer is “Never”, and you already knew it.
In fact, the ancient Greeks new it 2500 years ago. They called this behavior of sheer arrogance and stupidity “Hubris”.