UAW Strike…Get Ready for Another Auto Bailout

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Okay, UAW strikes, we knew it was coming. Hey, get ready taxpayers, could we have another auto bailout? Yeah, probably, probably. Let’s go through the story, shall we? So you got all three unions here, all three unions, all three auto companies being affected by this for GM and Stellantis makes Jeep here in the United States. And they’re doing these kind of

sporadic strikes. They’re trying to mess around with supply chains here and there. They’re not on a full out strike altogether. They targeted three assembly factories that employ about 12,000 hourly workers. And again, they also targeted the fact that they’re going after some pickup trucks, SUVs, things that are actually profitable. Okay. What does this mean? Well, the Ford spokes

person, GM spokesperson, Mary Bear. I saw her today on TV, extremely frustrated and disappointed. Yeah, this is just not sustainable. Now, let me explain to you this UAW president, Sean Fain. He knows what he’s doing. And again, it’s not difficult to figure out.

he sees right now an opportunity. We live in the land of socialism, social justice. He saw what the UPS drivers got and he’s saying to himself, man, I’m going after him. I’m going after him. And again, he also understands as well that, well, we created a massive moral hazard here in this country. Remember the phrase moral hazard?

Yeah, you have to be a long time follower of the watchdog on Wall Street and been listening. Well, obviously, prior to the podcast, you got to go back to the auto bailouts. When I was railing against George W. Bush, when I was railing against Barack Obama for all of these moronic auto bailouts, that was over 20 percent of TARP. People forget 20 percent of TARP went to the auto bailouts. And OK, there’s people out there that we got your money back.

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Not from that. Taxpayers lost $10 billion, saving the automakers, saving the auto industry. If I think of that movie, Back to the Future, save the clock tower, remember that? Save the auto industry, right, right. And I said, back then I said, okay, what’s gonna change things? What’s gonna change? The automakers know that they’re essentially too big to fail.

Banks, too big to fail. You got auto companies here in the United States, they can’t fail. They can’t fail. So this guy, I got to hand it to him. Again, I think he’s a weasel. He’s not acting in the best interest of the country by any stretch of the imagination. Sean Vane, he’s just bargaining. Hey, listen, I’ve got companies that are too big to fail. Not to mention the fact, he’s smart. He says, they’re also a big part, big part of the current administrations

uh big desire to electrify the country and have electric cars anywhere they’re not going to walk away from this so we’re going to demand we’re going to demand and we’re going to demand and this has happened in the past i’m going to we’re going to do memory lane where i’m back to the future you know what let’s get into our stainless steel delorean fire up the flux capacitor and let’s

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I know, oil prices went up. Oil prices went up. It was a period of time, and all of a sudden, people started looking for more energy-efficient automobiles. Yes, it was a shock. It was a shock. You remember back then, Maxine Waters was actually talking about socializing the oil companies? So the big three at the time, you had General Motors, Chrysler, Ford.

Well, they needed money. They had a housing crisis that was starting up. General Motors and Chrysler didn’t have access to capital. The only reason why Ford wasn’t a part of this bailout was the fact that they got a line of credit prior to things going to hell in a hand basket. But anyway, let’s go back to the whole bailout in terms of what led up to it.

Yes, the automakers here in the United States are overly reliant upon SUVs and, you know, pick up trucks. And I get it to some degree, again, that they made a lot of money on those cars and they needed to make a lot of money because of the ridiculous contracts that they had with the unions. I used to make fun of, back in the day, used to make…

make fun of the automakers. I used to call them basically retirement companies. They’re like pension and retirement companies that also make cars. Also, in fact, that the quality, the overall quality of the American cars, not that good. Not that good for a long period of time. I bought an American car.

this is in 2008. It was when Cadillac came out with their brand new CTS model and it was beautiful, beautiful body of the car is gorgeous on the outside. But yeah, it was cheap on the inside. You know, the rich Corinthian leather. Remember that from Ricardo Montemán? Remember that the rich Corinthian leather was faded in no period of time. I put nice stuff inside the car but with a lot of the stuff and it was just cheap.

