The insurance bottom line

Telling it all in auto sales

Via Autoblog:

The two brands who lost and gained the most sales last month (MINI and HUMMER) sum up nicely what happened to auto sales during May in the U.S. Brands armed with small cars weathered the storm and big trucks and SUVs continued to nose dive. In fact, after 17 years worth of being this country’s best-selling vehicle, the Ford F-150 full-size pickup (42,973) has fallen for the first time to fourth place behind the Toyota Camry (51,291), Corolla (52,826) and your new best-selling vehicle in the U.S., the Honda Civic (53,299). Note to automakers: that would be the sound of the canary in your coal mine hitting the floor.

An uncertain future for poorly endowed men in need of reassurance?

Atrios quotes a NYT piece saying that the Hummer brand, beloved by men with large wallets and small penises, may be discontinued.

The NYT piece now omits the quote, but we have another source so it’s at least been discussed.

Matt Stoller wonders:

And hopefully, the market will provide new eco-friendly products for insecure spite-filled assholes.  Maybe someone can make a fake gas guzzler, like Beggin’ Strips for dogs.  Dogs don’t know it’s not bacon!

Bleeding turnips

American Airlines announced new a new fee of $15 for checking a FIRST bag for any flight.

As could be expected, their stock fell as the announcement went public.  All the more reason for fliers to look elsewhere.

Missing the point for the middle class

Chris at Americablog calls it right:

Wow, go figure. Another Wall Street writer dismissing record high gas prices and food prices. It’s about time people get a grasp on the real world where such costs are in fact a problem. Not everyone in the world gambles trillions of dollars - paying outrageously high bonuses without any link to the ultimate end result - loses and then gets bailed out by the middle class who can hardly keep up with their own costs.

The only thing worse is that not only is there a steady stream of this nonsense, not a damned person in Congress is saying much about the bailout and it’s long term consequences. I get the whole “we need to prevent a major collapse” thing but sheesh, do we really need to fund lifestyle choices for Wall Street? If they can afford to pay the likes of Tony Blair $1 million per year and keep shoveling over handsome bonuses, they don’t get it. Either that or we’re all just idiots for tolerating and condoning this behavior.

NOT a good thing

The Delta/Northwest merger has been announced.

We’ll see what happens, and the extent to which Minnesota may need to seek penalties against the new organization.  As Governor Tim Pawlenty said:

In 2007, we negotiated agreements with Northwest to keep hub operations and a headquarters presence in Minnesota. We will examine how the merged entity will fulfill those commitments

Damn straight.  Losing a fortune 500 company headquarters matters.  State of the Brand speaks of marketing and benefits, tangible and intangible, for having major corporate presence and especially corporate headquarters in a city.  Sure, they speak of retaining the hub, but that’s not good enough.

From a tangible perspective, large corporate headquarters provide a number of benefits: Executive level employment, corporate philanthropy, cultural enrichment funding, and innovation / entrepreneurship hubs (as smaller firms spring up to grab business from these uber-entities).

All these concrete reasons provide a powerful incentive to keep a corporate headquarters in your state.

But the departure of a corporate headquarters has an intangible affect as well - a brand impact.

When a state works to create an image for itself (or in the case of branding, a state has its image created for it at the same time), it leverages these household names to “anchor” its position.

We see that dynamic at work in Minnesota.

Minnesota is a “biotech leader” because of Medtronic and Mayo Clinic. Minnesota is a “manufacturing/innovation” leader because of 3M. Minnesota is a “retail powerhouse” because of Target. The state is an agricultural/food innovator because of Cargill and SuperValu.

Until now, Minnesota was an “aviation center” because of Northwest Airlines.

As Minnesota tries to present itself on the national stage as a good place to live, a good place to work, and a good place to seize opportunity, it relies on these brands to help make its case.

Exactly.  Minnesota is due hundreds of millions if the new company walks out on its committments.  And it should collect - it is small compensation for lost opportunity and broken promises.

The real solution here is to maintain two headquarters cities - it’s not at all uncommon, respectful of both Atlanta and the Twin Cities, and reasonable given the lack of overlap in the separate entities’ operations.

Will clearer heads prevail?  Unclear but unlikely.  We can only hope Oberstar manages to gum up the works if they aren’t cooperative.

What’s the saying about payback?

It seems a small Kansas company was suddently dropped as Wal Mart’s preferred vendor for recording services.  It also seems Wal Mart didn’t have it’s ducks in a row and is now paying the price.

Those moments never meant for public display include a scene of male managers parading in drag at an executive meeting, a clip used by union-backed critics at Wal-Mart Watch for a recent advertisement castigating the retailer’s attitude toward female employees.

“The videos provide insight into the company’s real corporate culture when they’re not in the public eye,” Wal-Mart Watch spokeswoman Stacie Lock Temple said Tuesday.

Much of the interest in the candid videos is coming from plaintiff lawyers pursuing cases against Wal-Mart.

