More decorations to dig out and put up.  The time changed back an hour.  Which really messes me up this time of year.  I don’t have much trouble in the springing forward part, but this falling back really takes its toll.  I think because of all the darkness.  You get up in the dark, go to work in the dark, and then come home in the dark.  Dark, dark, dark.

Growing up, holidays took on a different feel.  I grew up in a good sized family.  2 Aunts, and 2 Uncles.  A smattering of cousins tossed in for good measure.  And that was just on my Dad’s side.  My Mom had 10 Brothers and Sisters, but we didn’t see them as much as they lived on the Detroit side of Michigan.  And we can’t remember my Grandparents.  Earl and Vida lived on a farm outside of the small town I grew up in.  Not a huge farm, but to me it was the greatest place there was.  And holiday dinners with my Grandparents, Aunts and Uncles, and cousins were wonderful.  Great food, people who loved you, and a warm house.  Gathered around the TV, or playing games in the dining room.  Taking naps on the floor listening to the adults talk.  Voices of people who loved one another. 

Those were good times.

Basically the site is based around college, and post-college aged folks and the drunken, crazed texts that they send to one another.  The subjects range from rating men and women, talking about their conquests, talking about their lives, and the such.  It is like a train wreck.  And I can’t stop going to the site every day and reading the latest episodes.

Mind you, I am thinking to myself all the while that I sincerely hope that my youngest son is not getting himself involved in any of these shenanigans.  Though, I do know that he probably is.  The child is way too much like me not to.  And I am also thinking, that I just don’t remember college being that way when I was attending.  Of course we didn’t have cell phones back in the dark ages.  We would have had to chisel our thoughts onto stone tablets and then drop them off at our friends caves.  Way too cumbersome, if you ask me.  Maybe that is why we had so many parties, because we didn’t have a convenient method of communication.  Had nothing to do with the copious amounts of alcohol and drugs that were consumed.

At least that is what I hear, as I didn’t do anything like that when I was going to college.

That I remember, anyway.

L8r

Toss in a few Nyquil fueled dreams, and you can figure out where my focus has been. Certainly not in writing anything that has been lumbering around in my head. Unless you are interested in OTC drug dreams.

Back to it.

In following what is happening in my home state of Michigan I came across this little tidbit last week. The UAW and GM are meeting for contract talks.

Now doesn’t that send chills down your spine?

Just when the state, hell the nation, needs for things to go without a hitch for the Big 3 Automakers you have to toss in a contract negotiation.

The UAW has a no strike clause in their current contract. That contract expires in September of 2011. GM and Chrysler have until December of 2011 to pay back the loans that they received from the Federal Government. Which leaves everyone in a weird situation.

The UAW and the car companies have got to come out of these negotiations with a plan to keep the companies whole, and healthy.

Anything less, any petty bickering will kill them all.

In my opinion.

Namaste.

My Uncles didn’t live outrageously. They had modest houses, in modest areas. Their kids went to college, got married, and moved out of their parents homes into their own. There were no $70 an hour retirees in my Mothers family. They were the middle class, who worked, took care of their families, saved money for retirement, and when they did retire, they lavished love on their kids and their grandkids.

That was a huge run-on sentence. Sorry.

Part of the $17.4 billion we are giving the Big3 is tied to GM funding their pension package with stocks. You can read about it in todays Detroit Free Press:

Strings on auto loans risky for retirees
Stocks would be used for half of health-care trust

BY KATIE MERX • FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER • December 25, 2008

Retirement health care for as many as three-quarters of a million Americans will be placed at high risk if conditions proposed as part of auto rescue loans are enforced by the incoming Congress and Obama administration, labor experts say.

At issue is a condition of the federal loans that calls for General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC to use company stock or the equivalent to pay half, or $10.5 billion, of the cash owed to a union retiree health-care trust.

“It’s as if we, as a nation, learned nothing from Enron, essentially risking the health care of retired and active workers in such a cavalier fashion,” said Harley Shaiken, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley who specializes in labor issues. “The great Enron lesson was: Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. … Putting half your eggs in the trust-fund basket is still a high level of risk.”

Enron workers lost the lion’s share of their retirement savings when the company’s once fast-gaining stock became virtually worthless. Enron workers received their matching contributions in Enron stock — then were prohibited from selling it until they were 50 — and many invested their own 401(k) contributions in company shares.

