Thursday, December 25, 2008

Merry Christmas

A Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and yours.  As a kind of Christmas present from me to you, I present a link I found (sorry, no embedding allowed) to part one of the 1951 film version of A Christmas Carol, starring the great British actor Alastair Sim as Scrooge.  It’s often considered to be the definitive film version, and if you don’t have time to re-read the Dickens story this holiday it’s a very enjoyable substitute.  See the link for further links to the other parts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1l1_82x2BO4&NR=1

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Eventually, the Media Will Fall Out of Love With Obama. Right?

Just saw this news headline while checking my e-mail:

Blagojevich questioning takes up Obama's time.

Yes, poor, poor Barack Obama, having to take time talk to federal investigators about a major corruption scandal involving (allegedly) the selling of his current Senate seat and perpetrated (allegedly) by the sitting Governor of his home state, who was also one of his closest political allies in the not-too-distant past, a (alleged) crook we now know has had recent contacts with the President-Elect’s would-be chief of staff.  Will there be no end to this vile harassment?

Friday, December 19, 2008

What I’m Doing (Instead of Posting Here)

As I mentioned in passing a while back, some friends (and soon to be employers) of mine are forming a new law firm, and I have the task of helping draw up the associated legal and practical paperwork (the operating agreement, articles of organization, office lease,  Firm policies and forms, etc.). This is all happening very quickly: we are hoping to start operations on the first Monday of the new year.  And we’ve all got a lot left to do for that to happen.

That’s all just another way of saying that posting will probably continue to be a bit sparse and unpredictable, at least for the next couple of weeks.  However, I don’t intend “sparse” and “unpredictable” to be euphemisms for “nonexistent”; there’s a lot of stuff I want to write and talk about, it’s just a matter of having the time to do so.  But I promise that I’ll do the best I can.

Thanks, once again, for your readership.

 

Yours,

Brian

 

Update:  Ok, so now I realize that it wasn’t “in passing”; I wrote pretty much the exact same missive 11 days ago. Ah, well.

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Congratulations, Illinois! Two in a Row!

The FBI arrested Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and his chief of staff on a myriad of corruption allegations.  According to a 76-page affidavit the feds have wiretap transcripts of Blagojevich conspiring to sell the appointment to fill President-Elect Obama’s soon to be vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder.

Blagojevich’s predecessor, Republican George Ryan, is currently serving a six year sentence in federal prison for participating in a huge bribery scheme.

(Yes, yes, those charged are innocent until proven guilty. But if the feds really do have the wiretap evidence they swear they have and it doesn’t get suppressed in court [and suppression would probably be very unlikely, as the feds had to get a warrant and meet certain other strictures to do the wiretap at all], that’s pretty much it for Blago and friends.)

Update:  The Smoking Gun has an excerpt of the FBI affidavit up. Makes for fun reading.

Update/Correction: Ok, maybe “fun” was the wrong word. “Astonishing” is more like what I meant.

Monday, December 8, 2008

Preoccupied

Dear Loyal Readers:

Sorry about the lack of promised updates in the last few days.  Some friends of mine have undertaken to start a new law firm (in which I will have a role) and are looking to get things setup and operations under way ASAP.  I have the tasks of drawing up a somewhat lengthy operating agreement, the Articles of Organization, and some important contract documents by the end of this work week.  I was preoccupied with that stuff over the weekend and will be for most of this week as well. I shall post here when time allows, and I’m dead set on publishing a podcast this Friday.  But I appreciate your indulgence as I crash on some very important professional matters.

Yours,

Brian

Friday, December 5, 2008

No Podcast Tonight

Not sure I’d have enough interesting material to fill out an episode anyway, but I’m currently working on some stuff that needs to be done by tomorrow, and that stuff’s going to take me the remainder of the evening.  I think I shall wait until next Friday to throw out Episode 3 (a bi-weekly posting schedule might be wise as a permanent move anyway).

Check back here over the weekend, however: some good posts are in the hopper.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

To the Big Three: For God’s Sake, Just Agree to Bankruptcy Reorganization

General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler are plagued by three deeply rooted, difficult-to-address sources of woe:

1.  Nobody wants to buy their products.  It’s true that automakers all over the world have seen huge sales drops with the onset of the current downturn, but the demand story for Big Three products is far more troubling.  The companies have been hemorrhaging market share for decades (their failure to anticipate the recent trend toward smaller, more fuel-efficient cars is only the latest in a long series of serious missteps), and right now there are few signs that those declines will stop in the near future.