Ah, karma…

Subsidizing sports

Remember the buckets of money the Supersonics arena was supposed to bring into Seattle?

Well, forget about it now that they want to break the lease:

“The financial issue is simple, and the city’s analysts agree, there will be no net economic loss if the Sonics leave Seattle. Entertainment dollars not spent on the Sonics will be spent on Seattle’s many other sports and entertainment options. Seattleites will not reduce their entertainment budget simply because the Sonics leave,” the Sonics said in the court brief. 

Hat tip:  Coyote Blog

Flights to New York just got more expensive

And here is why.

Travelers going through Kennedy and Newark Liberty airports next summer may find somewhat fewer flights at the hours they most want to travel, but they are far more likely to leave on time or arrive in time to make connections, federal transportation officials said Wednesday.

And travelers may even find more flights over all, the officials said, as they announced a combination of agreements and orders intended to eliminate last summer’s epic delays.

Bleeding hearts

Oh, the poor picked on airlines, being forced by NY state meanies to provide food and water and toilet facilities to captive passengers.

In a case that could affect passengers delayed on planes at airports nationwide, an industry trade group is challenging New York’s law requiring airlines to provide food, water, clean toilets and fresh air to passengers stuck on the ground for more than three hours.

New York lawmakers passed the “airline passenger bill of rights” — the first law of its kind in the nation — after a series of delays last winter at John F. Kennedy International Airport that left some passengers stranded for more than 10 hours with no food or water, overflowing toilets and no air conditioning.

My heart bleeds for them.  If their service wasn’t so uniformly atrocious and if they hadn’t so badly abused their own customers in the past, there wouldn’t be the demands for state oversight.

Hat tip:  Americablog

Encountering electric reality

According to Truth About Cars, there may be less than believed to the Volt:

General Motors is considering an unusual program to keep the price of the Chevy Volt within the grasp of the average auto buyer: renting them the battery pack. The Financial Times reports that GM is considering allowing buyers to buy the car for the price of a Chevy Malibu, and then pay a monthly rental fee for the batteries. Volt chief engineer Frank Weber estimates an average owner would pay about $25/month for gas, compared to $125 for a traditional Malibu. The battery pack would rent for about $100/month giving a similar total operating cost. Oops! Unless we’re missing something, Weber forgot the cost of recharging the battery. Since the primary reason most people look at any kind of hybrid is lower operating cost, we’ve got to say this seems like a bone-headed self-defeating marketing idea.

Hitting the target market

A couple of interesting pieces caught my eye on the feeds.

First off, the Mazda BT-50 could really make a splash on this side of the pond.  Too bad the import tariffs and such make it unlikely to come here in the immediate future.  It’s a small truck without a lot of frills, but with a turbo diesel engine and lots of power.  I would LOVE a small truck as a third car, but living where I do it would need to have front or four wheel drive and by the time you make it a 4X4 the cost goes up and the fuel economy goes down to almost the same as a full sized pickup.   Too bad it’s not available here.  For that matter, why not make it yourself Detroit?  I’d be perfectly fine buying a Ford pickup, but the don’t offer what I’m looking for.

Second, Asus has announced bare bones laptops starting at $199, targeted toward other than just the developing world markets.  I’m interested.  Yeah, I’d not want one as my only PC but something quick and light when I’m doing personal travel and just need internet access?   These days most people could get by with much, much less computing power than they end up purchasing.  Indeed, at least as a stopgap measure most of us can be amazingly productive with little more than a web browser at our disposal.   It’s a much better deal than other micro machines like the Palm Foleo, etc.

Smart product development.  We need more of it.

Foxes and hen houses

The FTC has decided to put net neutrality on the back burner.  And it’s a profoundly STOOPID decision, even by Washington’s standards.

Symbolic protectionism

An embarassing bit of news out of my adopted home state of Minnesota:

As if raising and waving millions of Stars and Stripes was not patriotic enough at Independence Day celebrations yesterday, the flags now have to be made in the US.

The state of Minnesota has taken the most draconian action, requiring all US flags sold in the state to be of American manufacture. Violations of the law, which comes into force at the end of the year, will be punished by a $1,000 (£495) fine or 90 days in jail.

Symbolism over substance.

As Jason Steck at TMV notes, protection is often an urge best left unfulfilled.

Many forget that protectionism was one of the primary causes of the economic and financial meltdown preceding the Great Depression. And while it is unlikely that the complex financial markets that exist now would allow for the same kind of direct collapse that occurred in 1929 and the early 1930s, protectionism could still result in an escalating series of trade wars that would seriously inhibit global economic growth, both in the United States, where a slowdown would exacerbate a looming crisis in entitlement programs, and in developing countries like China, where economic crisis could provoke both a devastating financial chain explosion that could blow up the U.S. economy and a wildfire of domestic social upheaval that could result in war in southeast Asia.

Not ready for prime time

It will be a while before we want to see Chinese cars in the US.  Check out the results of some German crash testing…