Chinese auto giants are geared up to buy out GM and Chrysler

So the Big 3 and their unions are to stupid to change so now they are open for a hostile take over. GM pulled it's electric car at what appears to be it's masters request ( the tech is known, if Tesla can do it so could GM ). They will take the money from the Chinese and we shall buy/hopefully not lease our electric cars from them. The $50 per hour lug-nut screwer will be screwed. And some guy in China is going to go home to his wife and say "honey they are paying me $5 per hour to screw on lug-nuts, Of course I took it I'd be crazy not to".

Brad

Lee Iacocca told a bunch of UAW types, "Every dollar-an-hour increase in wages makes a thousand more robots economical."

The day before the last steel mill in Pittsburgh shut its doors forever, steel workers hotly debated the merits of going on strike.

These unions are their own punishment.

It'll never happen.

The Chinese don't buy, they steal.

Not right.

we are both creating the new world.

The Chinese don't buy, they steal.

Oh puhleasee... and you guys don't??

How many Britsh inventions have you appropriated?...not to mention the German rocket scientists after WWII?
Get off your high horse before you fall off.
That's why your economy is screwed...because people like you insist that you are always right despite every indication to the contrary.

as Winston Churchil once said.

'you can rely on the Americans to do the right thing...
After they have exhausted every other possibility.'

Del

How many Britsh inventions have you appropriated?

appropriated adj : taken without permission or consent especially by public authority.

Name one.

With evidence.

Oooh Hawker Harrier?...
Radar?
Computers?

Heck just look here ... if you are hard enough...

Del

You forgot one we did invent Accidentally but did invent none the less.

The internet that became the world wide web. And if we would have realised it would be so big our government would have nipped it in the bud, and we would have put a little more fore thought into it.

Instead it evolved into a vacuum of need and wants that would make any three year old proud.

Brad

http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Things_America_Did_Not_Invent

In case you haven't realised it, that is a satire of the pathetic English notion that the English invented the world and won the war.

Try getting your facts right or is smear the best you can do?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AV-8_Harrier_II

Oh it's a joke site and there I was thinking it was really Wiki...

Ah yes it all becomes clear.

It's dastardly use of the KrisDel time machine which allowed the British to go back in time and design the Harrier retrospectively after you guys had dabbled with mkII.
I I think you had the wrong link.... try mine.

maybe you watch too many movies...next you'll be telling me you guys captured that Enigma machine...

Anyhow I don't want a battle... just trying to ensure a more balance view... with a little humour (which obviously missed the mark)
Del

I believe the Enigma machine was captured by the Poles... and migrated to UK.

Also you forgot ASDIC (translate to SONAR in American).

Frank Whittle? (developer of the jet engine). Note that it was also developed by the Germans independently in the same time period.

The engine which made the P-51 Mustang the success that it was, happened to be a British design. (The Merlin).

I am quite proud to be an American, and am proud of the advances WE have made in society, but I damn sure believe in credit where credit is due. WE didn't do it all.

Sincerely

Bill

PS The USA did NOT invent God... as some Americans might think.

Hello europium

<"....who stole it from the Hobbits, who hid between the covers of some obscure Brit Adventure/Fantasy and are still among us....">

Excuse me please.

The ancestral home of the hobbits is well-known, at Middle Earth:

Much of it right here in the foothills of New Zealand's South Island, where I live.

Refer: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/download.php?Number=69500

That should be proof enough.

Kind Regards....

Now that is one cool link. Thanks, Sparky!

(Your pic didn't come through. Maybe try uploading it again?)

Hello europium

The LOTR Website evidently removes hyperlinks to their website, so I placed it into my Photobucket Album, so it is available for you and others.

Now there's a puzzle, because the original map has arrived back, after a couple of minutes.

Kind Regards....

I think the entire world owes a great thanks to England for many of the things we take for granted. England was truly a world leader.......until electricity. The strongest navy in the world.....until electricity.

One thing that was not mentioned that the English also brought to the world was

Lucas Electric Company.

Think where England would be if Bosch and been English.

LOL ... nice one .

The Brits drink warm beer because they have Lucas refrigerators.

Travis

Just to clarify a commonly hed missaprehension..
We like beer at 'cellar temerature' i.e Cool... not bloody gut clenchingly freezing.

