{"id":1166,"date":"2008-12-02T13:10:47","date_gmt":"2008-12-02T20:10:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/2008\/12\/02\/bailout-dreams\/"},"modified":"2009-01-10T07:15:08","modified_gmt":"2009-01-10T14:15:08","slug":"bailout-dreams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/2008\/12\/bailout-dreams\/","title":{"rendered":"bailout dreams"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For a long time the primary focus of American car makers has been financial services.\u00a0 Cars have been a vehicle (sorry) to get people into a payment schedule or a lease stream.\u00a0 Lease or purchase financing has been the main focus, not cars.\u00a0 They make their money primarily in finance charges, not in automobile gross margins over costs of production.<\/p>\n<p>The market for alternative energy autos driven (sorry) by price, performance, quality, reliability, etc. &#8212; all the factors that people consider in acquiring a car &#8212; will determine the economic incentives for manufactures to build those vehicles.\u00a0 A bailout will not, cannot, provide those incentives.<\/p>\n<p>There may be a good case to bail out American car makers, but the reasonable expectation that such a bailout will produce a positive evolution in American automobile products is not part of it.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/12\/dec-02-08-am.jpg\" title=\"Dec 02 08 AM\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/12\/dec-02-08-am.jpg\" alt=\"Dec 02 08 AM\" height=\"304\" width=\"504\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For a long time the primary focus of American car makers has been financial services.\u00a0 Cars have been a vehicle (sorry) to get people into a payment schedule or a lease stream.\u00a0 Lease or purchase financing has been the main focus, not cars.\u00a0 They make their money primarily in finance charges, not in automobile gross [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1166","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-economics","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1166\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}