shut down

[Diamondpilot]

Very well said. I fly our CEO and CFO weekly in our corporate airplane and I have said since day one I would not take that job for all the money in the world.

Chris

 

[denmansoft]

If you took $2,000,000 off the exec's pay an handed that out to 50,000 employees, that would come to $40 each per year. This is peanuts compared to the costs of the pay for not working that goes on.
Don't get me wrong, I think some of the execs need to be fired for the way they operated the company, not for the salary they got paid.

 

[Builder]

Very well said. I fly our CEO and CFO weekly in our corporate airplane and I have said since day one I would not take that job for all the money in the world.

Chris

You're right about that. Most big time CEO's I know are on their 3rd wife and their kids don't even know their CEO fathers.

When you're a CEO, you marry your job and raise your business.

 

[gemini5362]

I still say the problem is the gas prices. I am going to make a lot of people mad for this but we should be paying $6 per gallon. We should have been paying $4 per gallon back in 2000. We did not keep gas prices with inflation and the rest of the world and when they jumped 300% people were not ready for it.

I just talked to my uncle who owns a Shell gas station in Ohio and he said the first 3/4 of the year his sales were only off 1.2%, basically nothing. People did not change their habits, they just bought gas first and let the other bills slide. If gas would have slowly raised in price the car companies would still be selling cars, homes would not be going back to the bank at such a rate, and stocks would be stronger.

Chris

Chris I am of the opinion that this mess would have been avoided if credit would not have been so easy to get. When you open your mailbox and are flooded with credit card offers. When you want to buy a house and you can walk in and get it with no money down and easy qualification terms. When you go to buy a house and you get told you dont make enough money to make the payments but that is ok they will allow you to buy the house with reduced payments and then in 5 years when your income is up you can afford the bigger payments. When you have gotten all those credit cards and maxed them all out and you cannot even make minimum payments someone comes along and tells you that they will loan you 125 per cent of the value of your house to pay the credit cards off with and you dont even have to give the credit cards up. Those are some of the biggest reasons the country is in the mess it is in now.

 

[Diamondpilot]

Chris I am of the opinion that this mess would have been avoided if credit would not have been so easy to get. When you open your mailbox and are flooded with credit card offers. When you want to buy a house and you can walk in and get it with no money down and easy qualification terms. When you go to buy a house and you get told you dont make enough money to make the payments but that is ok they will allow you to buy the house with reduced payments and then in 5 years when your income is up you can afford the bigger payments. When you have gotten all those credit cards and maxed them all out and you cannot even make minimum payments someone comes along and tells you that they will loan you 125 per cent of the value of your house to pay the credit cards off with and you dont even have to give the credit cards up. Those are some of the biggest reasons the country is in the mess it is in now.

This all comes back to the parents doing a decent job of raising the kids. When I got married my fiance was in debt and had nothing to show for it. She was making $60,000.00 per year and had a $600 a month house payment and a $400 per month car payment but could not put food on the table. Her living expenses were minimal but credit cards were out of control. I turned her around in 18 months by showing her how to budget and set up a payment plan. I told her the engagement ring came with conditions. It worked out great and she paid things off quicker than I thought she could. She could not believe how much extra money she had after it was gone.

She lacked guidance as do so many when it comes to financial matters. I ask people all the time what could you live on if you had to and most don't know the answer.

Chris

 

[sandman2234]

I think we bring high prices on ourselves, the more features, the gizmo's the more we want and the more we pay.

Can you still buy a regular cab 3/4 ton 4 speed, with vinyl seat, vinyl floor, am radio and an option of A/C ... I don't know.

GPS, Onstar, Satellite Radio, CD, DVD, Back up camera's, all the bells and whistles ... And then we finance it!!!!

If you add in the diesel engine, my Dad was still able to find one as of 2004 when he bought a new Dodge. Not sure if it was a 4speed or not, but it is a standard transmission. He needed something that would stop when he started down the hill into the parking lot at the auction barn and his old half ton wouldn't. I asked him why he didn't just put brakes on the trailer instead. With gas engines not getting the mileage that diesels were getting, and the cost differential, he did better with a diesel engine (right up till last year when diesel went out of sight and stayed there, compared to gas). Oh, he paid cash for it...
David from jax

 

[JGY]

PBS recently ran an episode of Frontline which touched on the subjects of traditional lifetime retirements and 401k retirements -- amongst other issues. I would recommend your watching it just to have your eyes opened ....

J

 

[2manyrocks]

Renze, I am not familiar with the specifics of the retirement plans at the Big 3 auto makers. Retirement plans in the US are a complex topic.

Generally speaking, in the US federal laws are intended to separate retirement plan assets from the employer's assets or the union's assets so the funds will actually be there when the workers retire. These laws were passed because in the past, both employers and unions were accused of dipping into the funds supposedly set aside for the workers retirement.

There are different types of retirement plans. In one type of plan, the plan provides that the worker will receive a certain benefit in the future when he retires after completing so many years of service. If the plan falls short of providing those benefits, then the company will have to contribute more to make up the shortfall.

In the other type of retirement plan, the plan provides that the company and/or worker will contribute a specific amount today and then any appreciation or shortfall in the worker's account is on the worker and not on the company or the retirement plan.

 

[Builder]

PBS recently ran an episode of Frontline which touched on the subjects of traditional lifetime retirements and 401k retirements -- amongst other issues. I would recommend your watching it just to have your eyes opened ....

J

You gotta watch what you believe from PBS & "Frontline".

Lots of left wing slant on that program......

 

[Builder]

Generally speaking, in the US federal laws are intended to separate retirement plan assets from the employer's assets or the union's assets so the funds will actually be there when the workers retire. These laws were passed because in the past, both employers and unions were accused of dipping into the funds supposedly set aside for the workers retirement.

But I bet our own gov't has no problem spending its' taxpayers social security money.