Chrysler CEO: World supply of cars outpaces demand

Myfreeze.com
(AP) By TOM KRISHER AP Auto Writer

The global auto industry must reduce factory capacity in order to survive, especially in Europe, Chrysler Group LLC CEO Sergio Marchionne said Wednesday.

 World automakers can build 94 million cars and trucks a year, Marchionne told the Automotive News World Congress. But that's 30 million more than it can sell, he said. Bankruptcies and economic struggles have forced cuts in North America, but European manufacturers have not closed plants, often because they are paid by governments not to, he said.

 He predicted the global auto industry will be consolidated into five or six companies Marchionne also said Chrysler has not decided if it will challenge Congress' decision to require arbitration for 789 dealers whose franchises were revoked during the company's passage through bankruptcy protection.


Marchionne's speech was interrupted twice by protesters. One man yelled "Shame!" in Italian, and Marchionne later said the man was protesting Fiat's plan to close a factory in Sicily.

Another said her mother was killed by a defective Chrysler product. Both were escorted out of the room.
Marchionne said Fiat loses money on every car built at the plant in Sicily. He did not respond to the woman's statement.

The Chrysler CEO said the company will survive this year by being cheap, saying it still has cash reserves of $5 billion to $6 billion.

"You know the concept of hibernation Canadian bears use?" he asked when asked how the company will survive its sales slump with no immediate new products.

Chrysler sales were down 36 percent last year.

Marchionne conceded that the only new thing it is displaying at the Detroit auto show is a new interior in the Dodge Caliber compact.

But he said the Fiat 500 minicar will be in the U.S. in December.

Obama Expands Federal Power Over the States with Executive Order

Kurt Nimmo

Infowars.com

January 12, 2010

 
Obama has issued another executive order, this time establishing a so-called “Council of Governors.”




The order, signed on January 11, further diminishes the sovereignty of the states and builds on a framework for possible martial law. The executive order was completely ignored by the corporate media.

“By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 1822 of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2008 (Public Law 110-181), and in order to strengthen further the partnership between the Federal Government and State governments to protect our Nation and its people and property,” the order reads.


Read the entire story

"Right to move about freely; at home and abroad..." ?

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 06, 2010

Spirituallysmart.com

I was amazed to hear my daughter repeating these words. I looked at what she was reading from and it was right out of her school text book and was a list of freedoms supposedly covered by the First Amendment of the US Constitution. Why or how could she actually be taught this right now? We cannot move about freely at all. I am sick over what these incompetant people are having done at the airports. I will never fly under these conditions and I wish others wouldn't fly anymore either. How can you let people touch you or look under your clothes and search your personal belongings without batting an eye?

Recently a friend of mine travelled to Florida for vacation. She verbally protested the embarrassing search of her personal belongings. The airport "security" then began to make a public example of her. Cordening her off with her child as they both were violated by the hands of strangers on their bodies. This is nothing less than sexual assault. Yet America will not speak up. So why not think that Nazi Germany is upon us again? They "dusted" my friends child's hair for explosives. And it wasn't because they suspected them of being a terrorist. It was because they spoke up. Truly evil and wicked individuals. I pray all these people that oppress others in the name of "freedom" have all peace of mind (if they have any) removed from them by God Almighty.

I am almost too disgusted to write this because I can feel the injustice of having to go through this if I wanted to travel. Of course I wouldn't keep quiet either. This would then cause me to be blocked from getting on my flight. People actually do not even want to fly with someone like me. They think you're dangerous or even perhaps a terrorist yourself if you protest the assault on your privacy we must endure. Or maybe I would end up like like the Carol Ann Gotbaum who was murdered by airport security by being choked to death and left for dead in a small cell.

While these people are saying they are protecting me from "terrorists", who will protect me from them? I haven't seen a terrorist except the ones who are wearing badges eyeballing me and asking to look through my bags at any given time. To me these are the true terrorists. Can I help being offended at this intrusion? No I can't. I am just verbally expressing how I feel. I have the right to do that. Don't I? Only here though right? Only in this little forum I have here. But what happens if you go out and verbally protest? You become a target of harassment and intimidation.

So this leads me again to the focus and cause of my work. Being that Religious Roman Catholics are in power in this government, who can I blame?



Don't forget the article from the Washington Post which spoke of President Bush's guidance of Roman Catholic thinkers under who's watch much of this oppressive legislation was passed. The article is called, "A Catholic Wind in the White House". This "Catholic wind" has blown away ALL of our precious civil liberties.



What's very strange is that when all this oppressive legislation like the Patriot Act was being passed I heard SOME voices protesting that it was dangerous legislation. But right now, in the face of 24 hour a day News coverage of all this crazy intrusive security I don't hear any public outcry of concern of the violation of our inherited rights to move about freely at home or abroad.



