Meanwhile, In The Carpool Lane

I thought only one, the Ford guy was driving a hybrid. The other two are flying commerical. True?

While the endless speculation on the auto industry, complete with dreams of Willard Romney, is compelling why do you suppose the already doled out money going unsupervised doesn't interest TIME?
Is it a white collar/blue collar issue?
Too complicated?
Speculation is easier than reporting?
All of the above?

"Bailout Monitor Sees Lack of a Coherent Plan"
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The head of a new Congressional panel set up to monitor the gigantic federal bailout says the government still does not seem to have a coherent strategy for easing the financial crisis, despite the billions it has already spent in that effort.
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Elizabeth Warren, the chairwoman of the oversight panel, said in an interview Monday that the government instead seemed to be lurching from one tactic to the next without clarifying how each step fits into an overall plan.
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“You can't just say, ‘Credit isn't moving through the system,' ” she said in her first public comments since being named to the panel. “You have to ask why.”
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If the answer is that banks do not have money to lend, it would make sense to push capital into their hands, as the Treasury has been doing over the last two months, she continued. But if the answer is that their potential borrowers are getting less creditworthy with each passing day, “pouring money into banks isn't going to fix that problem,” she said.
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Answer: More cow bell.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/02/business/02tarp.html?ref=us

Of course, all the attention to labor costs misses the fact that they account for a relatively small portion of car price--about 10 percent.

U.S. automakers have enormous bargaining leverage with their suppliers, because of their size. They use that leverage to drive prices as low as they can. The downside is that as suppliers strive to meet demands for lower prices, their margins shrink and they may deliver parts that simply aren't as good. That can actually cost the automakers more in the long run.

This can probably be amplified to a general rule. If price is your only consideration, you end up shooting yourself in the foot. If price isn't a consideration at all, you also shoot yourself in the foot. I like to refer to "managing by spreadsheet" as another phrase meaning "shooting yourself in the foot." Managers who spend too much time examining numbers and not enough time looking at physical processes or considering the actual effects of their decisions on the people involved are at the root of most problems currently affecting us all.

By the way. Us Americans buying more flat screens and other crap and running our fellow shoppers over at Walmart isn't going to get us out this mess either. So all these reports about great Black Fridays and super duper Cyber Mondays are worthless.
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After a slow start to the online holiday shopping season last week, Web retailers got their groove back Monday and broke some records.
The percentage of U.S. visits to the top 500 retail sites was down 11% on Thanksgiving Day vs. the same day last year, says market researcher Hitwise, and the trend continued through the weekend. U.S. traffic was down 5% on Black Friday and down 8% on Saturday.
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But things improved on the first day many were back to work after Thanksgiving, now called Cyber Monday because of all the promotions on individual sites and the National Retail Federation's CyberMonday.com.
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By 10 a.m. ET Monday, online visits to Web tracker Akamai Technologies' approximately 280 retail customer sites topped last Cyber Monday's peak of 4.6 million visitors per minute. By 3 p.m. Akamai's global retail customers — which include Best Buy and Victoria's Secret — were experiencing 6.7 million online visitors per minute — the most Akamai has seen since it started collecting the data in 2005.
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Concerns remain that price cuts are gouging profits at a time when few can afford it, but retailers are hoping that those who come for the bargains will buy higher-priced items, too.
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http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/retail/2008-12-01-cyber-monday-shopping-online_N.htm

ROFL.
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They are so fing out of touch. Nobody in their right mind would drive from Detroit to Washington. I guess they are gonna say that, for security reasons, they can't fly commercial.
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And are they really saying "drive their cars" in the press release? You KNOW someone is going to ask whether its a company car, whether it was chauffeured, and what they heck they were thinking. How stupid do they think we are? How stupid are they?
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Unbelievable. They need to fire their entire PR teams. Or just resign.

You know gunny, David Carr had a weird article in the NYT yesterday.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/01/business/media/01carr.html
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He criticized the media role in the creation of the Black Friday phenom. That is, he criticized his company for its revenue generation practices that pay his salary. Next thing you know, he'll be criticizing the movie review section for creating advertising demand, or all those "best books of the year" pieces, that run opposite advertisements from publishers.
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How does he think they pay his salary, anyway?
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That is to say, this reporting on retail sales may not be exacly accurate, but is in the newspapers and the retailers interest to promote.

2 days of shopping. Even if there are banner days each of the 2 days it still will not pull us out this hold because the banner days can be maintained.

[...] question is, how are they getting to Capitol Hill? ” ‘He’s driving,’ a Ford spokesman, Mark Truby, wrote in an e-mail today [...]

Off topic, but why is the press still so brain dead about the Iraq intel? (And Greg Sargent is being charitable by not mentioning Ron Suskind and 60 Minutes' reporting on preqwar Iraqi defectors.)

Speaking of "suppliers strive to meet demands for lower prices, their margins shrink and they may deliver parts that simply aren't as good.", here is a wonderful article about the WalMart model. A few years old, still highly relevant.
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The Wal-Mart You Don't Know By: Charles Fishman The giant retailer's low prices often come with a high cost. Wal-Mart's relentless pressure can crush the companies it does business with and force them to send jobs overseas. Are we shopping our way straight to the unemployment line?

