LONG BEACH, Calif. — Gleaming new Mercedes cars roll one by one out of a huge container ship here and onto a pier. Ordinarily the cars would be loaded on trucks within hours, destined for dealerships around the country. But these are not ordinary times.
For now, the port itself is the destination. Unwelcome by dealers and buyers, thousands of cars worth tens of millions of dollars are being warehoused on increasingly crowded port property.
And for the first time, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, and Nissan have each asked to lease space from the port for these orphan vehicles. They are turning dozens of acres of the nation’s second-largest container port into a parking lot, creating a vivid picture of a paralyzed auto business and an economy in peril.
And for the first time, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, and Nissan have each asked to lease space from the port for these orphan vehicles. They are turning dozens of acres of the nation’s second-largest container port into a parking lot, creating a vivid picture of a paralyzed auto business and an economy in peril.
“This is one way to look at the economy,” Art Wong, a spokesman for the port, said of the cars. “And it scares you to death.”
The backlog at the port is just part of a broader rise in the nation’s inventories, which were up 5.5 percent in September from a year earlier, according to the Commerce Department. The car industry has been hurt particularly, with sales down nearly 15 percent this year. General Motors has said it would run out of operating cash by the end of the year if it does not receive a government bailout.
But the inventory glut in Long Beach is not limited to imported cars. There has also been a sharp drop in demand for the port’s single largest export: recycled cardboard and paper products.
NWN:
Car sales in Britain are down 37%. The lowest since 1966
12 comments:
I've just heard another 1000 jobs are being cut in car manufacturing in Britain. Not a pretty picture.
"I've just heard another 1000 jobs are being cut in car manufacturing in Britain. Not a pretty picture."
NWN forum have registered more than 80,000 job losses in the past 8 days
http://www.nwn-forum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=171
Building things we do not want ,what is the average length of time that you will want to keep your car for before you change it for the latest model that you do not need but you will be told that you have to have the latest up grade?
R H Rumpole QC.
Building things we do not want ,what is the average length of time that you will want to keep your car for before you change it for the latest model that you do not need but you will be told that you have to have the latest up grade?
R H Rumpole QC.
04 December 2008 11:54
If people didn't change their cars there would be no jobs in car manufacturing. What would those people do, how would they earn a wage?
Typical, I ask a question and you can't give an answer. What will the car workers do?
Just admit it, no one in nationalism has a clue.
backat you anon>>>
Car workers are likely to be laid off now, under a recesssion presided over by the parties of internationalism, what will car workers do for a living now. Internationalism has let them, and us, down.
Indeed thanks to internationalism, British car workers have seen uk factories closed, the marques sold overseas and their jobs exported. Only for the new foreign owners to open up here, import labour and now lay them off.
Internationalsim doesnt make much economic sense.
What will the car workers do?
We will invest in our own nationalised car factories and use the valuable skills that these people have.
We will produce cars for specific purposes other than vanity.
We will produce an energy efficient peoples car that will have a significant market advantage because it will be far cheaper than imported and highly taxed cars
just Waite a mo and i will give you my answer,do not be inpatient as i know who you are.
R.H.Rumpole
1 By producing things we need ,grow our own food instead of in porting it
2 build everything we need as an island people for trading any where in the world,aircraft ships trucks and cars when they need to be replaced,clothing ,the list is endless but this forum is not a place where we can adequately discuss this matter and it is not as simple as i have briefly explained but that is a start.
And we would not have to work 40/50 hours a week .
Anonymous said...
Typical, I ask a question and you can't give an answer. What will the car workers do?
Just admit it, no one in nationalism has a clue
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Your posting makes you sound like an 'anti nationalist' , that is a supporter of the socialist/tory /liberal status quo. As such I admire your chutzpah ,though nothing else, in asking about job creation--may I remind your it is the socialist/tory/liberal concensus,that you appear to support, that has de-industrialised Britain and put millions of British people on the dole. Currently about 1.7 million registared as unemployed and about another six or seven million classified by the government as 'economically inactive'.It is the political consensus that you appear to support that closed down the coal mines, the ship yards, the fishing industry, the steel industry, and just about the entire engineering industry. How many British people now have employment in manufacturing? About two and half million out of a work force of about twenty five million. It is the consensus that you appear to support that has diliberately crippled British farming by imposing quoters on production. They crippled the fishing industry in a similar way with quoters. Imagine that -two industries having quoters imposed upon them by status quo politicians who claim to believe in free trade.
Not satisfied with the devastation that they have caused in manufacturing the status quo politicians are now happily outsorcing service sector jobs --the very jobs that they said would replace the manufacturing jobs that they were distroying.And ,of course, they are equally happy to import foreign labour into Britain because the more labour they is the smaller the labourers wage will be. (that is why employers support the importing of foreign labour--it reduses employees wages and increases employers profits.)Wages are determined by supply and not by skill--increase the labour pool and you decrease the wage.
Your question should have been along the lines of 'what do we do to rebuild our economy after the devastation of the socialist/tory/liberal consensus'.
Richard Chadfield
Why do any of us have to work? The land is ours, no one owns the earth.
The Banks and Money system are just massive parasites - sucking away 90% of the wealth and contributing nothing.
If you think back, this has been going on for a lot longer than they admit.
Remember those pictures from years ago of fields full of new cars, quietly rusting?
The economy is a giant soap bubble.
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