2.  Their Labor Costs Are Insane.  You know the statistics by now:  the bottom line is that the companies, on the whole, spend roughly $75 per worker per hour, while Toyota, Honda, etc. spend less than $50 for their (non-unionized) American workers.  According to the companies’ own numbers, the Big Three make medical, retirement, or other payments to almost 2 million Americans, while the companies now have fewer than 400,000 actual employees.  Recently the unions have finally agreed to major cutbacks and adjustments (not that the companies really pushed them much before this year), and more are on the way, but the full impact of those concessions won’t be felt for years.

3.  They’ve Got Way Too Many Top-Level Brands and Way, Way Too Many Dealerships.  Try this mental exercise: try to remember of all the names under which Toyota sells its vehicles in the U.S.

Now do GM.

Done?

For the latter you should have come up with Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, GMC, Hummer, Pontiac, Saab, and Saturn.

To reduce brand confusion, GM would like to get rid of some or most of these.  But it is effectively prevented from doing so by state laws that are in place to protect the interests of car dealerships.  (The recent elimination of the Oldsmobile brand alone took years to complete and cost GM about $2 billion.)  And while we’re on car dealerships, GM has far, far more associated with it than demand requires, hurting both GM (though various payments it has to make) and the dealers.

And that’s just GM.  

***** 

So what is to be done about these fundamental problems, which have made the difference for the Big Three between suffering-but-surviving (like Toyota, etc.) and the companies’ current verge-of-collapse status.  The most obvious option is Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization. Creditors would be kept at bay for a bit, those damaging union contracts that the companies so foolishly agreed to would essentially be junked, and state laws preventing the companies from fixing their brands and dealership structures would be overridden.  (Reorganization wouldn’t directly help the companies develop desirable products, but nothing but internal management change can do that.)  As with so many other companies in so many other industries, bankruptcy reorganization might offer the Big Three something of a fresh start.

And yet, as you know if you’ve kept up with the news, executives at GM, Ford, and Chrysler have been saying till they are blue in the face that bankruptcy is not an option.  Why?  In short, they contend that consumers wouldn’t be willing to buy cars from makers in bankruptcy protection.  Uncertain that warranties would be honored, parts would be available, etc., buyers would turn toward competitors, leaving recovery for the companies impossible and liquidation the only option.

But even conceding that bankruptcy reorganization is a bigger risk for an automaker than an ordinary company (which would be a concession on a hotly contested point), the obvious question is “What other choice do they have?”  GM says it may not last the year, Ford is in only very slightly better shape, and Chrysler is a cancer on the private equity firm that bought it.  What’s the alternative?

And that’s where the taxpayers come in.

The reason that auto executives continue to swear off the need for bankruptcy is because they still entertain the hope that Congress will rescue the companies from their self-made problems with tens of billions in public money.  No need to undertake the risks and indignities (and, let’s no forget, likely management shakeups) that would come with bankruptcy if Congress is willing to step in.  Of course, some of the needed fundamental changes that could get done through bankruptcy wouldn’t get done with a bailout, but that’s a problem that can be kicked down the road.  And if six months from now the companies need more money, why, Congress would surely be reluctant to see its previous investments go down the drain.

As long as the companies believe that Congress will pony up funds for them to stay solvent, they likely won’t make the painful changes that they need to make if they are to be viable in the long-term.

No one is saying that bankruptcy reorganization is without risk for the Big Three.  Moreover, it is true  (due in part to the still-damaged state of the credit markets) that even with reorganization some or all three of the companies would need a bridge loan of some size from the federal government to get through the first few months.  But with bankruptcy reorganization those federal funds might actually turn out to be a decent investment for taxpayers.  Without bankruptcy reorganization, we’d likely be hearing the same cries of distress from the Big Three again quite soon, and would face the choice of making them long-term wards of the federal government or forcing them to finally get serious about their problems after their problems had perhaps made the companies unrecoverable.

Washington must send a clear message to Detroit now:  No bankruptcy, no bailout.

Monday, December 1, 2008

The (Potential) Great Republican Hope Visits the Land of Subsidized Corn

The Washington Post had a good story yesterday on Gov. Bobby Jindal’s recent trip to Iowa.  Jindal said all the right things while he was there about a potential run in 2012, meaning that he denied that his trip was in anyway related to such considerations.  Few believed him.

Yes, like it or not 2012 is on.