So while one child is learning about Freedoms under our constitution, another child is being "dusted" for explosives and held back, separated from their mother and having bags checked by THUGS and being taught there is no US Consitution at all and that you have no freedom to move about or any privacy.



Maybe the answer lies in my above statement, "I pray all these people that oppress others in the name of "freedom" have all peace of mind (if they have any) removed from them by God Almighty." Maybe none of them have any peace and are terrified at nothing. Here's a few verses which describe this feeling they have and WHY. "The wicked flee when no man pursueth:" (Proverbs 28:1) and "There is no peace, saith the LORD, unto the wicked." (Isaiah 48:22) Important verses to mediatate on. Do you line up?

Domestic Espionage Alert: Spy Drone Discovered

By Ole Ole Olson

NEWS JUNKIE POST
Jan 8, 2010

KPRC news in Houston recently filmed a secret experiment by law enforcement agencies including the Dept. of Homeland Security of a drone intended to spy on Americans.


The drone uncovered during this investigation are not like the large, expensive models used by the military for targeted strikes on militants half a world away. These are manufactured by Insitu out of Bingen, Washington (corporate offices located in Australia), only weigh about 40 pounds (18.1 kg) before monitoring equipment is installed. This model has the capacity to stay airborne for up to a day.


The Houston Police Department responded with the following statement, “Potential public safety applications include mobility, evacuations, homeland security, search and rescue, as well as tactical.”

Such benign excuses were also used during the passage of draconian bills such as FISA and the Patriot Act before it was revealed the much more insidious and rampant applications of those tools.

Houston is within the coastal and border zone of America, where two-thirds of the population lives and where constitutional rights are routinely disregarded according to the ACLU, yet this poses the question about whether this is pilot program and the usage of unmanned drones might become a regular policy of law enforcement agencies in surveillance operations.

Pope denounces failure to forge new climate treaty

YahooNews.com
By NICOLE WINFIELD,
Associated Press – 1 hr 7 mins ago


VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI denounced the failure of world leaders to agree to a new climate change treaty in Copenhagen last month, saying Monday that world peace depends on safeguarding God's creation.

He issued the admonition in a speech to ambassadors accredited to the Vatican, an annual appointment during which the pontiff reflects on issues the Vatican wants to highlight to the diplomatic corps.

Benedict has been dubbed the "green pope" for his increasingly vocal concern about the need to protect the environment. Under his watch, the Vatican has installed photovoltaic cells on its main auditorium to convert sunlight into electricity and has joined a reforestation project aimed at offsetting its CO2 emissions.

For the pontiff, it's a moral issue: Church teaching holds that man must respect creation because it's destined for the benefit of humanity's future.

In his speech, the pontiff criticized the "economic and political resistance" to fighting environmental degradation and creating a new climate treaty at last month's negotiations in Copenhagen.

Officials from 193 countries met at the summit, which ended Dec. 19 having failed to produce a successor treaty to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. It produced instead a non-biding accord that included few concrete steps to combat global warming.

The Copenhagen summit did set up the first significant program of ensuring aid to help poorer nations cope with the effects of a changing climate. But while the accord urged deeper cuts in emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for global warming, it did nothing to demand them.

"I trust that in the course of this year ... it will be possible to reach an agreement for effectively dealing with this question," Benedict said.

He said the issue was particularly critical for island nations and in places like Africa, where the battle for resources, increased desertification and over-exploitation of land has resulted in wars.

"To cultivate peace, one must protect creation!" Benedict told the ambassadors, many of whom wore their national dress or medal-draped formal attire for the audience in the frescoed Sala Regia of the Vatican's apostolic palace.

The pontiff said the same "self-centered and materialistic" way of thinking that sparked the worldwide financial meltdown was also endangering creation. To combat it will require a new way of thinking and a new lifestyle — and an acknowledgment that the question is a moral one, he said.

"The protection of creation is not principally a response to an aesthetic need, but much more to a moral need, inasmuch as nature expresses a plan of love and truth which is prior to us and which comes from God," he said.

To illustrate his point, the German-born pope pointed to the experiences of eastern Europe under the "materialistic and atheistic regimes" of the former Soviet bloc.

"Was it not easy to see the great harm which an economic system lacking any reference to the truth about man had done not only to the dignity and freedom of individuals and peoples, but to nature itself, by polluting soil, water and air?" he asked.

"The denial of God distorts the freedom of the human person, yet it also devastates creation."

Robert Chapman-Dollar Collapse Time Table

1.41 Million Americans Filed for Personal Bankruptcies in 2009 a jump of 32 Percent from 2008. More and More Average Americans Resorting to Bankruptcy even with Tougher Rules to File.

