Thursday, December 04, 2008
Auto Bailout? Are you that stupid?
Let’s get real here.
To listen to the proponents of a bailout you would think that if a bailout is not forthcoming the North American headquartered auto industry with all its assets and jobs will, *poof*, disappear. Trust me, it won’t.
What will happen is that the North American headquartered auto industry will file for court protection via bankruptcy. The North American headquartered auto industry will then have to come up with a viable reorganization plan and get the plan approved by the court. This course of action would result in a reasonable chance that the North American headquartered auto industry would come out of the process in a viable state.
The first point that seems to be getting lost here is the fact that as it is now constituted the North American headquartered auto industry is not viable and is burning through $billions$ of dollars as it haemorrhages loses. A bailout will only allow the North American headquartered auto industry to continue to waste money, this time at taxpayer’s expense.
The North American headquartered auto industry needs to undergo a massive makeover in order to be a viable industry and bankruptcy is the best process to ensure this occurs. Remember that bankruptcy protection of business was designed to facilitate this reorganization, re-emergence process.
The second point to remember is that we are speaking only of the North American headquartered auto industry, the so-called big-three, here. There is an entire North American auto industry that is not headquartered in North America and while it is suffering from the economic downturn it is healthy and will grow, creating jobs, to cover and satisfy any market demand left unmet by the loss of a North American headquartered auto company.
The third point I would make is that the situation the North American headquartered auto industry finds itself in is the direct result of management, shareholder and employee decisions made over the past decades.
These decisions focused not on neither the long-term health and viability of the companies, or even the short-term health and viability of the companies, but entirely upon the greed based decision framework of maximizing the money made by management, workers and shareholders.
Playing these types of paper financial games will always result in, at some point, either the death of the entity or entities playing such games or in the need to reorganize in accordance with the real economic and business position of the company or companies.
The fourth point I want to make, or perhaps share, is that I have no sympathy for shareholders who have not only permitted management to mismanage the companies but actively encouraged them through executive reward and remuneration systems based on meeting quarterly (extremely short term) targets and goals as opposed to remuneration tied to the long term success, viability and health of the corporation. When all decisions are made on short term artificial targets and goals, these decisions are made at the expense of the long-term viability and survival of the corporation and nobody should be surprised that at some point this results in a non-viable corporation.
Points three and four reflect and underscore the reality that unless corporations, in this case the North American headquartered auto industry, refocus or are forced to refocus to consider the long-term effects of the decisions being made they will simply cycle through short-term paper success, financial trouble/disaster, bankruptcy and emergence from bankruptcy. There were sound reasons that the management and financial courses at the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Commerce stressed the need for basing decisions not just on the short term but on the long term effects on the survival and prospering of the company.
Which brings me to the final and perhaps most important point I want to make – the situation where greed results in decisions that provide (excessive) rewards for what prove in the longer run to be self-destructive decisions with costly consequences to all is not confined or unique to the North American headquartered auto industry.
The meltdown of the banking system in the US is/was clearly a result of greed running rampant. The only thing that saved Canadian banks from a similar fate was far tighter banking regulations and the luck that without a majority government Stephen Harper was not able to follow the US deregulation craze into disaster.
We either need to stop basing decisions on Greed or (more likely) provide regulation and remuneration systems that prevent short term abuse in pursuit of greed and reward/mandate long-term decisions based on survival, viability and health.
To listen to the proponents of a bailout you would think that if a bailout is not forthcoming the North American headquartered auto industry with all its assets and jobs will, *poof*, disappear. Trust me, it won’t.
What will happen is that the North American headquartered auto industry will file for court protection via bankruptcy. The North American headquartered auto industry will then have to come up with a viable reorganization plan and get the plan approved by the court. This course of action would result in a reasonable chance that the North American headquartered auto industry would come out of the process in a viable state.
The first point that seems to be getting lost here is the fact that as it is now constituted the North American headquartered auto industry is not viable and is burning through $billions$ of dollars as it haemorrhages loses. A bailout will only allow the North American headquartered auto industry to continue to waste money, this time at taxpayer’s expense.
The North American headquartered auto industry needs to undergo a massive makeover in order to be a viable industry and bankruptcy is the best process to ensure this occurs. Remember that bankruptcy protection of business was designed to facilitate this reorganization, re-emergence process.
The second point to remember is that we are speaking only of the North American headquartered auto industry, the so-called big-three, here. There is an entire North American auto industry that is not headquartered in North America and while it is suffering from the economic downturn it is healthy and will grow, creating jobs, to cover and satisfy any market demand left unmet by the loss of a North American headquartered auto company.
The third point I would make is that the situation the North American headquartered auto industry finds itself in is the direct result of management, shareholder and employee decisions made over the past decades.
These decisions focused not on neither the long-term health and viability of the companies, or even the short-term health and viability of the companies, but entirely upon the greed based decision framework of maximizing the money made by management, workers and shareholders.
Playing these types of paper financial games will always result in, at some point, either the death of the entity or entities playing such games or in the need to reorganize in accordance with the real economic and business position of the company or companies.
The fourth point I want to make, or perhaps share, is that I have no sympathy for shareholders who have not only permitted management to mismanage the companies but actively encouraged them through executive reward and remuneration systems based on meeting quarterly (extremely short term) targets and goals as opposed to remuneration tied to the long term success, viability and health of the corporation. When all decisions are made on short term artificial targets and goals, these decisions are made at the expense of the long-term viability and survival of the corporation and nobody should be surprised that at some point this results in a non-viable corporation.
Points three and four reflect and underscore the reality that unless corporations, in this case the North American headquartered auto industry, refocus or are forced to refocus to consider the long-term effects of the decisions being made they will simply cycle through short-term paper success, financial trouble/disaster, bankruptcy and emergence from bankruptcy. There were sound reasons that the management and financial courses at the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Commerce stressed the need for basing decisions not just on the short term but on the long term effects on the survival and prospering of the company.
Which brings me to the final and perhaps most important point I want to make – the situation where greed results in decisions that provide (excessive) rewards for what prove in the longer run to be self-destructive decisions with costly consequences to all is not confined or unique to the North American headquartered auto industry.
The meltdown of the banking system in the US is/was clearly a result of greed running rampant. The only thing that saved Canadian banks from a similar fate was far tighter banking regulations and the luck that without a majority government Stephen Harper was not able to follow the US deregulation craze into disaster.
We either need to stop basing decisions on Greed or (more likely) provide regulation and remuneration systems that prevent short term abuse in pursuit of greed and reward/mandate long-term decisions based on survival, viability and health.
# posted by James W Breckenridge : 3:41 AM
