OT: Saab filed for bankruptcy, Sign of the times. Options

[Mark Henry]

Swedish carmaker's Chinese investors fail to take over former GM company.
Too bad, nice car at one time (Saab 99), but they couldn't compete.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/12...bankruptcy.html

[rick 918-S]

I'm not sayin all union workers are slackers but I worked as a welder for a union ship builder and saw it first hand. I don't say things I can't back up.

http://lmliberty.us/2011/11/30/union-worke.../#axzz1hDiUUUww

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKrIhn9RgP8...feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujPLK-CkphM...feature=related

On you dime. Like that? You and me bailed out these guys. We pay their salery, contribute to their unions and big fat pensions. These are the guys we bailed out.

I feel real bad for them now that they showed me how much they appreciated it. When we have real 17% unemployment there are guys that would be happy to stand on a line with sanding mittens on their hands or a power wrench tightening bolts for half what these ingrates make.

[DBCooper]

On you dime. Like that? You and me bailed out these guys. We pay their salery, contribute to their unions and big fat pensions. These are the guys we bailed out.

I've run manufacturing companies, Rick, here and overseas, union and non-union, and now own/run my own business. No argument whatsoever about slackers, but those people didn't cause the problems that required bailouts, it was their bosses. Those bosses were giving themselves $150 MILLION dollar bonuses through 2008, even after the crisis was in progress, and that's far more than all the slacker welders put together could have cost the company. And it was management that negotiated those union contracts. Ford had the same contracts and didn't need a bailout, it was poor decisions made for decades at GM and Chrysler. Those decisions that weren't made by welders, but by top management and approved by their Boards. Same is true for the banks, the mortgage companies, etc, etc. It wasn't the employees in cubicles, but their bosses in the boardrooms who have full responsibility. That's what management's job is, being responsible for the bottom line.

So someone screwed up, like maybe your idiot arsehole neighbor's Christmas tree lights catching his house on fire. He screwed up and deserves it, so let it burn, right? But if you let it burn uncontrolled it will certainly catch your house on fire, then your neighbors, then the whole block. It's common sense, for the good of the community, that you get together to put it out, to protect the whole community. Then probably kick the shit out of the neighbor and write new rules to make sure it doesn't happen again. But don't let the whole community burn just because one idiot was stupid.

So in that same warm fuzzy spirit of community, MERRY CHRISTMAS to all you Teeners and former Saab owners.