There were some ups and downs this week.  Bankruptcy for Chrysler occurred early last week and GM is precariously close to declaring the same.  That's kind of amusing, especially when Chevy boasted that "every 12 seconds, someone buys a Chevy in America!"  Now, this ad is a bit over two years old, but, assuming that the ad agency and Chevrolet spent a year doing research on this, and also assuming that the work day of the dealers went from 9-5 Monday through Friday and 12-5 on Saturday, that would equate to selling five (5) cars a minute.  Five cars a minute times 60 minutes in an hour, times 45 hour work weeks would yield approximately 13,500 cars per week.  Multiply that by 40 (to account for vacations and holidays) and we are left with 540,000 cars per year.  Not too bad. 

And now they are on the brink of bankruptcy.  What happened?  Did people keep the secret to themselves?  Did Chevy refuse to make any more cars?  How does a company sell over a half-million cars and within three years go belly-up?

Evidence like this makes me question some people's mindset that the Stock Market causes depressions or boom cycles.  I always loved discussing the Great Depression in High School and having people contribute this lovely tidbit: "well, the stock market collapsed and that's what did it." 

Actually, it had more to do with people buying items in installments then losing their income and being unable to pay for the items.  Cars, homes, even stocks were ceded (or repossessed, depending on how you look at it) to banks. 

But how did this happen?  How did people lose their jobs if it wasn't directly caused by the stock market?  Well, the banks and other sectors of the economy such as real estate and land holdings, and subsidiaries of banking and real estate giants (including rail and transit facilities) were intertwined within the economic and industrial interests of each other.   Bank of America, by the way, became the largest landholder in the country during this time period by buying the land from destitute farmers and other Americans who couldn't pay back their loans, often for pennies per acre.  

Sound familiar?

Come back to this site later in the weekend when I will opine about this debacle.  And make fun of people, too.