Josh noticed something interesting:
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But as much as we hear about executive compensation I was still a little struck by this line: Ford CEO Alan Mullaly "has earned close to $50 million in total compensation since taking the helm of Ford in 2006." It was Mullaly who, when asked at that hearing whether he'd be willing to take a $1 salary in exchange for federal aid said: "I think I'm OK where I am."

Totally OT, but I wonder how MS' reference list would compare:
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Who Rules Mark Halperin's World? by Jed L Tue Dec 02, 2008 at 06:50:03 AM PST Number of references on Mark Halperin's website, thepage.time.com, for each of the following, according to Google: * Rush Limbaugh: 113 * Sean Hannity: 77 * Matt Drudge: 56 * Bill O'Reilly: 34 * Huffington (Post or Arianna): 23 * Keith Olbermann: 14 * Rachel Maddow: 9 * Daily Kos: 0

@jay: Personally, I think the "drive to DC" idea could work with a few tweaks:
1) bring along some 2010/2011 vehicles to let folks know what is in the pipeline (and what won't come to market without Washington's help), and
2) stop at Auto Plants along the way to remind Washington - and the MSM - that the $25B represent *real jobs*.
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Sadly, it seems as though the Big3's PR firms are as tone deaf as the CEOs.

More on JJ's OT point: Big News Orgs Help Bush Whitewash History Of Iraq War

jay: "They are so fing out of touch. Nobody in their right mind would drive from Detroit to Washington. I guess they are gonna say that, for security reasons, they can't fly commercial." I'll second what kbanginmotown said - that driving could have been used to prove a point and make some relevant news.
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But driving just to not fly, out of pique, is a crystal clear demonstration of stupidity and lousy use of resources. A remarkable waste of an executive's time, unless he doesn't have anything else to do.

PNNTO has a big point here.
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When I last figured, the Wall Street portion of the bailout was 172 times as large as the B3 bailout - and we haggle over that !
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But, by gosh and by golly, the $20B handed to Citicorp on the day after the first B3 bailout failure hardly drew comment! Sh!t, it was 80% the size of the B3 proposals and no one's pulse is anywhere near even 80 on that one.
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In the meantime, I heard 4,616,000,000,000 dollars is the new figure for what we've tossed down the Wall Street hole without supervision, some in very, very sneaky fashion. That makes the total bailout now almost 185 times the B3 bailout.
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Now I've supported the bailout, but that was when they were bandying small numbers around. You know, like $350,000,000,000 and $700,000,000,000. Yeah. Those small numbers!
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Lets get a picture here:
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The Earth is 4.685 billion years old, so, if you spent about 83 bucks a month since that time, it be just about equal to what's being spent now!

BTW,
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A freind of mine came back from the Muckleshoot casino. He brought back a deck of cards.
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The brand?
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Paulson!

"CARPOOL UPDATE"
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Okay I am honestly confused. Is this just a big joke to the media? I mean fine if it is but why bother?

@53_3: Amen, brother!

The dealerships, at least, should be left to sink or swim. Nobody gets hurt but polyester a-holes and college athletic departments.

I've been told that only the Ford guy is driving. The other two are flying commercial. One of those pointed out that at 600 something dollars a ticket, the private jet woulda been cheaper for the nine people who are going. Second hand from newsradio this morning.
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First, NINE people?! Does this include the masseuse and the makeup artist?
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Second, if that's so, TIME should be demanding a lotta money back from the presidential campaigns. 3 pilots at 150K a year is 1200 dollars a day, right there. How stupid do they think people are.\
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Oh, wait, $73 an hour. That's how stupid they think people are.

Mel Martinez out for the 2010 race. Have I mentioned that 2010 also looks bad for the Republicans?

Why is it that my Swampland Tab on Firefox has a Volkswagen logo - and Michael (Mitt for Auto Czar) Scherer is Time's go to guy on the Auto Industry?

OT, but JedReports has been doing a little homework on your colleague, Mark Halperin, and Jed has published a couple of great pieces on Mark and The Page:
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Who Rules Mark Halperin's World?
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Number of references on Mark Halperin's website, thepage.time.com, for each of the following, according to Google:
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* Rush Limbaugh: 113
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* Sean Hannity: 77
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* Matt Drudge: 56
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* Bill O'Reilly: 34
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* Huffington (Post or Arianna): 23
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* Keith Olbermann: 14
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* Rachel Maddow: 9
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* Daily Kos: 0

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Jed also wrote this well-researched piece:
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Defending The Media From Halperin's Tin-Foil Attack
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Basically, Jed points out what a number of other journalists and journalist watchdogs have already pointed out: Halperin's charge that coverage of the presidential race was "biased" in Obama's favor (particularly the NYT) and, therefore, "disgusting," in Halperin's words, is complete bull.
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Talk about irony... Halperin calling out other journalists for "bias" is hilarious in light of that first bit of information about who Halperin chooses to spotlight on The Page.
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Question for Scherer and the other reporters here: Do your editors consider Halperin to be a reporter, a blogger, or something else? Does he have to abide by the same journalistic standards that all of you do? How do you feel about the quality (or lack thereof) of his "work?"