So the NYT has an article today detailing the woes over at Ford and GM. Basically, sales of all of their products are down almost 25% compared to last year, with some of their behemoths (i.e. the idiotic Hummer) down by more than 50%. So here are my few questions:

1). Did they actually think that those 'employee pricing' sales over the summer would work? It seems to me that they've irrevocably linked their brands to the mentality that they're not worth paying full price for. "Come to your Ford dealer, where our cars have all the quality of your Taco Bell value meal!"

2). It seems to me a bad business model, in an era of rising energy costs, to base your company's entire future on selling energy hogs. Moreover, didn't the American automakers go through this once already? Back in the 70's, when the embargo hit, didn't they get slammed by the Japanese companies because the American fleet was a bunch of gas-guzzling muscle cars?

Which begs the question - what do you do to someone who repeatedly fails to learn from their mistakes? Fool the US automakers once, shame on you. Fool them twice...