Quotes of the week: Friedman, Lutz and Beebe
Thomas Friedman, New York Times (Dec. 9, 2008) — On the Detroit 3 auto bailout.
Our bailout of Detroit will be remembered as the equivalent of pouring billions of dollars of taxpayers money into the mail-order-catalogue business on the eve of the birth of eBay.
Bob Lutz, vice-chairman of General Motors (Fox News interview) — Giving meaning to Friedman’s quote above and giving us a reason to refuse a bailout for GM.
Let me just get one thing straight here: There’s a lot of talk about well, General Motors doesn’t make the right kind of cars or General Motors built trucks too long. At $1.50 per gallon, the American public wants sport utilities and large pickup trucks.
Andrew Beebe, managing director of Suntech Energy Solutions (Greentech Media) — On President-elect Obama’s appointment of Steve Chu as energy secretary.
This was a choice –- in line with what now seems to be the norm for this incoming administration –- that was simply based on the ‘the best person for the job,’ and not on who helped the most or which constituency needs placating.
Tags: Andrew Beebe, Bob Lutz, Thomas Friedman
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
December 13th, 2008 at 10:15 pm
[...] Quotes of the week: Friedman, Lutz and Beebe [...]
December 14th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
So is the president if GM really so blind as to be telling us that the future lies with trucks and SUV’s that are only currently a trend item due to a slumping economy and temporarily decreased energy and commodity prices? Perhaps he should stop spoon feeding his **** to the media and general public and fess up with straight facts by saying something along the lines of:
“We realize that GM has been heading in the wrong direction and our slumping sales figures have been driven by nothing more than changes in the consumer market, a complete lack of future vision in the consumer market, lack of perceived innovation, a decrease in the quality of our vehicles and the crippling fact that our unionized workers are (in the grand scheme) overpaid, under skilled and are in some cases being propped up in antiquated positions.
We will change this.”
In other words.
Please GM.. Just die a quick death already.