Since Enron’s collapse, many corporations have limited the amount of company stock their employees can hold in 401(k) accounts. Legislators and shareholder advocates argued for tougher regulations to protect individual investors.

That is why, Shaiken said, it is shocking that President George W. Bush “apparently bowed to political pressures from the Republican right in the Senate” and called for the retiree health care of so many Americans to be placed in jeopardy.

Shaiken says he believes the new Democratic Congress and President-elect Barack Obama will revisit conditions placed on the UAW, and particularly on the funding of the VEBA (voluntary employee beneficiary association), when they take office next year.

But others say it may not be possible for the automakers to achieve the degree of restructuring cost-cutting required to meet conditions of the federal loans by the end of March without abiding by the terms set by the Bush administration.

The White House agreed to provide as much as $17.4 billion in loans to carry GM and Chrysler through the first three months of 2009. But the automakers must demonstrate viability by March 31 or they will be forced to immediately pay back the loans or file for bankruptcy. As part of the loan agreement, the federal government set targets for restructuring that include union wage concessions, the change in VEBA funding and cutting the company’s bond debt by about two-thirds.

While the automakers can deviate from these targets, “absent a near-term economic recovery,” Citigroup auto analyst Itay Michaeli wrote in a note to investors this week, “we believe it would be difficult to deviate significantly from these targets and still demonstrate viability.”

Gary Chaison, professor of industrial relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., said that while the changes to VEBA funding are not optimal for the approximately 750,000 people for whom the new fund was supposed to provide health coverage beginning in 2010, it still may ensure more benefits than they otherwise would have received in retirement.

“I think this makes the best of a bad situation,” Chaison said. “If they pay a portion of the VEBA now, they might have enough to pay for the health-care benefits of the current retirees and they might get more later.”

But, Chaison said, his impression even from the time the UAW and automakers agreed to the VEBA in late 2007 was that it was questionable whether the health-care trust would last long enough to keep the commitments the UAW and automakers made.

Although the UAW described the VEBA as a solid plan to provide benefits to retirees and workers who were active as of the contract agreements last year, it was in part a defensive maneuver intended to protect workers from corporate bankruptcies that typically wipe out retiree benefits.

And it might not even have come to that, the UAW said when it pitched the VEBA to members. The automakers could have sought court approval to simply terminate retiree medical benefits.

At the time the UAW agreed to it, workers and analysts believed a VEBA would protect them from the risk of bankruptcy. While an automaker’s default seemed possible, just a year ago, few thought it would happen before the VEBA was funded and took effect in 2010.

But with the risk of illiquidity now an imminent possibility, the UAW on Dec. 3 agreed to postpone until 2012 the VEBA payments that were due from GM and Chrysler in 2010.

Now the government is asking the trust to accept half cash and half stock.

A UAW spokesman declined to comment on the proposed conditions for changing VEBA funding.

GM retiree Ralph Herndon of Otisville said he isn’t worried about getting half of the VEBA funding from GM stock — he has faith the company will rebound and survive — but he is worried about the management of stocks on Wall Street in general.

“GM stock doesn’t bother me,” Herndon said. “I’m not going to worry about the VEBA, because all the worrying we do is going to change nothing. I’m cautiously optimistic it will work out. … But if you expect me to save for my own retirement, someone needs to manage the managers on Wall Street better.”

Herndon said his 401(k) has dropped by half in the past year or so.

But many industry experts said the bet on GM stock is a risky one.

Several analysts this week cautioned that current GM equity investors could find the value of their holdings wiped out either by bankruptcy or by dilution from new government stakes in the company.

“The stock may go down to zero,” Chaison said. “My view of the VEBA is it was on shaky ground already. Now, if I were a retiree I would be hoping to come out of this with health-care benefits for the short-run. If I were a present employee, I wouldn’t count on the VEBA for health care. I would hope I would get a buyout or keep my job. The name of the game right now is to save jobs. Everything else is secondary.”

