Big Three Stand Together

Few of you need an introduction to the current ailing state of the US's dominant automakers for the last century or so. At the congressional hearing in which the automakers plea for a slice of the $700 Billion Bailout deal created to stimulate the US Economy.

I stumbled across the Senate Banking Committee's website where they have a streaming media broadcast of all 262 minutes (that's over four hours!) of the recorded hearing. If you are having trouble sleeping or don't know what to do with yourself over the holiday break, click this link below:

Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee SD-538

From a strategic perspective, the CEOs of Ford, Chrysler and GM have their work cut out for them. They must be able to change the metagame:

• Unite cooperatively against the probing and humiliating questions of the Senate. As opposed to the "here, take all you want" posture of the Fed injecting $25 Billion dollars EACH into AIG and Citibank, the interrogators never miss an opportunity to remind the automakers that they are severely behind in the competition for US market share. It almost seemed as if the congressmen thought they knew how to run the auto companies better themselves;
• Smartly divide the $25 Billion dollar request between the three firms. I felt the automakers planned poorly before coming before the Banking Committee, and they will likely have to circle the wagons again before they are to convince the committee that their individual requests for chunks of exactly $25 billion are justified. One of the first questions the automakers were asked was, "how much does each of you need?" After some stumbling and bumbling, "aah, all of us? $25 bill--oh umm, we figured we'd split it according to our proportional market share..." GONG! Wrong answer guys. Although proportionality is considered a measure of fairness in many distributions, it was not acceptable for the Senators.
• Use "jedi tricks" to guilt, woo and appeal to the committee members for mercy. Alan Mullaly of Ford proposed a personal salary of $1 for 2009. Rick Waggoner drove all the way from Detroit to Washington, DC in a hybrid Malibu. GM had to rely on showcasing their all-electric Chevy Volt just to convince the committee that they could compete with the foreign automakers Accusations were made that the government was prejudiced against blue-collar workers and favored the white-collar ones. "Autoworkers on Main Street work just as hard if not harder than those on Wall Street...don't they deserve a bailout too?" Are any of these justifiable proof that a bailout is required? No, but it helps...

Stay tuned sports fans. This could get ugly. Who knows, the Big Three could become a Big Two or worse, the Big None.