Thursday, May 01, 2008

Ask Mr. Obvious.


Little Adam Daifallah writes in:

At first glance it seems paradoxical: Petro Canada posts a $1.1-billion profit in the same quarter that GM loses $3.3-billion. What's going on?

Well, Adam, it's like this. Oil is selling at record prices while, perhaps because of that and because the U.S. economy is in the toilet, people are buying fewer cars.

This has been another installment of "Ask Mr. Obvious."

5 comments:

Red Tory said...

Fascinating. That man has such... insight. No wonder so many of the Blogging Tories look up to him.

Mike said...

How about that? "Rescuing Canada's Right" does not require knowledge or application of basic economics.

Some one ought to be getting a refund from Laval for this piss poor education.

E in MD said...

GM's losing money for the same reason they've been losing money since the 70's. They think Americans want big, powerful, gas hogging vehicles that take up an entire block of parking spots all to themselves, get 1 gallon per mile and make a lot of noise when they go down the street.

And it's true for the 2% of the middle class adults who can afford such cars who haven't actually ever gotten past the mental pre-pubescent stage into actual adulthood stage.

Unfortunately for the remaining 98% of the population DO NOT FUCKING WANT THEM. Why? Because we're busy trying to put food on our families. We're trying hard to make our wings take dream.

And any one with half a brain realizes that if you have to spend 20% of your weekly income just getting back and forth to work you're going to suffer because of it.

So much like during the 70's oil crisis, we turn to auto manufacturers who will give us smaller, cheaper and more fuel efficient cars en masse.

Mean while Detroit executives whine about having to increase cafe standards by a mere 25% in the next 20 years.

So the question isn't why is GM losing $3.3 billion dollars.. it's why the fuck is GM still in business at all with short sighted unchanging morons who don't listen to their customers when they should have went out of business in the 1980s. You wanna know why Toyota is winning? Because they fucking LISTENED to what we wanted and didn't bitch about selling it to us.

And the answer is in a free market, they wouldn't be. But our government keeps handing them our tax dollars in the form of subsidies and breaks and outright handouts to keep them afloat.

Red Tory said...

I always love it when people can work "food on our families" into the conversation like that. Nicely done.

toujoursdan said...

So the question isn't why is GM losing $3.3 billion dollars.

The other reason these car companies are on the verge of bankruptcy is the horrifyingly inefficient and (privately) bureaucratic American healthcare system, yet another testament to the superiority of laissez-faire "free" market economics.