When You Ride ALONE You Ride With Hitler!

During the (second world) war, Americans were told to carpool, but Roosevelt’s teachings have been long forgotten. Today, every American family has at least three gas guzzling cars. The system requires more cars to be bought. In almost every high school there are teachers whose job it is to give driving lessons. An American youth can drive when she or he turns 16 (but you can only drink alcohol when you’re 21 – which is when an American is truly considered an adult). And those who don’t have the cash to buy a car can always get a loan. Loans help facilitate the buying of a car, and another, and so on. A bank director’s statement sums it up perfectly: “We have an obesity problem in this country and it’s not just individuals. It’s the corporations too. They’ve become greedy,” said Anthony Biandi, president of Merchant’s Bank. American companies have offices in Europe as well, but the cars they sell on this market are different from those sold in the U.S. Perhaps that’s why companies like General Motors felt they had the right to ask money from the German state by bringing up huge possible lay-offs. Meanwhile, Ford is thinking of giving up the Volvo altogether–it’s not feasible anymore.

And it is only now, on the brink of bankruptcy, that companies realize how important it is for them to invest in the new technologies that will increase the efficiency of a car. The CEOs promised Congress the world: restructuring, giving up on polluting models, cut down (as soon as possible) the huge salaries of those in an executive position — anything, to get the state’s $34 billion aid. However, there is no guarantee for Congress that if they provide the credit again, while the price of a barrel of oil is only $47 and could reach $30, that the American auto companies won’t forget about creating better performing cars again. Only last year, Congress pumped $25 billion into the three companies to help upgrading their technologies. The money went into completely other areas, though. And future actions of the CEOs are easy to foretell –after the decrease in SUV sales, caused by an “unprecedented increase in oil prices,” they were expressing their firm beliefs that American cars would make a comeback because the price of oil would “stabilize.” Performance, in their view, is tightly connected to oil prices, and sales depend on how well America is doing in big oil producing states. This view was reinstated yesterday in Congress, when the CEO of GM declared that “forces beyond our control have pushed us to the brink.” Under these circumstances, Congress needs to get really solid warranties before even daring to lend the U.S. tax payers’ money to American auto companies, which are bankrupt, not only in their accounts but also in how they are run.