Ford Motor Company
By RadioZX Editor: B. F. Stoddard
Thank God America still has some responsible Corporate Leaders!
Some say America has lost it's way, and when the Market go's south it is easy to wonder if America has peaked.
But if you study Corporate America in a Down Market you will find some Old Guard Corporations are still wise and leading America into the future. Such Corporations as GE & Ford stand strong and lead with good old American wisdom.
Bill Ford and the Ford Motor Company is one such company proving that American Wisdom is well and working for All of America.
Not long ago some short sighted analyst, viewed Ford as being in the worst shape of the three Detroit automakers, but now, as its two crosstown rivals — G.M. and Chrysler — explore a merger to avoid running out of cash, Ford has become the most stable. It still has a large cash cushion — $26.6 billion as of June — from mortgaging most of its North American assets in 2006, before the credit markets tightened.
“Despite meaningful production declines forecasted for the coming quarters, we estimate that Ford has enough cash through 2009,” Brian A. Johnson, an analyst with Barclays Capital, wrote in a report this week.
Automakers have been battered by a weak economy, rising gas prices, a sharp shift away from their most profitable products and a credit crisis that has emptied dealer showrooms.
The stunning falloff has affected all automakers, as shaky consumer confidence and the inability of many eager shoppers to get loans because of tight credit drove sales down 31.9 percent in October compared with the period a year ago.
A lack of available credit for consumers has hurt all automakers this fall, but G.M. has been particularly hard hit by the problems of the finance unit GMAC Financial Services.
GMAC is controlled by Cerberus Capital Management, which has a 51 percent ownership stake. G.M. owns the remaining 49 percent. GMAC reported a $2.52 billion loss in the third quarter, mostly because its lack of access to available capital choked off the flow of auto loans to G.M. customers.
With G.M. revenues declining and its cash reserves rapidly diminishing, G.M. began looking for a merger partner this summer, according to people with knowledge of the company's actions.
G.M.’s chairman, Rick Wagoner, first approached Ford, but its leadership rejected the overtures.
In September, G.M. began talks with Chrysler, which is also controlled by Cerberus.
While both sides are committed to merging the two automakers, the deal has stalled because prospective lenders have been hesitant to support it without assurances of government assistance to Detroit.
Mr. Wagoner and other G.M. executives have repeatedly vowed that the automaker will not seek bankruptcy protection.
Analysts, however, believe that without an infusion of capital from the government, G.M. will exhaust its cash reserves by sometime next year.
For its part, Ford has reacted aggressively in recent months to the downturn, announcing a plan to convert three truck plants so they can build small cars instead and to bring six fuel-efficient vehicles to the United States from Europe in the next few years.
It is beginning a major new-product blitz, introducing a redesigned version of its stalwart F-series pickup this fall and more revamped models, including new versions of the Taurus and Mustang, next year.
It is counting on strong sales of the F-series, despite lessened demand for trucks, to lift its short-term fortunes.
HotV8.com and the Stoddard Family has expressed confidence in the company and in the leadership of the chief executive, Alan R. Mulally from his first day on the job, and we see Ford is still delivering the best of America to the World,
American Free Enterprises advanced thinking, some call it American ingenuity!
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No More Nuclear Power Plants!
Clean-up past Minning sites and build a Safe Nuclear Waste Dumb!
U.S. Decides One Nuclear Dump Is Enough
By MATTHEW L. WALD
The Bush administration will recommend enlarging the proposed nuclear waste dump in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, rather than open another.
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration will recommend that Congress give up the idea of a second nuclear waste dump, dropping a grand bargain struck in the 1980s, and instead vote to enlarge the repository now proposed in Nevada, the director of the Energy Department’s civilian radioactive waste management program said on Thursday.
The director, Edward F. Sproat III, who is in charge of work on the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, said that the process of trying to open one repository had been so slow and expensive that this was not a good time to start looking for another.
The future of the entire repository program may be in flux anyway because President-elect Barack Obama has called for finding another solution. But Mr. Sproat noted that the law called for his department to pursue the opening of the Yucca site.
Originally, the government promised utility companies that it would begin accepting nuclear waste in 1998 and began accepting payments from them of one-tenth of a cent per kilowatt-hour generated at their reactors.
The government now predicts that a waste repository will open by 2020 at the earliest, and clearing the backlog could take many decades. Because of the delay, the government will owe commercial damages to the utilities of $11 billion or more.
