Yahoo reports that for the low cost of $4,000 a year (excluding maintenance), you can outfit a home with solar cells, saving your self from paying the oil-burning utility companies $1,500 a year. Of course, that $4,000 a year figure would be significantly higher if the solar cells were not manufactured using oil-subsidized energy.

Japan has a defacto one party system. There is pressure on that system over the issue of whether Japan’s postal system should be privatized.

GM and Ford hemmorage marketshare and mindshare every year. More threatening than their blood-red balance sheets is the near universal opinion both in and outside the US that “American” is synonymous with “inferior” within the automotive industry. They desparately need to inject life into their products and stave off the terminal infection of foreign cars; GM and Ford show strong signs of ganggrene, contagious to consumers, lenders and investors alike.

Ford and GM have a cure at their disposal, but are they aware they need one? Most of the world assumes their cars are poorly designed, use cheaper parts and require far more maintence. Isolated in Detroit and divorced from the rest of reality, they may well insulate themselves from the fact that the people only buy American cars when they cannot afford a European or Japanese one.

The problem is not that marketing dropped the ball. The problem is that the perception of inferiority is grounding in reality. Marketing cannot turn lemons into lemonaide indefinitely. Eventually the sugar coating dissolves; the public will turn sour on poor products. Bad products will eventually destroy a company, especially if a competing company sells good ones.

The cure is a simple one. Produce a better car than the Europeans and Asians are willing to sell. Copy foreign designs, use higher-quality exterior and especially interior materials; sacrifice margins to produce a car people want to buy. Easy to say, not terribly difficult to do but very hard to swallow. People are willing and eager to buy American cars, assuming all else is equal to the competition. This is not the case presently.

To understand how out of touch with reality GM is, consider the ads they are currently running on TV:

GM seems to believe that if they wrap their products around enough American imagery, Americans purchase their automobiles reflexively. Nevermind the fact that they are a mulitnational corporation with factories around the globe. Nevermind that they spent the past 30 years abusing whatever way they represented America by producing inferior products at home and exporting jobs and wages overseas. Apparently their opinion of Americans is so low that need only assert that the American experience requires purchasing Chevys and Americans will line up to buy their cars like thoughtless drones. If they think that will cure their problems the future is very bleak.

Ford seems to have a much better handle on the situation:

Their advertisements implicityly acknowledge the superiority of the foreign competition’s design and construction. They present a rebuttal supported with expert opinion and a sampling of individual public opinion. They do not present a completely forgettable truck as “all-new” like GM. Assuming people really do get excited about driving a Ford after testing a Honda, make the purchase and continue to believe they made the right decision, people will slowly return to Ford.

At that point, unions will be the only ones holding Ford and Ford employees back from financial success.