Fed’s bank ruling buoys GMAC, GM
Dealers rejoice as bank status lets lender tap bailout funds

BY BRENT SNAVELY and JEWEL GOPWANI • FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITERS • December 25, 2008

The Federal Reserve granted a request Wednesday from GMAC LLC to become a bank holding company, a designation that helps General Motors’ lending arm avert a potential bankruptcy, significantly improves GM’s chances of survival and provides an immediate sense of relief to auto dealers.
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“I just got the best Christmas gift in the world,” said Joe Serra, who owns 37 automotive franchises.

The Federal Reserve Board said it made the decision under “emergency conditions,” and is requiring both of GMAC’s owners — GM and Cerberus Capital Management L.P. — to give up control of the company.

GMAC’s future has been viewed as a wild card in GM’s restructuring plan. A bankruptcy by GMAC could have wiped out the main lender to GM dealers, potentially derailing a turnaround at the Detroit automaker.

The Federal Reserve’s move offers GMAC a lifeline, opening the door to GMAC for several funding options to lend money to dealers and consumers during a time of frozen credit markets brought on by the meltdown of the nation’s financial institutions.

“General Motors is pleased that GMAC has won bank approval,” Steve Harris, GM’s vice president of communications, said late Wednesday. “Over time, if this makes credit for GM customers and dealers more available, it is obviously a good thing for GM.”

GMAC spokeswoman Gina Proia said Wednesday, “We’re very pleased about the news. It’s a significant positive step for the company and really marks a turning point in our history.”

Becoming a bank makes GMAC eligible to tap the $700-billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. GMAC has applied separately to the U.S. Treasury for money and is awaiting approval. Congress passed the TARP in October in an effort to bail out the nation’s financial institutions and unfreeze the credit markets.

In addition to applying for money from TARP and being able to accept deposits, as a bank GMAC also plans to apply for a program to sell bonds that are backed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

“It provides GMAC with what we think is the best long-term solution for us to support the automotive finance business both for consumers and dealers,” Proia said.

GMAC, which lost $2.52 billion during the three months that ended Sept. 30, is in such bad financial shape that it is having difficulty funding auto loans to consumers as well as financing dealer inventory plans. In November, GMAC warned that Residential Capital LLC, its mortgage lending unit, could default on its loans by year’s end.

Without approval to become a bank, analysts said GMAC faced a bankruptcy filing that would have cut off financing to the roughly 85% of GM’s North American dealers with which it does business.

Most of GM’s auto dealers rely on GMAC for “floor planning,” an industry term that refers to a loan that allows dealers to buy vehicles from the manufacturer until they are purchased by consumers.

Serra said he got the news while in church on Christmas Eve. About 65% of Serra’s dealerships are GM franchises. Several months ago, Serra, president of Serra Automotive, said he put his vehicle inventory financing out for bid to other banks.

“But with what was going on recently …no other lenders were interested in taking all of my inventory,” he said. “Without floor planning, you cannot conduct business.”

Losing loans from GMAC could have snowballed into a steep sales decline for GM, which already has been pushed to the brink of insolvency by the financial meltdown, frozen credit markets and national recession.

Allowing GMAC to fail potentially would have undone progress GM could make with the $13.4 billion in loans it is getting from the federal government, announced by the Bush administration last week.

One of the biggest immediate consequences is that the plan requires Cerberus and GM to give up most of their ownership stakes in the financing arm.

Cerberus, which owns 51% of GMAC, would cut its ownership stake to as little as 33%, maintaining voting interest of as much as 14.9%. To cut its stake, Cerberus would distribute its stock in GMAC to its investors. GM, which owns 49% of GMAC, would cut its stake to less than 10% of GMAC.

The news was released after the market closed Wednesday. Shares of GMAC dropped 36 cents or 6.6% Wednesday to close at $5.11.

And across the border in Indiana, Kokomo, with four Chrysler plants employing about 5,000 workers, helps support numerous auto parts suppliers, including Delphi Corp., an auto electronics supplier that has about 3,100 Kokomo employees.

Marion Mayor Wayne Seybold, whose city has a GM plant that employs 1,200 and has numerous suppliers, said he was relieved that Bush “stood up” and offered the loans to GM and Chrysler.

Just another example of the ripple effect.

Namaste.

Thank you, President Bush.  Thank you because 2.5 to 3 million folks in Michigan were holding their breath all week.  I could hear the exhale, and following inhale all the way here in Pennsylvania on Friday.