MyBudget360.com
Posted: 09 Jan 2010 12:08 PM PST




The employment report out on Friday just goes to show that the American economy is still struggling to create jobs for average Americans. In fact 85,000 more jobs were lost in December but that isn’t the biggest data point out of the report. The civilian labor force shrunk by a stunning 661,000 and that is really the only reason the unemployment rate is still at 10 percent. This economy that is still very much in a jobs recession has pushed more and more Americans into the ultimate economic distress equivalent of a SOS. Bankruptcies are soaring and in 2009 1.41 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcies, a jump of 32 percent from 2008.



This must put the recent stock market rally into perspective. The average American is still trying to negotiate the new economic landscape while the select few are able to increase their wealth at the expense of the many. Let us look at bankruptcy filings per year:

Now you might be wondering why there was a big jump in 2005 in the midst of the “growing” economy. In 2005 new rules and regulations were coming into effect that would make future bankruptcy filings more onerous and had clauses to gouge average Americans. So many rushed to file before means testing and other criteria came into effect. So this recent jump is more significant since it comes in light of the new tougher standards to file. But the economy is aching and average Americans are trying all they can to get by, tougher rules or not. How much money can you squeeze out of a family that just lost their job?




This enormous jump in bankruptcies came in a year that the stock market rallied by over 60 percent from the March lows in 2009. Apparently, this stock market rally did very little to assist many average Americans in their economic struggles. As you would expect this crisis is causing many people to file and not what you may expect. Average Americans from all levels are having troubles servicing their mounting debt:

“(WSJ) during this recession, the housing crisis and high unemployment rate have prompted more people to file for bankruptcy who may never have considered the option before, experts said. Filings from 2008 showed more people with high income and high education levels resorting to bankruptcy petitions, according to an annual survey of consumer-bankruptcy filers’ demographics by the Institute for Financial Literacy, a nonprofit that provides bankruptcy-related counseling and education services. Those demographic trends appeared to continue last year.

Mr. Mann said he believes bankruptcies reached their peak sometime last year, but bankruptcy attorneys from across the country said there was no sign that business was slowing. The 113,274 filings in December alone were a third higher than the same month a year earlier.
“I can’t see over the top of the files on my desk,” said Cathleen Moran, a bankruptcy attorney at Moran Law Group in Mountain View, Calif., likening it to the rush of clients before the revised law went into effect. In a three-month period before those rules changed in 2005, her firm filed five times as many cases as usual.Ms. Moran’s clients in 2008 typically were people who earned between $40,000 and $80,000. That changed last year when a rash of people who earned $100,000 to $300,000 began filing as well, she said.”

So of course, those that are in the trenches continue to see problems in the economy. The 10 percent headline unemployment rate is misleading. If we look at the underemployment and unemployment rate we find that 27 million Americans are without work or are working part-time hoping for full-time work. And with this recession, it is looking like more and more of those jobs are not coming back:

As the unemployment situation struggles to improve, we may be seeing a permanent shift in the economy where high part-time employment is simply part of our economy. Now this is only more reason to believe bankruptcies will remain elevated since debt is the major reason for bankruptcies. Or better put, the ability to service the debt. And as many bankruptcy attorneys are finding out many people with once high incomes may have had to take cuts in their wages while their debt is still elevated to the halcyon days of the bubble. This brings us to a new austerity in the country that is probably something we have yet to go through since the post-World War II era.




Now if we look at the pool of those that are at risk for bankruptcy, we still see that many average Americans are still in massive amounts of debt:

Household debt obligations as a percent of personal income is still higher than it was in 2000 at the start of the bubble. What that means is we can expect more de-leveraging of debt that people cannot pay with current incomes. That is why there is little reason to believe foreclosures will slow down significantly in 2010 and also, bankruptcies will remain elevated. It is also the case that credit card companies are putting on the clamps on households that are struggling even though credit card companies have received enormous amounts of bailouts. It is a misnomer to label them “credit card companies” since the too big to fail banks issue the largest amount of credit cards. This again shows how the corporatocracy is able to wield excellent profits while the economy is really struggling.




People forget that no one wants to file bankruptcy just as much as someone wants to go through foreclosure. These are financial decisions made in stressful situations. No one wakes up and says, “today seems like a good day to go into bankruptcy.” Many bankruptcies hit even in the best of times as the chart above highlights. Yet the double-edged sword of debt is that it maximizes pain in the bad times just as it amplifies bets in the good times. A household that cannot pay their debts won’t. It is that simple. The rise in bankruptcies only reflects what we all know and that is the economy for the average American is still in tough shape.