This is beacuse our beer has.
a) Taste.
b) Alcohol

These two combine to allow us to enjoy it without the need to anaesthetise our digestive tract by supercooling the rat's urine which passes for 'beer' in some other countries .

Del

Del

When I was still able to drink more than a wee dram (meds interact with alcohol), I used to make out like a bandit every St. Patricks's Day. Lots of folks who are of Irish descent would go out and buy Guiness stout. Then they'd ice it about 34°F which makes it taste like old wash water. So, nobody wanted to actually drink it. I'd just take the bottles and sit them beside the heat register for about 15 minutes to bring it up to about 50° at which point it has a wonderful frothy taste.

On the other hand, if you take a beer like Budweiser and try to drink it at 45°, it's awful.

When I was stationed in Germany, I used to see the German workers (in winter) stop for their lunch break and actually set their beer bottles in a pan of warm water. I thought they were crazy till I tried it.

We use a lot of corn and rice in our beers and that likely accounts for much of the difference in taste. We're getting a lot of microbreweries now that do produce some good ales (yes, the colonies have ale!) and a few fair lagers. If you're ever in San Francisco, you have to try the local sourdough bread, Ghiradelli chocolate, and Anchor Steam ale/porter/beer. Some of the better joints serve it at a decent temperature.

Budweiser (American) tastes awful at EVERY temperature my friend.

In the western US, that stuff came from horses... not rats. They produce alot more for any given whiz. I grew up on that stuff in the 1960s, at 3.2%... and brand didn't matter. It all tasted the same.

I was so happy when I got so-fisticated and found the real world of beers. Today I will buy the stuff as frozen in the store, but leave it out on the back porch to get it to decent drinking temperature.

Many of the breweries who only knew how to make that poor excuse for Pilsner are no longer in business.

Bill

Earlier on, Del said :

"Anyhow I don't want a battle... just trying to ensure a more balance view... with a little humour (which obviously missed the mark)"

Given that you'd accused the entire Chinese population of stealing, you deserve anything you get. Nobody here thinks theft is a joke. Maybe you could lighten up and explain how/why China will steal GM ?

I think you will find if you do a poll as to the effectiveness of my humour that you will be outvoted.

You castigate the Chinese...yet they built much of your railroad system and then were persecuted in the great depression and driven out of towns and businesses..

In the great earthquake in San Francisco the Chinese dead weren't even counted....

Your world view is somewhat parochial and myopic.

Del

Naughty Cat. A bath for you. LMAO.

A oblique reply to a bad statement.

When you brand a race, a religion, a gender, or a group with an all inclusive negative connotation it is slander.

You will find "Some" (qualifier) Lawyers, Politicians, and Used Car Salesmen are very honest upright people. (gasp sputter)

The only group I respect less is Policemen Only because otherwise honest cops turn a blind eye to the bad ones. The officers of the courts protect their own.

I personally know many Chinese that are very good people. Do I know some bad ones? Not really but out of that many people it would be statistically impossible for there not to be. At 2% that is still more than our whole population including the Chinese here.

Many groups are given a bad name by a small minority. China's industry is going through the growing pains we went through in over 200 years. We used lead pains for how many hundreds of years before we learned better?

China's population is learning about the responsibilities of wealth when most of their population has been dirt poor for over three generations. There is a learning curve and in dealing with any dynamic system all factors must be taken into consideration. If someone doesn't take this into consideration then that is their mistake. Greed on the part of the buyer will be fulfilled by a seller any where.

Brad

"You will find "Some" (qualifier) Lawyers, Politicians, and Used Car Salesmen are very honest upright people. (gasp sputter)"

Did you ever notice that it's never a Lawyer, Politician, or a Used Car Salesman that gets bitten by the shark? Is that what they mean when they use the term "Professional Courtesy"?

Actually, I think Del has a rather good wit... Would you like half of it?

Vermin, where the hell are you???

And don't forget: Al Gore invented the Internet.

Well, there was that nasty business with the Derbyshire textile spinning frames. It was in all the papers; you must have seen it.

Chinese motor companies should help all of us fight to achieve the total freedom of press and speech in China. www.HelpFreeChina.com

I think I've finally figured you out, Annaeswhatever.