This infusion of cash is not going to stop all of the bleeding.  There will be suppliers who will close because they don’t have the cash reserves to keep going until GM and Chrysler pay their bills.  But for the majority of folks out there, they can see some light at the end of the tunnel.

And hopefully it isn’t another train coming at them.  Both Management and the UAW have to look at what has been given them and make some hard decisions.  Who should get paid what is the first one that needs to be made.  I read somewhere, and I can’t cite it right now but I will later, that Japanese execs make 4-5 times more than their lowest paid employee.  Not here in the US, of course, but in Japan.  US execs make over 100 times their lowest paid employees.  Stop and think about that for a minute.

Everyone likes to have money, and live in a nice house, and do the things that they want to do, when they want to do them.  I know that I do.  But if your company is cash strapped, wouldn’t it be prudent to give in on some salary and benefits rather than not have a job?  Don’t cite the $70-$100 hourly wages being made by UAW members.  It doesn’t happen.  But the point is that both sides of the bargaining table are going to have to pony up to keep Detroit alive.

The UAW always says that Management is the problem, taking all of the cream and leaving them with crumbs.  Management says that the bargaining unit wants blood from a turnip.  Blah, blah, blah.  Both sides need to figure out whether they want to be employed or on the dole.  And they need to figure it out soon, as there is a glut of cars in the market.  New cars that haven’t been sold because very few people who CAN get loans are going to buy from a company going out of business.  And folks like me, who own foreign vehicles , aren’t going to head back to Detroit rolling iron if they can’t make reliable vehicles that don’t last.

Yeah, I drive a toyota as compared to MLW’s Chevy.  Her engine blew at 82,000 miles.  My engine has 256,000 miles on it with only having to replace an EGR valve.  Her heater core had to be replaced at 90,000 miles, all I have had to do to my vehicle is to recharge the AC every couple of years.  Given that kind of performance, what vehicle would you buy?

So.  GM, Chrysler, and the UAW have an opportunity here.  Hopefully they can get beyond themselves and not screw it up.

Namaste.

2.5 million people without a job in the stated of Michigan. That is 20% of the estimated 10,000,000 population of that state.

20% of the population unemployed.

So who would be impacted if that happens? No work, no money to spend on gas. Gas stations close. No work, no money to spend on consumer goods. Appliance stores, clothing stores, toy stores, jewelry stores all closed. No work, no money to send your kids to college. Can’t get a student loan without a job. Can’t buy a car, or a house without a job.

Economic apocolypse.

Would the last person out of the state please turn out the lights?

namaste.

Last Update: 12/12 2:35 pm

NEW YORK (AP) – General Motors Corp. said Friday it will temporarily close 20 factories across North America – including its truck assembly plant in Fort Wayne, Ind. – and make sweeping cuts to its vehicle production as it tries to adjust to dramatically weaker automobile demand.

GM said it will cut 250,000 vehicles from its production schedule for the first quarter of 2009, which includes a cut of 60,000 vehicles announced last week. Normal production would be around 750,000 cars and trucks for the quarter, spokesman Tony Sapienza said.

Many plants will be shut down for the whole month of January, he said, and all told, the factories will be closed for 30 percent of the quarter.

“We’re adjusting pretty dramatically,” spokesman Chris Lee said.

The Fort Wayne plant assembles Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra light-duty trucks.

GM’s Indiana operations also include a casting plant in Bedford and metal stamping plants in Marion and Indianapolis. The automaker said it was still assessing those operations.

The move affects most of GM’s plants in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. During the shutdowns, employees will be temporarily laid off and can apply to receive a portion of their normal pay from the company. They can also apply for state unemployment benefits, Lee said.

GM and nearly all automakers who sell in the U.S. are mired in the worst sales slump in 26 years. GM reported its sales in the U.S. plunged 41 percent in November and are down 22 percent for the first 11 months of the year compared with the same period last year.

Cash-strapped GM is seeking government loans to stay in operation beyond the end of the year. The White House said Friday it may tap into its $700 billion Wall Street bailout fund to help GM and Chrysler stay in business after the Senate blocked a measure to provide $14 billion in immediate loans.

The measure failed in dramatic fashion late Thursday after Senate Republicans balked at passing the bill without more wage and benefit concessions from autoworkers.

