chrysler

Tailpipe emissions are hardly the only concerns to pop up amid Washington’s debate over an automaker bailout. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) wondered yesterday why taxpayers should pump billions of dollars into Chrysler if its private owner, Cerberus, isn’t willing to do so. From Grassley’s Dec. 9 to Democratic leaders:

Nearly a month after the executives of the Big Three automakers arrived in Washington on corporate jets to ask Congress for a bailout, a group of auto workers made the same trip by carpool. Their mission was the same, but the blue-collar image they projected was strikingly different.

The heads of Detroit’s automakers might be willing to accept $1 salaries as a condition of a federal bailout, but they won’t commit to capping their total compensation, even at $1 million.
So says Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), a liberal member of the House Financial Services Committee, which hosted the three auto execs this morning to [...]

Last month, when Detroit’s Big Three automakers stormed Capitol Hill in search of $25 billion in emergency loans, a number of lawmakers wondered aloud where that figure came from — and whether it would be enough.
It seems there was reason for their skepticism.
Chrysler yesterday afternoon was the last of the automakers to unveil its revamped [...]

In 1979, with Chrysler at the brink of failure, Lee Iacocca famously cut his salary to $1 per year in recognition of the federal help that eventually saved the company.
Fast forward nearly 30 years, and several lawmakers have put the Iacocca challenge to the CEOs of Detroit’s Big Three, who are in Washington this week [...]

If the auto industry fails, the pain will be felt across the country and throughout the economy — not just in the Motor City.

As the Wall Street bailout program morphs from one helping banks to one benefiting insurers and (perhaps) automakers, the Bush administration is having a hard time explaining what rules are dictating the process — and where it’ll draw lines of eligibility.
It’s an unlikely spot for a conservative White House that once lived and died railing [...]

A spate of gigantic mergers sparked by the recent global crisis has overnight reordered the American economic landscape — if not America itself.