Archive for the 'Cars: Damocles’ Last Sword' Category
Monday, November 16th, 2009
The Radical Truth About Energy
Nathan Lewis of Cal Tech says we’d need 10,000 plutonium (not uranium) reactors to produce 80 percent of existing energy consumption. To do that, we’d need to build a new plutonium plant every other day for the next 50 years, without any interruptions.
Conservation is coming and coming hard, my friends. The only question is whether we’ll retain any say in the adjustment process. Our current rulers, Obama distinctly included, don’t want us to gain the first glimmer of
awareness of the basic facts.
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009
GM’s New Geniuses Can’t Live on Half a Million
SEGUIN, Texas (Reuters) — General Motors Co. Chairman Ed Whitacre on Tuesday urged the Obama administration to give the automaker less restrictive pay caps and said it was too early to discuss the timing for the automaker to become a public company again.
Cash salaries for the top executives were cut by 31 percent, and only one unnamed executive besides Henderson will be paid more than $500,000 for 2009.
Whitacre said that $500,000 limit made hiring from outside difficult, and he urged a reconsideration of the limits set by the Treasury Department’s special master Kenneth Feinberg. (Source: Automotive News, November 11, 2009)
Whitacre, the fresh-faced rebel shown at left, was, after all paid $61 million in 2006, for his excruciating labors overseeing the AT&T-Bell South merger while also passing along illegally-gathered wiretap information to the NSA.
And what would we all do without glorious breakthroughs like the AT&T-Bell South merger? Sure, 10,000 people lost their jobs in that process, and it also further entrenched the institutional basis for the world’s highest telecommunications bills.
But, look, those things are good for investors, aren’ t they? And, just as anybody can sleep under a bridge, soare we all perfectly free to become major investors. All you have to do is get yourself $10 or 20 million to get yourself started.
And Ed and his pals probably lost a lot of their $61 million pay packets last year, too, right? Just like the rest of us, right? Aren’t you down to your last few dozen millions yourself? I know I am.
Besides, it’s got to be a rather thankless task, this acting as the funeral director who keeps insisting the guy in the box is still alive…
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
Suppression of Peak Oil Facts: Guess Who
Here’s a link to the least surprising news of the day (among always stiff competition):
Key oil figures were distorted by US pressure, says whistleblower
Is that a cliff up ahead? A capitalist cliff? Gun it, Louise!
Monday, November 9th, 2009
What the Automotive Bailout Bought
Remember that Obama-designed bailout of the automotive capitalists, the one that will direct at least 130 billion no-ownership-exercised public dollars to what remains of the real-economy vanguard of our mortally decrepit overclass?
What changes has the bailout cash facilitated, you might wonder. New, cutting edge cars that out-perform Japanese makes? Radical MPG improvements? Exploration of the idea of using existing production equipment to rebuild the nation’s rail stock and infrastructure?
Not so much.
Turns out, the money is retooling marketing strategies, not transportation arrangements.
If by now you’ve finished rolling on the floor laughing your ass off over GM’s new “May the Best Car Win” campaign and perhaps vomiting as you realize that pickup trucks and SUVs remain a central part of the Not-So-Big Three’s plans, consider the latest news out of Chrysler.
According to Automotive News, here is what that pool of investors is planning to do with their free handout:
Chrysler hikes spending to rebuild brands
After five months of near silence on the marketing front, Chrysler Group is roaring back with a new attitude. The automaker is ratcheting up advertising this quarter and plans to do so in each of the next two years, CFO Richard Palmer said last week. He spoke at the unveiling of Chrysler’s five-year plan under Fiat S.p.A., which took control of Chrysler as it emerged from bankruptcy in June.
Chrysler Group vehicle sales fell 30 percent last month from a year earlier and are down 39 percent this year through October. CEO Sergio Marchionne said, “I can give you one reason: The fact that we’ve been incredibly quiet for the last five months, so the marketing positions of all our brands have been incredibly weak.”
Chrysler’s plan is big — literally. Three experts who attended the meeting were given a loose-leaf binder 2 inches thick outlining it.
Continue to See Chrysler’s “New” Marketing Ideas…
Monday, October 26th, 2009
Honda “Experiment” Tests Shallowness, Vanity
Honda Motor Company is running a marketing campaign packaged as a “social experiment.” The cover story is to see how much people “love” Honda automobiles by inviting them to post personal photos and blurbs on the Facebook “social” networking site.
The truth, of course, is that what Honda is really testing is how effectively they can convert people’s petty vanity and sheer programmability into still more irrational brand loyalty.
Have people been falling into this trap?
The results thus far have blown away Mr. Peyton, who felt at the campaign’s onset that “If we got a million connections, that would be cool.” He called the push “a pretty powerful piece of advertising because people are buying into it and we aren’t giving anything away.”
Honda initially supported the site with a sprinkling of ads on Facebook. “It wasn’t a big media buy, but it got a lot of attention,” said Tom Peyton, senior manager-national advertising. Earlier this month, TV was added to the mix, with 15- and 30-second spots featuring actual owners. The commercials were created by Honda’s longtime agency, independent RPA, Santa Monica, which developed the concept. The buy, also handled by RPA, encompasses prime-time programming such as “30 Rock,” “How I Met Your Mother,” “Dancing With the Stars” and NFL football.
The campaign got a huge boost after a one-day targeted homepage takeover Oct. 19 on high-reach sites, including ESPN.com, CNN.com and SportsYahoo.com. That more than doubled the number of Facebook fans into the range of 1.7 million. (As of press time Oct. 22, the number had topped 2 million).
Footnote: As of this morning, the number of victims of this campaign is approaching 2.5 million.
Friday, September 11th, 2009
Not Joking: The Face of the “New” GM
Fresh off its public bailout, the General Motors Corporation is about to launch a massive marketing campaign titled “May the Best Car Win.” The intent of the campaign is to show prospective buyers how new and different the post-bailout GM will be. The spokesperson “face” of this coming blitzkrieg? I shit you not:
ROFLMAO
Script: “They tell me the young whipper-snappers are none too happy with our latest batch of horseless carriages…Well, by gum, this’ll learn ‘em…”
