Auto Industry Update

Once again, it looks like the management at Ford did everything right to face this crisis, and they have executed debt for equity swaps and haircuts to bondholders that has lowered their outstanding debt by $9.9 billion, and lowered their interest payments by about $550 million a year.

On the other side of doing the right thing, we have GM, who says that they
expect to sell their SAAB automobile division by the end of June, as there are 3-5 serious bidders.

I never understood this merger in the first place, SAAB auto was too small for GM, and unlike Ford's purchase of Jaguar, where Ford's quality was marked superior, and was applied to the British sports care maker, GM didn't have anything of value to send to SAAB.

Meanwhile, I get to say a sentence that I rarely get to say, that "The New Republic gets it,"on the auto bailout.

The problem is not the unions. It's the bondholders and banks who are unwilling to deal.