I'd bet good money that what really sticks in your craw is the fact that you know someone, somewhere, somehow, is ...

... happy.

In my opinion our country has no good reason to complain about someone stealing our industry. Our union workers are paid way more than people in similar jobs in the rest of the marketplace. They continually demand more and hold industry and the communities surrounding them hostage. They are only matched in their avarice by the corporations that hire them.

"In my opinion our country has no good reason to complain about someone stealing our industry."

This one not GOOD enough for you.

http://www.technologyreview.com/wire/21708/?nlid=1530&a=f

annaesthetised,

Thanks for that link.

When I posted #8 I was remembering what happened to my small business and hundreds of others in the Tri-Cities WA in about 1980.

The major source of employment for that area was, at that time (and may yet be) the Hanford Nuclear reservation. One of the major unions struck for six months over a fifty cent an hour pay increase. Eventually Jimmy Carter shut off the funding and businesses that had not yet succumbed to the strike were left with no choice but to close their doors.

The unions dont care who they hurt in their pursuit of unjust compensation.

Hanford still is Shadetree,

between them and the large farming the recession is little felt here.

Brad

if things get worse for the auto majors and no bailouts, they just might succumb to the Red enticement.

their stooopid decision of pursuing with bigger and bigger gas guzzling SUVs when people were opting for small, compact fuel efficient sedans is to blame for their downfall

if they were to break up into smaller assets and sold off, it is more likely that an Asian entity will buy them out. conservative approach to managing money practised by Asians would place them in a better position to make such bids on loss making American/European companies

P.S.: The CEOs should consider wearing hand-me-down clothes and travelling on bicycles, the next time they approach the govt for a bailout.

Using your pvt jet to go begging - LMAO

Allow me to be regionally selfish for a minute. If you give us here in the rust belt the choice between 20% unemployment with US ownership of the big 3 or 10% unemployment with foreign ownership, we're not gonna take long to paint the local Chevy dealership bright red. Eating regular trumps chauvinism.

We've survived big steel going to (largely) Asia. We've survived Westinghouse Electric being broken up and being parceled out to foreign ownership. In most cases, we kept good jobs (not as many but a fair number). And, we've found the Japanese, Italians, Germans, Swedes, etc to be good partners and neighbors.

We were very jingoistic in the early 80s when steel was going down. Many parking lots had signs prohibiting Japanese cars. We were pissed off and feeling righteous. We were also wrong.

I think all of the countries and their leaders in this world are idiots born of corruption.

Give a man some power and he can do good. Give a man some wealth and power and he will surely be corrupted.

I didn't quote that because its my own words.

Peace

We cannot expect anything different, except the US is to decline, and the colossus of a revived Roman Empire is to continue to rise via Europe.

What is to come has been already written, by the Prophet Daniel and others, and nothing we can do is going to stop it, sorry folks.

Hard times a'coming for many.

Kind Regards....

Is the chinese owning Detroit that different from out of state coal companies owning West Virginia?

And is it any different for foreign investors and corporations owning real estate here? The difference is that Detroit has strategic military value. They make vehicles, chassis and parts for military vehicles.

How's about China building our tanks for us? Iran building Hummers? North Korea, troop carriers?

Russia, C-rations? Ugh! Perish the thought!

The idea of China owning our auto companies is a really, Really dumb idea.

The thought of China building our tanks has nothing compared with the existing fact that China IS building almost all of the computers that are running the businesses and infrastructure in the United States, and probably most of the rest of the world.What do any of us know about imbedded programs that might shut down a computer if it receives a predetermined message? Who built the computer you are using now. What will you be doing if it locks up tomorrow? That friends is a worry to me.

Indeed! A concern I've had for some time is WinTel doing Bad Things in silicon that are hidden in the sheer complexity of modern CPUs. Another, related concern is this business of Trusted Computing where they determine what gets executed on your computer. And those chips are made right here in the Good Ol' US of A. Corporations are more a concern to me than are geopolitical entities such as China.

Corporations are legal persons. Unfortunately, they are persons with "no souls to save, and no bodies to imprison."

