Industry: Autos: Auto-parts company's belly-up generates '30% chance' General Motors will file for bankruptcy

You may have heard about the very recent demise of Delphi, a huge auto-parts manufacturer that was spun off as a separate corporation from GM. But GM had come to regard itself as "paying $2 billion a year in above-market pricing when it buys parts from Delphi.

"A billion here and a billion there adds up," he said. "In the long run, a restructured Delphi could supply GM with parts at lower prices." David Healy, a Burham Securities auto analyst says on the Delphi / GM relation.

Part of the cost is the longterm payout load GM still carries for retirees of Delphi and for its own workers, since the spin off. The United Auto Workers, which has a monopoly of labor representation at GM and Delphi, due to North American winner-takes-all and checkoff-of-dues unionism, may surprise us all by compromising to approve at least a partial write-off of retirment payouts for former employees of the companies, in order to protect the jobs of current GM workers.

The main point of the viability of the auto industry is its continuing to produce oil-fuelled vehicles (a tremendous political deficit for the USA), and its continuing to produce air-poisoning exhaust-generators (the same vehicles, which are the main health hazard in all of North America). The province of Ontario is a major auto manufacturer, including GM products. Both the Federal Canadian Prime Minister, Paul Martain, and the Provincial Prime Minister, Dalton McGuinty, will be opening a major new Toyota plant in the province, and there's no word of a single alternatively-fuelled vehicle rolling off the assembly line. I think this is a crime against humanity. - Owlb