This year has seen some interesting news headlines, and its still only February. One of the articles I have read on Forbes.com is that General Motors is the world top auto manufacturer in terms of automobile sales. After three years of losing its crown to Toyota, General Motors had to deal with a huge debt, which it managed to reduce through bankruptcy.

Toyota's problems with brakes and 'sticky' accelerators probably had a large part of play in General Motors' success and in the business world, that isn't anything you can hold against General Motors because it could have happened to any of the big three. There are crash reports of crash testing dummies getting severed in test reports against Chery and some other manufacturers, but they still keep going and have loyal buyers who perceive the cost advantage as their key selling point.

Bummer! I was rooting for Ford, since they didn't take any of the government bail out money!
I find it rather sad that the government gets involved with private enterprise and then the company the government supports seems to get an unfair advantage over the privately owned company. It's a real kick in the head to the free enterprise system if you ask me.

sheepdog,

I know exactly what you mean. It is one of the reasons why firms with subsidies available to them for their manufacturing are not usually permitted to export to other parts of the world because they can undercut their competitors. Now, you might say - why would the government of the country where the goods are being manufactured offer such a subsidy, and I will look back at you and say, "Employment." When the government deals with a lower unemployment rate, crime rates are lower and therefore there is a decreased spending by the government on maintaining law and order, there is increased tax collected by the government in the form of income taxes, sales taxes, and import duties, apart from excise duty from the manufacturing firms. In short, the government spends a little to make a lot and it is great in terms of an investment by the government, except that they do not and they cannot do so because the world trade organization prevents it.

BTW, the Ford motor company does have a lot of things going for it. They managed to turn the company around and go from offering SUVs and a couple of other vehicles to offering a whole family of vehicles to suit just about every customer, and they have done quite a bit of work to focus on the Ford brand instead of distribute their effort across a whole line of brands that will never really be as popular as Ford. Ford has also managed to integrate its research and development, and engineering capabilities across the world and they did manage to get their investment in electric vehicles and alternative fuels to plan for the future. Ford has got its cars to the stage where they are the best in class, in terms of value, fuel economy, performance, and comfort.

Ford is not just an entity that makes and sells cars in the United States. They have a pretty large presence in India too. Ford managed to sell a huge number of its Ford Figo cars in India as soon as they were launched because it simply had the right pricing. It was a direct competitor to Maruti Suzuki's Swift and Tata Motors' Indica-Vista. The Ford Figo hatchback is also being offered to existing vehicle owners for a one-month exchange to lure customers to the brand.

Oh, I agree completely. If business is allowed to do business, everyone benifits, as you explained so well. More jobs, less crime, more taxes to the government, everyone benifits.
But the big problem today is keeping government out of business enough so that the business can actually run itself and make a profit. Unfortunatly, it's our government that hampers business with riduclulous regulations that place an unfair cost of doing business to struggling companies.

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