Lee said Friday’s production cuts are unrelated to the rescue’s failure and had already been planned.

The entire auto industry has been making massive production cuts recently as it adjusts to the reality of lower automobile demand. Earlier Friday, Honda Motor Co. said it was cutting production in North America by 119,000 vehicles for its fiscal year ending March 31.

That brings Honda’s expected production for its fiscal year to 1.3 million units, a spokesman said.

Auto demand in the U.S., and increasingly around the world, has been hobbled due to the declining economy and the credit squeeze, which has made it more difficult and more costly for some buyers to obtain financing. Industrywide vehicle sales crumbled 37 percent in November, with every major automaker posting giant sales declines.

Lee said GM’s production cuts will be achieved by adding “down weeks” to the schedules at the affected plants. During down weeks, which can be staggered during a given period of time or can come several at once, the plant will not produce anything and employees will be temporary laid off.

“We look at it on a plant-by-plant basis and make decisions regarding their production schedule in terms of market demand, so it’s not a blanket … we look at it plant by plant and make those decisions,” Lee said.

—

AP Auto Writer Tom Krisher in Detroit contributed to this report.

From Mlive.com

Want a gripping reality show? Check out Michigan
Posted by Jo Mathis | The Ann Arbor News December 12, 2008 22:08PM

The news Friday that the $14 billion bailout for the Big Three died in the Senate left me, like most Michiganders, numb.

After tossing $700 billion – just like that – at the fancy folks and criminals on Wall Street, the shortsighted, anti-union, stubborn fat cats in Washington had the nerve to balk at a $14 billion loan to automakers?

Really?

The struggle for survival of the Big Three automakers reminds me of grounding teenagers for a series of grievances. Mistakes were made. You know they need to suffer the consequences. But if you ground them, everybody in the house suffers, too. So because they’re showing promise and progress and a whole lot of people will benefit from their success, of course you send them a lifeline.

So now what? We wait for the Bush administration to take a chunk of Wall Street’s $700 billion and send it our way. And we keep on keeping on.

Back in January, The News printed a letter to the editor from a Whitmore Lake woman who wrote:

Six months ago my life was great, but it was all taken away in an instant when I lost my job last August. By October, I was moving out of the house I was trying to buy on land contract and since November I have been living in my aunt’s basement with my husband and two children.

I remember sitting at work reading about all these “people” who lost their jobs and feeling sorry for them. Now I am one of those “people.” …

I saved a copy of that letter because it was a reminder to not get smug or complacent about anything, including my job. And that was months before the stock market meltdown, when fears of Big Three bankruptcies were real but still remote and before the latest rounds of massive layoffs.

We journalists are experiencing many of the same problems we’ve written about for years: Buyouts. Layoffs. Cutbacks. Downturns.

My friend Sarah just lost her reporting job during a round of layoffs at The Cleveland Plain Dealer, and is staying with me for a few days to get her mind off things.

She’s 38 and talented and has no spouse she can depend on financially until she finds something else. She’s also stuck with a house in a city with a dearth of both jobs and home buyers.

“I’m worried that my life is going to become the same as a nursing home patient: Wake up. Eat. Watch TV. Go to bed,” she said, smiling on the outside, desperate on the inside.

We admit we’ve both had fleeting moments when we wished we were senior citizens comfortably retired and living peacefully on a pension.

Even Sarah’s mother is counting the days until she’s 65 and eligible for Medicare.
When did old age become the holy grail?

It’s further proof that everything’s spinning out of control and the world has gone mad.

And this is why I’m proposing that Hollywood dump its reality shows based in Atlanta and Beverly Hills and on deserted islands and move crews into the state of Michigan right away. Tomorrow.

They want drama and angst? We got ‘em en masse.

Wouldn’t you like to see an insider look at Borders? How about a reality show about Hillary Swank making a movie here? The Zingerman’s staff is a funky, friendly, colorful bunch. I sniff a reality show with the word pastrami in it.

What the heck. The Ann Arbor News newsroom has its share of characters and might make interesting reality show fodder right about now, too. You think I won’t act out a scripted fight with a copy editor or photographer if the price is right (and the lighting’s good)? Think again.

This is survival, baby.

And reality bites.