Auto news #3: while GM and Chrysler cling to government life support, Ford has enough fight left in it to help customers through the recession. Ford just announced that if you buy a new Ford between now and June 1 and then lose your job, the company will cover your car payment, up to $700 a month, for a year.
A commenter noted yesterday that I paint plenty broadly when it comes to portraying corporations as evil. Point well taken. Ford surely has its bottom-line reasons for offering what is essentially private unemployment insurance. They are following a plan similar to one that helped Hyundai avoid the huge sales losses that pretty much every other automaker has experienced so far this year. But I will grant that Ford is recognizing that social responsibility and fiscal responsibility go hand in hand. "You help us, we'll help you," Ford is saying. "We're all in this together."
Update 11:35 CDT: GM's in, too! New CEO Fritz Henderson says GM will cover up to nine $500 payments for laid-off customers.
Lets hope their actuaries are better than the top guns Fannie, Freddie, and Wall street hired. They thought they could package up a bunch of bad debt, spread it around, hide it, disguise, and prayed it would be alright. Well it was not and is not. I guess if your goal is for the government to own the automakers, banks, hospitals,and essentially free enterprise, where heading down the right path. Lets just keep printing the money until we are all "even steven".
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