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Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Dec. 18, 2008 21 Kislev 5769

Seeking a Ford in our future

By George Will


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | DEARBORN, Mich. — Designed by architects from Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, the Chicago firm that created many icons of postwar modernism, Ford's headquarters building has the sleek glass-and-steel minimalism that characterized up-to-date architecture in the 1950s, when America was at the wheel of the world and even buildings seemed streamlined for speed. Ford's building opened in 1956, a peak of American confidence — one year before Sputnik shook Americans' faith in their technological supremacy and the Edsel shook their faith in the acumen of a corporate America grown slothful from complacency.


Today the building is home to high anxiety. Yet CEO Alan Mulally, a boyish 63, seems preternaturally pleased, in spite of his recent participation in Congress's ritual pillorying of the leaders of the so-called Big Three auto companies. Ford took a full measure of the abuse for the failures of "Detroit," while asking for none of the money urgently sought by General Motors and Chrysler, a.k.a. the "Too Big One, and a Fraction."


Twenty-seven months ago, Mulally, who probably thought he had seen the worst that events could throw at his business career, came to Ford from Boeing. There, when civilian aviation became collateral damage of Sept. 11, he presided over downsizing the work force from 127,000 to 52,000. One of his first moves at Ford was one of the great gambles in U.S. business history: He borrowed $23.5 billion, most of it secured by almost all of Ford's assets, even the intellectual property in the company's blue oval logo. Today, Mulally says "Ford would have adequate short-term liquidity" even if throughout 2009, industry sales levels were worse than in October 2008. That is why Ford is not asking Congress for money. It is asking only for access to money if there should be what Mulally delicately calls "a significant industry event."


By that he means GM filing for bankruptcy, which would, he believes, threaten many of the nation's 3,000 parts manufacturers, which already are owed $13 billion from the three domestic companies. Ford uses 80 percent of the suppliers GM and Chrysler use, and 25 percent of Ford's highest-volume dealers also own GM and/or Chrysler dealerships. That is why Mulally appeared like a good soldier before Congress with his GM and Chrysler counterparts as those two pleaded for cash to avoid bankruptcy.


Mulally says bankruptcy, which has become almost routine for airlines, would be fatal for a car company: Passengers will fly on an airline undergoing reorganization in bankruptcy because their tickets are short-term transactions, whereas customers cannot be confident that a car company in bankruptcy will be around to honor its warranties years hence.


While Mulally was at Boeing, where he was responsible for developing what became the very successful 777 aircraft, he brought to Seattle for consultation the Ford team that had made the Taurus the best-selling car in America for five years. The Taurus, however, became stale and was discontinued in October 2006 after being supplanted by Toyota's Camry.


It has, however, come back and is being revamped as part of plans to build all the company's products on a few "platforms" — powertrains, underpinnings, suspension systems. Many of these platforms are currently used in cars that are consistently profitable in the European, Asian and Latin American markets.


Having reduced its workforce 50 percent in three years, by February Ford will have cut salaried personnel costs 40 percent. Most important, it is now on a path to prune, soon, almost half of what have been 76 nameplates. Having shed Aston Martin, Jaguar and Land Rover, it seems to be moving toward the sale of Volvo and of what remains of its reduced investment in Mazda. Soon the company will consist of Ford, Lincoln and — perhaps — Mercury, with consolidated dealerships (currently 3,790, down from 4,396 three years ago).


Total industry sales in America this year — about 10.5 million, down from 17 million in 2005 — are, on a per capita basis, the lowest since World War II. There is zero likelihood of industry sales sufficient for three U.S. companies to share them profitably with "transplants" — factories producing cars with foreign nameplates. A 1979 bailout enabled Chrysler to survive to announce yesterday a month-long sabbatical from manufacturing. It almost certainly will not survive.


So the task of the proposed "car czar" — silliness on stilts — would be to supervise the pruning of GM's nameplates and dealerships. Anyway, the most qualified person for that ill-conceived and unenviable position already has a more promising job, as Ford's CEO.

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