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Ford Asks Gov’t for $9 Billion

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Posted on Dec 2, 2008
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After a dismal November, Ford Motor Co. is hanging by a thread, but the automaker told Congress on Tuesday that it is in better shape than Chrysler and General Motors and could make it through its current economic crisis with a little help—to the tune of $9 billion in standby loans.


The New York Times:

In a 33-page plan submitted to the Senate Banking Committee, Ford said it was healthier than the other two Detroit automakers but warned that its fortunes were closely tied to that of its two rivals, General Motors and Chrysler, both of which have said they could soon run out of money.The industry’s troubles were evident in the dismal United States sales figures for November that the manufacturers reported on Tuesday. Ford’s sales fell 30.6 percent from a year earlier; Toyota and Honda did slightly worse, and hard-hit General Motors significantly worse, with a 41 percent fall in sales.

“Because our industry is an interdependent one, with broad overlap in supplier and dealer networks, the collapse of one or both of our domestic competitors would threaten Ford as well,” the company said in its plan. “It is in our own self-interest, as well as the nation’s, to seek support for the industry at a time of great peril to this important manufacturing sector of our economy.”

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By jackpine savage, December 2, 2008 at 4:51 pm Link to this comment

Um, Truthdig, why not point out that Ford doesn’t want the money unless they end up needing it.  They’re midway through a restructuring plan that appears to be bearing fruit.

You’ve made it sound like Ford wants $9B right now or they’ll go belly up.  They’re not “hanging on by a thread”.  They have more cash on hand than GM and they still have more than $10B left on their own line of credit.

Yes, they want to know that the government will extend a line of credit in the worst case scenario, but that’s mostly because the banks still aren’t lending money even after the government has thrown hundreds of billions of dollars at them.

If there was some real digging for truth around here, someone might have pointed out GM’s shenanigans with trying to get GMAC covered by the TARP bailout AND get an auto bailout by saying that they’ll be bankrupt by January.

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