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But anyway, 2006, it’s interesting, 2006 Consumer Reports reported that all 10 of the cars that are considered to be the 10 best were built by Japanese companies.

Michigan lost 83,000 manufacturing jobs between 1993 and 2008, where 91,000 manufacturing jobs were created in Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and Texas. Yep. Again, you take a look at some of the labor numbers back in the day and what.

the auto, what you basically the people working for the UAW were making in comparison to people at Honda and Toyota. And that’s still the case this year. Jobs banks, remember jobs banks? Guinness, I was just a laugh, you know, stocking. I was, oh, you’re gonna buy GM stock, Ford stock. I’d rather stick a hot poker in my eye. Anyway, this is a Detroit news story from 2005.

The Big Three automakers paid more than 12,000 idled employees their full salary and benefits in a jobs bank program. That was part of the 1984 UAW labor contracts to protect worker salaries and discourage layoffs.

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You know, it’s amazing that again, they’re right now they’re coming down hard on Stellantis, but Stellantis has kind of seen this coming and they built up their inventory in cars because Stellantis is going to be closing plants here in the United States. And again, they don’t UAW doesn’t want that. Let’s look, shall we? Because I know I get people out there loving auto, but I had an auto bailout. So wonderful. What would have happened to the country?

What would have happened to the country if we didn’t bail out the automakers? I’m here to tell you nothing. That’s what’s supposed to happen. OK, it’s supposed to happen. Either you get it right or you get eliminated. Oh, I know the suppliers would have been in disarray and there would have been problems. No. No, people will step in. That’s the free market, people. OK. What seems chaotic for a period of time, you get you have order.

Order will come in because guess what? Guess what? Someone will come in and fill that void. People are still buying automobiles, right? Well, obviously GM and Chrysler, they didn’t get it right. Ford, again, escaped by the skin of their teeth because they had a credit line at that period of time. But you want to take a look at the stocks of these companies?

Do you know that General Motors went public again? At the time, it was the biggest IPO in the country. And we laughed at it here on the show. I said, I’d rather stick a hot poker in my eye than buying General Motors. That’s so un-American! No, what’s actually un-American is bailing these companies out. That’s un-American. General Motors went public at $33 a share back in 2010. It’s at $33 today. All right.

Imagine if the same amount of money, you stuck it into an S&P index fund. You know, do that comparison. Yeah, Ford, not that great. Actually Stellantis out, you know, far outperformed the others. And again, that’s not even, it’s based in the Netherlands, Stellantis. And it’s got a European manufacturers as well with Fiat and some others. The moral of the story is this, okay?

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The UAW is going to put the screws because they’re already talking right now. They’re already talking right now. Democrats have walked away. They’re not helping the unions right now. This guy is playing the left like a fiddle and he doesn’t care. And the reality is that these companies, these companies, okay, if they have to acquiesce on these demands, not to mention the fact they have to continue to make cars.

that many people don’t want. There’s a story today, Ford CEO says electric vehicles provoking charging anxiety. What do you think is going to happen? What do you think is gonna happen? Things are gonna get worse. These auto companies are gonna say, help me, help me, help me government, help me taxpayer bail me out. I am.

I’ve said this before. I said, I don’t even, you know, again, we’re not a capitalist country anymore. You might as well go all in. Screw it. Okay. Hey, let’s see how the world govern. Why don’t you just socialize the big three? Well, it’s not even the big three anymore. Salinas, like I said, Dutch company. Socialize them. Go ahead. Go ahead, basically what we’re doing at this point in time, you’re telling them what cars to make, you’re telling them that they’ve got to lose money on cars, Ford losing over.

4 plus, what is it, 4.5, 4.8 billion, billion dollars last year on their electric vehicle unit. This is what happens when you get governments meddling in the free economy. You get garbage like this. Watchdog on wallstreet.com.