Automotive+Industry-Period+3

For your group's assigned topic below, read one or more of the articles provided, then use the Times Topics pages to find more articles that address this issue and how it has played out in recent news. Work to both understand the larger issues as well as to identify a "microcosm" of the issue—such as a person involved who people can relate to or focus on, like Bernie Madoff, or a small part of a larger problem, like the A.I.G. bonuses—that you can use to "sell" the issue to the public.
 * FISHING FOR RED HERRINGS**

· Times Topics: Automotive Industry Crisis []
 * Issue: AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY**

· