Over at the Guardian, I ask the question, "Is there anyone who had a worse week than the CEOs of the big three automakers?"Even in a week full of bad economic news, these guys had a rough time of it:
Robert Nardelli of Chrysler, Rick Wagoner of GM and Alan Mulally of Ford came to Washington to make their case for a taxpayer bail-out, and left town empty-handed and with fewer friends than when they arrived on their private jets. Instead of wondering whether the automakers are too big to fail, members of Congress decided they are too dumb to know how to beg for money. House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate majority leader Harry Reid, who had really wanted to help the automakers, sent them packing, saying they should go back to the drawing board and come back with a plan that isn't built on bleeding more red ink and hoping for the best.
Keep in mind that Congress really wants to help the automakers. But these guys made it harder for themselves. They've been given until December 2 to submit plans that won't leave members of Congress shaking their heads. By the way, ABC News is reporting that GM is downsizing its fleet of corporate jets.
It looks like I'll be leaving the tux in the back of the closet in January. As I noted yesterday, Jack Markell and Matt Denn will take the oath of office at 12:01 AM on January 20 in Newark so as to not interfere with the presidential inaugural in Washington. A larger, more public ceremony will be held the next day in Dover. But the News Journal reports that you shouldn't expect the standard inaugural ball here in Delaware. Instead of a ball, a variety of events are being planned for the entire week. (If history is any guide, I expect pizza to be involved at some point.) Carla Markell suggests that we use the money we save on fancy duds and use it to support some worthy causes:
"Take your money and put it toward the Food Bank, to buying a set of blocks for the school," Carla Markell said. "The budget is such that the state is going to have big cutbacks. It's important that we come together as a community."
Denn said he is excited about the inauguration festivities, even if he is unable to travel to Washington to see Biden and President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration. So far, he hasn't been able to locate a ticket.
When it comes to succeeding Joe Biden in the Senate, my rule of thumb is that those who know aren't talking, and those who are talking don't know. The conclusion of this syllogism is that I didn't know anything when I went on the air (with some trepidation) to discuss the subject with Allan Loudell of WDEL this evening. We've been presented with a couple of tea leaves to ponder in the last day or so. Jack Markell and Matt Denn rescheduled their swearing in to 12:01 AM on January 20, not wanting to compete with the Obama/Biden blockbuster the same day. Markell and Denn will hold a public ceremony the following day. But for those examining the tea leaves for clues, it does give Biden the option of whether to have the outgoing or incoming governor make the appointment. If John Carney is the pick, which is what most Democrats would like to see, it wouldn't make any difference who makes the pick. Actually, I haven't talked to anyone in the Democratic Party who doesn't think that Carney is the natural pick. As Allan points out in his blog, Carney may have helped himself by saying in the News Journal that he'd accept the job, even for just a couple of years:
"I would take it if offered under any circumstances," including a two-year stint "if that's what was contemplated by those who made the decision."
Being a senator for two years isn't such a bad deal when you consider that the best vantage from which to run for the Senate is as one of the 100 member of the exclusive club. As for Beau Biden, he did the right thing when he declared that he would not consider being called back from his tour of duty to fill his father's seat. Beau clearly has a bright future ahead of him, and has time to build a career in elected office when he comes back from Iraq and finishes his first term as attorney general.
In his new book, Alphabet Juice: The Energies, Gists, and Spirits of Letters, Words, and Combinations Thereof; Their Roots, Bones, Innards, Piths, Pips, and Secret Parts, ... With Examples of Their Usage Foul and Savory, Roy Blount Jr. offers this definition of pun:
The lowest form of wit, it used to be said, but that was before Ann Coulter.
Roy Blount Jr. has demonstrated over many years that his is one of the higher forms of wit. He offers the perfect counter-example to those Sarah Palin fans who are convinced that down home and educated are mutually exclusive qualities.
