The German car maker Daimler wants to put the Chrysler chapter behind it, so it will give up its remaining 19.9% stake and forgive all remaining loans. See BBC story.
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As the possibility of bankruptcy draws nearer, General Motors is moving to sell non-core assets and to broker arrangements with bondholders and unions alike which will keep it out of bankruptcy. In a 9AM press conference today, new General Motors head Fritz Henderson announced a debt-for-equity swap offer for GM bondholders which would cut [...]

I want to make clear the significance of the Treasury’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy plan for Chrysler if Fiat pulls out.  It will mean massive job losses and and a huge down-tick in consumer demand.  There will be no second half recovery. Geithner and Obama will look very much like greenhorns and lose a lot of [...]

Press reports coming out of Germany are suggesting that the Germans are looking to hook up Opel with Fiat in order to prevent a lot of job losses when General Motors goes under.  In my view, this means curtains for both Chrysler and GM and could spell some massive increases in jobless claims and unemployment [...]

Apparently the Obama Administration was just bluffing about bankruptcy for the automakers, because when push came to shove, they blinked.  The automakers are to get yet more bailout funds and the dates for restructuring plans hae been pushed back.

General Motors (GM) and Chrysler are to get more loans from the US treasury as the troubled [...]

This clip is very much in line with my thinking from a previous post.

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I like the fact that President Obama has drawn a line in the sand and signaled that no more funds will be given to U.S. automakers without their presenting a viable long-term plan for restructuring. Ultimately, the automakers cannot survive merely as a result of government largesse, but through the discipline of a competitive auto market.

In my view, the American automakers are viable companies which can produce cars that sell well. It is their poor operating cost structure and disastrous balance sheets which make them bankrupt organizations. This should mean they are prefect candidates for restructuring.

Nevertheless, other aspects of Obama’s treatment of the automakers are troubling. The dichotomy between how the big three automakers are being treated and how the big banks are being treated plus the sacking of a CEO at a critical juncture leave a lot of questions.

In 2 hours I will be on BBC World News Today talking about the recent government actions involving the auto industry. Afterwards, I will have more to say about this here. In the meantime, here is what Barack Obama had to say.

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This comes via Angus Robertson of Research Recap:
The performance of auto loan securities has been mixed, but Standard & Poor’s Credit Research points out that overall ratings on the ABS have been remarkably stable in spite of the recession.
In a new report on the sector, S & P says that delinquencies and write-downs among certain auto loan [...]

As I mentioned in my post, “TALF: A bailout if one reads the fine print” the TALF is not a program ONLY for U.S. institutions. It is a vehicle for re-starting the U.S. asset-backed securities credit markets. In fact, the first recipient of TALF money may be Nissan Motors, a Japanese company (Hat tip Marc):