automakers

In June, when the Cash-for-Clunkers program — which provided a government subsidy to people who traded in older low-mileage vehicles to buy new, supposedly better-mileage vehicles — was humming to the tune of $1 billion, we wrote a piece warning that the program was hardly the environmental benefit its Capitol Hill supporters were claiming. Instead, [...]

With the enormously popular cash for clunkers program soon to exhaust its $1 billion allotment, the Senate on Thursday passed legislation providing an additional $2 billion, which the lawmakers hope will see the program through the month.
The vote — 60 to 37 — came less than a week after the House approved the same proposal. [...]

The Department of Transportation just sent out some updated figures on the vehicles being scrapped and purchased under the popular cash for clunkers program, which provides up to $4,500 in cash to drivers who trade their gas guzzlers for more efficient vehicles.
Of the $1 billion allocated under the program, $775 million is out the door, [...]

House lawmakers are on the floor as we speak debating a bill to provide $2 billion more to what proved to be a tremendously popular cash for clunkers program. And, while some lawmakers would like to see the conditions of that program changed to encourage the purchase of more fuel efficient cars, White House economist [...]

As funding for the $1 billion cash for clunkers program has reportedly dried up less than one week after its launch, Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) want answers from the White House about what vehicles are being sold and scrapped under the program. In a letter to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, the [...]

Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm hopes so.

As part of the war-funding deal reached yesterday between House and Senate negotiators, Detroit’s automakers found a $1 billion gift: The launch of a cash-for-clunkers program that focuses more on selling large, otherwise unwanted cars than it does on curbing greenhouse emissions, as the program was initially intended. Detroit News lays out some of the [...]

Seems that critics of the White House decision to bail out General Motors and Chrysler were right to question how well federal government would manage its enormous new investment. The New York Times reported today that the administration recently bought thousands of new vehicles, but a lion’s share of the money went to the only [...]

Robert Reich, economist and former Clinton administration labor secretary, doesn’t think much of General Motors expected bankruptcy filing today, as the nation’s largest automaker prepares for a de facto government rescue and takeover. If the United States really wanted to help GM, Reich wrote in an op/ed for the Financial Times, it would try a [...]

The real risk to the future of General Motors (other than the unpopular vehicles) is that a bankruptcy and reorganization process would not be quick, in what’s called a 363 sale, but would go through a standard Chapter 11 reorganization, which could take several years. A long and drawn out reorganization would probably have an [...]