An interesting project called Purple States TV is compiling and posting video interviews with bloggers from all fifty states. Today is my turn, aided by the camera work of LiberalGeek. I talk about how the financial meltdown is affecting Delaware, including one business in my own neighborhood.The site will post videos from bloggers representing all fifty states, in alphabetical order, between now and the middle of January. If you're interested in learning how economic conditions are affecting communities across the country check them out.
The ad links to this story by Jake Tapper dated March 10, 2008, which describes the tension between the Clinton and Obama campaigns in the thick of the primary season. The story is one of many thousands of stories written about the epic battle for the nomination. But why is this ad still popping up eight months later? Did an over-enthusiastic ad buyer for ABC News drop so much on this ad that Google is still running it? Or is someone else paying for the ads to try to keep a dead story alive for sport or in hope of reigniting a long-settled feud?
One will take office as vice president in January. The other is heading back to her job as governor of the sparsely populated state of Alaska. So why is Sarah Palin generating twice as many media stories as Joe Biden? A search of Google News this morning yielded 66,842 hits for Joe Biden and 149,255 hits for Sarah Palin. Love her or hate her, she is a phenomenon.
Last September, I was in a hotel room watching CNBC early one morning. They were interviewing Bob Nardelli, the C.E.O. of Chrysler, and he was explaining why the auto industry, at that time, needed $25 billion in loan guarantees. It wasn’t a bailout, he said. It was a way to enable the car companies to retool for innovation. I could not help but shout back at the TV screen: “We have to subsidize Detroit so that it will innovate? What business were you people in other than innovation?” If we give you another $25 billion, will you also do accounting?
Friedman goes on to suggest conditions for federal help, including asking Steve Jobs to run a car company for a year. It's an intriguing thought, but as unworkable as asking Jobs to run Microsoft (once described as the GM of software) for a year. Consider what happened when Jobs came back to Apple after his exile. He came to a company that still had people used to innovating, even though the company's products had lost some of their pizazz. GM, Ford and Chrysler have precious few people who have launched innovative products. As Business Week reported earlier this year, GM CEO Bob Lutz was shot down when he tried to raise the issue of building an electric car back in 2005. Jobs also got Apple to buy his company Next, which provided the DNA for the operating system for a new generation of Macs. It would be like building a new generation of cars with an entirely new drive train provided by a startup company. My advice to Steve Jobs, if he's interested in building cars, would be to start over from scratch, as the New York Times reported a year ago:
A generation of digital-era Henry Fords, unabashed and brimming with confidence, has emerged. Born of Silicon Valley and the dot-com culture, they are trying to apply to carmaking the same entrepreneurial spirit that built the information superhighway. Most of the inventors are not carmakers by background or training. But they are cocksure, backed by millions of dollars in venture capital and cloaked in the righteousness of environmentalism. To their critics, they are flying at high speed around a blind curve, destined to become reality-check crash-test dummies. Cars on the market or in development include the $100,000 all-electric Tesla Roadster, the $190,000 Wrightspeed production super car, an electric pickup truck called the Phoenix, the low-cost diminutive Th!nk car and the Bangalore-made Reva.
The large-scale impact of the collapse of the U.S. auto industry may be too horrible to contemplate. But, as Friedman and many others are suggesting, the companies can not and must not try to keep going as though nothing happened. The not-so-big-three may not be as nimble as the startups, and change may be wrenching. But one approach that could accelerate innovation would be for the automakers to buy new technology from the startups, just as Jobs brought in a new operating system from outside. GM, Ford and Chrysler may be bleeding money, but they can still attract more capital than the small innovators. If the federal government is going to sink money into U.S. automakers, it should go to developing future technology, not propping up past failures.
Tom Noyes started TommyWonk in 2005. He was picked to go to the Democratic National Convention as the embedded blogger with the Delaware delegation.
Tom, who works as a finance geek, has previously served in city government, managed two non-profit organizations, worked on numerous political campaigns, and earned an MBA in finance. Tom lives in Wilmington with his books, his guitars, his bicycle, his pots and pans, his aching foot and the birds chirping in the newly planted tree outside his window. You can reach Tom at tomnoyes[at]gmail[dot]com.