A corporation exists to dissolve the responsibilities of the human beings who run it. Say the board of Acme Inc. decides to pollute a river. If anyone has a problem with that, they'll have to sue Acme, not the twelve members of the board or the investors. Most individuals would be ashamed to be named in a pollution suit, a fact which might deter them from committing such a crime. Acme has no shame, though.

Jail is a great equalizer. The richer you are, the less a fine will harm you -- but a year is still worth as much to a rich person as to a poor one. Unfortunately, you can't lock up an abstraction and the directors have little or no criminal liability. Fines become another cost of doing business. Of course, when pollution turns a profit, individuals divide the money.

Corporations are also legally required to put profit above every other good. A small business owner might decide that, on the whole, a 5% rate of return is plenty, even though she knows she could get 10% by raising prices and cutting jobs. It's her business, so she gets to decide how to balance profits against other values. By contrast, the Acme Board is required to make as big a profit is it possibly can, no matter what. For all its power, the directors aren't allowed to place jobs over profit, or sustainability over quarterly return. For that, they could be fired.

Normal human beings are enmeshed in a network of obligations and competing goods. We'd all like to make money, but we recognize that other people's rights and feelings matter, unlike psychopaths who feel entitled to do whatever they want. If empathy and ethics aren't enough to keep us normals on the straight and narrow, we can be deterred by punishments ranging from social ostracism to death. Even human psychopaths can be deterred by the threat of punishment.

Corporations have the same rights as people, plus more lawyers, guns and money. Terrifyingly, they are also designed to be amoral, immortal, and insatiable. For example, corporations enjoy free speech, and property rights including the right to own own other corporations (ironic, that, considering the 14th Amendment established corporate personhood).

It is not simply that corporations do bad things. Nor are corporate leaders necessarily terrible people. They can often be sympathetic and thoughtful. Corporations, on the other hand, are a legal fiction; one that has unleashed a dangerous self-perpetuating entity which is designed to slip the bonds of individual human decency and personal responsibility. That's why corporations are literally psychopaths.

Several of these makes our computer chips. M$, the biggest software company in the world (51,122 employees as of 2008) writes our operating systems, and they make no bones about their unmitigated greed, the desire to squash Linux, OS/X, Unix, and other competitors. Once you install an M$ operating system on your computer, it ceases to be yours. Just imagine what would happen if M$ put a backdoor in their OS. They could hold the world's economies hostage. I wouldn't put it past 'em.

I con cur, GA by the way. The Good old U.S.A. Is a cooperation. Walks like a duck acts like a duck then it is a duck for all practical purposes it is a duck. Ok a Robotic Duck.

Strange this is. My last three posts -- including this one -- were not posted Off-Topic! Go figure.

I hope that all of you had, or will have an opportunity to watch the last episode of Boston Legal. It deals with a Chinese conglomerate buying up law firms, and the repercussions that could result from this. It had its usual nonsense, but was laced with an ethical dilemma. Well worth watching if you have followed this thread.

China:

The world largest company: PetroChina
Largest Dam: China's 3 Gorges Dam
Longest Wall: Great Wall
Oldest and continuous civilisation of humankind: China
Largest Internet User base: China
World first commercial Maglev Train: Shanghai, China
Largest Solar Panels Manufacturer: Suntech, China
Largest Mobile Phone Market: China, larger than entire US population
Largest Creditor of the US: China, and you can see why this is the China Century. We are living in interesting time. Adious to USA and its killing machine of the last 50 years. The world hate America and there are countless good reasons around the world. Think why and think hard but don't think long, there's not much time left for the Republic of USA. Texas Governor want to leave the Union, next will be California. They don't want to share the Federal debts coming from China, Japan. Sell California to China to repay the debt.

Mankind's largest foreign reserves since the invention of money by China: China, again.

Thank you for your unbiased words of wisdom.

Next time grow a pair and sign your name!

...Think why and think hard but don't think long, there's not much time left for the Republic of USA...

If you think long then you would realize the problem is the golden rule. He who controls the gold makes the rules.

And why would China buy what they already own? Thank your government for selling you out for fiat money that they pay back with your work. Better yet do some root cause analysis and long hard thinking instead of emotional BS. This is not something that happened over night. Cash cows are bled not killed.

And yes do grow a pair

Brad