Subject: Fw: cars and industry problems
Letter from a Dodge dealer May 19, 2009 letter to the editor
My name is George C. Joseph. I am the sole owner of Sunshine Dodge-Isuzu, a family owned and operated business in Melbourne, Florida. My family bought and paid for this automobile franchise 35 years ago in 1974. I am the second generation to manage this business.
We currently employ 50+ people and before the economic slowdown we employed over 70 local people. We are active in the community and the local chamber of commerce. We deal with several dozen local vendors on a day to day basis and many more during a month. All depend on our business for part of their livelihood. We are financially strong with great respect in the market place and community. We have strong local presence and stability.I work every day the store is open, nine to ten hours a day. I know most of our customers and all our employees. Sunshine Dodge is my life.
On Thursday, May 14, 2009 I was notified that my Dodge franchise, that we purchased, will be taken away from my family on June 9, 2009 without compensation and given to another dealer at no cost to them. My new vehicle inventory consists of 125 vehicles with a financed balance of 3 million dollars. This inventory becomes impossible to sell with no factory incentives beyond June 9, 2009. Without the Dodge franchise we can no longer sell a new Dodge as "new," nor will we be able to do any warranty service work. Additionally, my Dodge parts inventory, (approximately $300,000.) is virtually worthless without the ability to perform warranty service. There is no offer from Chrysler to buy back the vehicles or parts inventory.Our facility was recently totally renovated at Chrysler’s insistence, incurring a multi-million dollar debt in the form of a mortgage at Sun Trust Bank.
HOW IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA CAN THIS HAPPEN?THIS IS A PRIVATE BUSINESS NOT A GOVERNMENT ENTITYThis is beyond imagination! My business is being stolen from me through NO FAULT OF OUR OWN. We did NOTHING wrong.This atrocity will most likely force my family into bankruptcy. This will also cause our 50+ employees to be unemployed. How will they provide for their families? This is a total economic disaster.
HOW CAN THIS HAPPEN IN A FREE MARKET ECONOMY IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA?I beseech your help, and look forward to your reply. Thank you.
Sincerely,
George C. Joseph
President & Owner Sunshine Dodge-Isuzu
FW: cars and industry problems
6/09/2009 11:44:00 AM
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Key Words:
BAILOUT,
BARACK OBAMA
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7 comments:
Right wing or left wing, I actually think the various cancelled dealers got pretty rooked, especially when there's unsold inventory. But, in a bankruptcy, creditors sometimes get screwed. Them the breaks.
Well, I hate to break it to Mr. Joseph, but the loss of his business is not an ebul liberal plot by Barack Hussein Mugabe to steal his hard-earned white dollars and give it to undeserving minorities, but simply the actions of the free market.
Yes it sucks. yes, I feel bad for you. Yes, you are getting screwed. But THAT IS CAPITALISM. Chrystler is bankrupt, so they are cutting you loose. The vehicles are not yours, so they are moving them someplace else. Sorry man.
How can he lose his business under the "free market", he asks? What did he think would happen when his parent company went bankrupt?
If he'd wanted to succeed no matter how badly his business was run, he would have gone into investment banking.
I LOVE it: the self-same folks who shrieked and screamed that we needed a "free market" and "smaller gubmint" etc are NOW unhappy when that very "free market" operates the way it is INTENDED to operate... but NOW that they are LOSING MONEY, rather than making money, they, uh, don't like it.
So it has to be Barry N****R Sotero's fault, and they're gonna bitch & moan.
Yeah, I do have a smidgen of sympathy for this person, and yes, it does suck. But then again: were you paying attention in your Econ 101 class? Because if you DID, you would have KNOWN that running a business means assuming some RISK.
Oh! What? You want your business to be SOCIALIZED so that the evul gubmint can bail your butt out???
OR what, pray tell? You may feel that you did "nothing wrong," but many, many others who have lost their jobs recently ALSO did "nothing wrong." Them's the breaks. That's how a free market and capitalism works.
and the obscenely wealthy laugh all the way to their off-shore accounts bc they fooled rubes like you into protesting against tax hikes for said obscenely wealthy.
But ya still don't get it, so maybe I don't feel so sorry for you after all.
How did this happen? The free market. See, a bunch of CEOs figured out that they could get paid more if they incurred short-term profits, even at the expense of long-term stability. So acting in their own self-interest, that's exactly what they did.
The car companies all threw themselves at gas-guzzlers when oil was cheap, and willingly ignored all the signs that it couldn't last forever. When the winds changed they were caught without an alternative, and then the second whammy of a global downturn hit. Heck, even forward-thinking Japanese companies are loosing money right now, but at least they have a year or so of hybrid sales to coast on; the big American automakers were screwed one and all.
Capitalism is not to blame, the individuals at the top of the company are, for their eager short-sightedness. I'm sorry you have to pay the price, Mister Dealer, but maybe you'll walk away from this experience realizing that millionaire CEOs aren't any smarter than you are and under no circumstances earned what they paid themselves over the last few years.
PS - Also, please consider if we lived in a truly free-market system, and there was no chance that the government would have bailed any of these companies out. Your sales would have frozen 4 months ago and everyone would be even worse off.
To Hybrid post: good analysis. It is intensely annoying bc it's these same wingtards who CONTINUE to mock and make fun of global warming initiatives - claiming it's a "librul plot."
U.S. automaker CEOs indulged themselves in lousy business practices designed to enrich themselves. Refused to be progressive about their auto designs. Designed essentially lousy cars/trucks that fell apart almost immediately but said their only "problem" was bad PR and marketing.
The list is endless. If you were an auto dealer handling only US made cars, I feel somewhat sorry for you. But the warning signs were all there for all to see.
But the rightwing (probably most of the auto dealers vote republican) desired to stick their stupid heads in the sand, make fun of progressives who had the temerity to QUESTION US business practices, etc, and NOW they want to whine & complain and point fingers of blame again at the left.
Well, that's not going to solve the problem. Wake up and start questioning how you've engaged in politics, your short-sighted business practices, and how YOU can take some responsibility for improving the system, rather than just trying to blame someone.
I just heard something on NPR last night (6/10/09), which I will paraphrase badly, I'm sure. I don't know who was speaking, and I have not way to verify the veracity of what this person said, but... the speaker said that one of the bigger problems w/ the auto industry (his opinion) is that there are TOO MANY auto dealers.
He went on at some length about it stating towards the end that the auto dealer industry was way over maxed out; their profit margins, therefore, were really small; and that there were just too many per the population base for them to be that profitable.
One of his other points is that the auto dealers need to come up w/a new sales model, whereby the pricing is much more transparent & the customers don't have got haggle and continuously fear they are being ripped off.
Anyhoo... seemed relevant to this topic. It is unfortunate if a generations old family business gets wiped out, but otoh that is what happens sometimes.
My mom's family was in the grocery business during the so-called "great depression," and they, too, got wiped out and had to start over again. And yeah, my understanding is that it was very hard for them. Yes, I felt sorry for them, too, but that is how the free market works. Pointing fingers of blame at the gubmint really doesn't make much difference, and that's not really the "problem."
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