I'm not sure if you are disagreeing or just pointing out the binding arbitration clause, which I too would expect to be in the franchisee agreement. Two things though: first, if the arbitration is conducted in an unfair manner, the franchisee can still sue. In fact, there's nothing that prevents the franchisee from suing anyway - it's just that the court will refer to the arbitration clause if there's no reason for it not to apply. That being said, dealerships aren't like other franchisees. A lot of states have special laws that give dealership extra rights. These cannot be stripped away by arbitration or the franchisee contract. As we all know, you can't be contractually binded to do something that's contrary to the law.
The respect for contract and business which made our society as dominant as it was, is coming to an end. Wall street learned how to corrupt congress with money. Congress let us down and instead of blaming our politicians and replacing them with politicians who respect the rule of law. We are letting politicians gain more power. We must stop financial lobbying.
I'll be more specific- the Govt. has NO BUSINESS subjugating contract law in this case. It wouldn't matter who was president. If we cannot agree on that, then we cannot go further discussing this.
Ok. That's what I don't understand when he says his business is being "stolen" from him. I feel sorry for his condition but the fact is he bears most of the responsibility for what has happened. He signed a poor one-sided contract and made that the basis of his livelihood, unfortunately now he is paying the price.
I count myself as a conservative and you, sir, with your knee jerking barely literate posturing give us a bad name. Please, do actually read the facts of this dealership business before bashing people who essentially agree with you. The government has no business stepping into a well established legal process and shafting one class of obligations in favor of a more politically likeable one. But unless there's evidence that the management's decision to close certain dealerships is politically motivated, it's just part of the reorganization process. Moreoever, the company itself has for years planned on doing exactly that - cutting down the number of dealers. What's happening with chrysler is a travesty. It'll have consequences long after this is over. The added uncertainty from politics will drive up the cost of debt and lower the competitiveness of the united states. But closing the dealerships has as about as much to do with this as all the people who are getting laid off within the company itself.
I absolutely do agree contract law shouldn't be subjugated and when this is all done I think you'll find it wasn't. The secured holders AGREED to their payoff and they are getting it in cash. This is why I take the squawking from the creditors with such a grain of salt. Everyone is jockeying for a piece of the pie and any public statements from any party involved should be read very skeptically. This includes the creditors who you're apparently willing to take at face value while not believing any of the other players. And I'll point out once again, this is the first gov't intervention that the bondholders are taking a haircut on. No one took a haircut from Bush. From the WSJ describing the deal: "The big banks quickly agreed to the deal -- equal to 29 cents on the dollar. Though that offered a profit to a few firms that bought debt as low as 15 cents on the dollar, most of the lenders had paid 50 cents to 70 cents, and the banks 100 cents. News that the big banks were accepting the offer leaked before they had told the smaller lenders. "To say the least, we were floored," says one. Mr. Lee was nonetheless intent on winning 100% approval from debtholders, to give the government the option of avoiding a Chrysler bankruptcy filing. He asked the Treasury to raise its offer by $250 million, which it grudgingly agreed to do if the lenders answered within 90 minutes. After a flurry of last-minute calls, about 20 firms, mostly small hedge funds, voted no. At noon the next day, April 30, Mr. Obama said Chrysler would file for bankruptcy. He blamed "speculators" who had turned down the $2 billion offer for their $6.9 billion of debt. A lawyer for holdout firms, Tom Lauria, accused the White House of threatening to destroy the reputation of Perella Weinberg. The White House denied exerting pressure on it. Mr. Lauria's clients took their fight into bankruptcy court last week, imperiling the administration's plan to guide Chrysler into and out of court swiftly. But on Friday, the holdouts abandoned the fight as too costly, financially and politically." Edit: Here's another gem from the same article: Many of the lenders believed the administration wouldn't let Chrysler file for bankruptcy. "The plan was to call the government's bluff. The game was to game the government," said a manager of a distressed-debt fund.
Well, my apologies for not being able to return the favor. You'd think that with as many posts as you have at least one of them would have been interesting enough to have left an impression with me. Sorry, zip, nada, zilch. Uh, attacking one's logic isn't won by using hyperbole... Which, if true, says an awful lot about yourself for having spent the time to bother replying to one of my posts.
C'mon, you can't be that niave, can you? Any of the big banks who didn't vote for this deal would be signing their death warrant when it comes to the additional government bail out money they are certainly going to need in the near future.
absolutely - additionally, you would have auditors, SEC, IRS, etc crawling up your rear every time you turn around. BamBam is a thug - there were reports that the gov't threatened the secured debtholders with annual IRS audits. desperate act of a failed presidency to pander to their base.