When Congress sent the Energy Department to look for places to bury waste from civilian reactors and the nuclear weapons program in the 1980s, the idea was for two repositories, one in the West and one in the East, and the Energy Department listed a dozen sites in seven states, ranging from Maine to Minnesota and Mississippi. Congress eventually ordered the department to focus on Yucca Mountain, but set a limit of 70,000 metric tons of uranium and plutonium wastes, and to report back if another was needed.
Mr. Sproat, who spoke Thursday at a conference on nuclear waste held by the Center for Strategic and International Studies here, said that the inventory of waste would reach 70,000 tons by 2010.
He said, however, that the repository could hold all the waste that has been produced so far, as well as the waste that will be produced by the 103 existing power reactors for the duration of their lives and all the waste from at least the “first handful” of new reactors, if any are built.
But a geologist and nuclear expert who spoke at the conference said the Yucca Mountain repository might never open.
It does not meet international standards for a repository because it is in an area of active earthquakes and volcanoes, said the expert, Allison M. Macfarlane, associate professor of environmental policy and social science at George Mason University.
“We will probably need to have multiple repositories,” Dr. Macfarlane said. “Let’s not cut the nuclear industry off at its knees.”
She and Mr. Sproat agreed that the choice of a repository site was political. One way to assure a fair political choice, she said, “is to have multiple repositories.”
Einstein
Techno-Alchemy
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Christmas 2008
# 1 Gift 2008
Guns & Ammo
On Concerns Over Gun Control, Gun Sales Are Up
A boom in an other wise bleak Chirstmas Retail Season.
As America sees Barack Obama as a gun-snatcher!
Sales of handguns, rifles and ammunition have surged in the last week, according to gun store owners around the nation who describe a wave of buyers concerned that an Obama administration will curtail their right to bear arms.
David Nelson, a co-owner of Montana Ordnance & Supply in Missoula, Mont., said his buyers were “awake and aware and see a dangerous trend.”
Mr. Nelson said sales at his store had risen about 30 percent since Mr. Obama declared his candidacy. “People are concerned about overreaching legislation from Washington,” he said. “They are educating themselves on the Internet.”
In Colorado, would-be gun buyers set a one-day record last Saturday with the highest number of background check requests in a 24-hour period, according to figures from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.
Federal law-enforcement officials cautioned that gun sales were extremely volatile. Nationally, rifle and handgun sales surged 17 percent, for example, in May, compared with May 2007, according to Federal Bureau of Investigation figures. That was before Mr. Obama had clinched the Democratic nomination.
“Clinton was the best gun salesman the gun manufacturers ever had,” said Rick Gray, owner of the Accuracy Gun Shop in Las Vegas. “Obama’s going to be right up there with him.”
The political battle over guns raged fiercely throughout the campaign in many states where gun ownership is common.
On Monday, the day before the election, home-delivered copies of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette arrived in plastic bags that said,
“Vote Freedom First” and “Defend Freedom — Defeat Obama.”
The bags were paid for by the N.R.A., whose initials were printed on each one.
Democrats fired back all over the country, with mail campaigns in many states with fliers stating flatly that as president, Mr. Obama would respect an individual’s right to own guns.
“Obama will protect our gun rights,” said one flier sent to homes in Minnesota.
In Montana, Gov. Brian Schweitzer, a Democrat, was photographed shooting his guns outdoors.
But some gun buyers and sellers never forgot, or forgave, Mr. Obama’s widely reported comment in April to a group in San Francisco that some Americans “cling to guns or religion” in times of adversity
Second Amendment rights are unquestionably important, but so is feeding the family.
In reality, you won’t be able to afford to buy a gun if your job goes overseas.
Chris Casella, general manager of Federal Firearms Company in Oakdale, Pa., a suburb of Pittsburgh, said he had been fielding about 30 calls a day from people interested in buying assault-type rifles, especially semiautomatic weapons, often with magazines that could hold lots of ammunition.
“A lot of people are buying them as an investment,” Mr. Casella said. “Better than gold.”
In Alsaka we find the same is true, ammunition is selling at a rate of 5 ton or more a week across the State.
After All You Can See Russia, from Shara Palins House.
National Christmas Tree
RadioZX Exclusive
By RadioZX Editor Mighty Quinn Hamilton, Montana
RadioZX Published the First photo on the Internet of the 2008 National Christmas Tree, and now we are going to give you the full store.
In this Weekend Edition
Saturday & Sunday
with music by: Jack Gladstone, who will be singing in Washington D.C. as the National Christmas Tree is Lit.
with Special Thanks to Boo Rody!
From Hamilton, Montana
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