cars

A sign that the commercial real estate (CRE) market continues to cause headaches comes this weekend in the form of news of Capmark Financial’s imminent demise. Capmark is one of America’s largest commercial property lenders with about $10…

Toyota, now the world's largest automaker, has said it would halt production at a plant in Aichi prefecture in Japan, reducing total output by a massive 220,000 cars.  This should be seen as a recognition of the over-capacity tat…

You may have heard the reports that US auto dealers were swamped on Monday night as the car scrappage scheme dubbed “Cash for Clunkers” expired. American taxpayers were eligible for a tax rebate of up to $4500 for trading in an older gas…

Now that it has emerged from bankruptcy and received free money from the Federal Government, General Motors is seriously thinking about keeping Opel by raising capital.  The German government has been urging GM to make a decision about…

Dick Berner, Chief North American Economist at Morgan Stanley, thinks we are in for a sizable uptick in GDP for Q3.  I must be honest; I am sceptical about this, but Berner is a well-regarded economist  whose views can’t be…

Roland Koch, the leader of the German state of Hesse, has dismissed the possibility of Chinese auto manufacturer BAIC acquiring German carmaker Opel.  Below is my translation of today’s Spiegel article explaining this. Clear rejection of…

Judge Robert Gerber has given General Motors approval to sell its assets under section 363 of the bankruptcy code.  Last month I indicated that this 363 sale was more questionable than Chrysler’s and could meet more resistance in…

Apparently, the U.S. auto industry is working off a significant backlog of inventory because I have been hearing that pretty much everyone in North America is planning to ramp up production for the third quarter.  This is prima facie…

Here’s a good segment from CNBC with an interview from two city mayors, the mayor of El Centro, CA that has 26.9% unemployment, the highest in the nation, and the mayor of Flint, MI, which is imploding due to the decline in the U.S. car…

We have just learned that Fiat has successfully completed its deal with Chrysler.  This means that the bankrupt ‘Old Chrysler’ will now have far fewer cash and assets available for creditors and that it will be liquidated with large or…