Circuses consolidated 100 years ago in a losing effort to maintain their entertainment dominance of the agrarian age. Today the auto companies are pursuing a similarly losing effort with mergers.
Here's Part II of our series this week on a personal visit by Kimberly Taylor to Detroit this fall:
"We met with a lot of people and I want to mix up their stories even though they are all from the same script. The stories are from people at General Motors, Ford and Chrysler. One meeting included another organization and everything was upbeat and politic until we parted and heard from our friends hurried, whispered tales of how desperate things are. In another meeting that lasted 1 hour and 15 minutes, for 65 minutes we heard the wildly clashing fear and hope of someone who needed to explain the inexplicable. “There’s no laughter here anymore,” she said. In the Chrysler meeting we were told that the magnificent building they are in was designed as a gigantic shopping mall in case the OEM didn’t make it. What an eerie “can you beat these odds?” challenge to be reminded of every day. The layoffs are so massive that these corporate mansions have empty cubicles turned storerooms everywhere. Chrysler is selling off capital assets (i.e. buildings) and consolidating people in one place. I suspect all of them are. Bare bones means people are getting their salaries but they don’t have budgets to do anything and the paltry amounts they are given are never secure." Part 2 of 3
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