As GM sinks, its blog grows more interesting

Naughty Dave... taking all the glory on this one! He and I have been involved in a back and forth volley about the direction of GM's Fastlane blog over on BusinessBlogConsulting.com.

I agree with you, Stephen. I don't think we can write off Fastlane just yet. Although I do wish the blog would be just a tiny bit less cheery, as GM enters what looks like a death spiral.

As I wrote in response to Dave's entry:

"Blogging is an imperfect, messy strategy. And it's going to be adapted and will evolve as more and more companies use it as a marketing strategy. It's premature to say that corporate blogging has to be done a certain way or else the blog is a failure."

So I'm taking a wait-and-see attitude to Fastlane. I think the folks writing and managing the blog need a bit more time to figure out how to handle the elephant in the room. Cuz it looks like this elephant isn't going away anytime soon.

GM is rising. Even in 2005 you should have seen the turn coming.

Do you even bother to study the terrific cars they are building?

In 2005 you should have been watching Saturn. GM will have more market share by 2015 than they do in 2007. Watch...

The next Republican President better have some good ideas because this is what is really hppening:

The American auto industry needs help.
In the U.S. interest rate are going lower, Gold is going higher, Oil is going higher, inflation is going higher, the dollar is going lower. What is wrong with this? Everything! At some point the FED is going to have to raise rates bigtime. We are in a very, very, precarious situation at the moment. I think Gold will tripple to over $2,000 an ounce when the market finally wakes up and sees the real inflation. Last I checked a lower dollar = higher import prices. There is no inflation deflator here. With commodities on fire you can forget about that. Bernanke should have never lowered rates last week. However, the Fed might be doing something that few have talked about. Maybe the Fed has abandoned the dollar to crush the trade deficit. Good luck, it will take 20 years to correct our 6% of GDP trade deficit and move it back to under 1% of GDP, unless you want to seriously disrupt the global economy. We are in for tough times people. Very tough! The FED will not be able to save housing with lower rates. We are in for a 10 year decline in home prices. It is called a cycle! Low home sales often equal low auto sales.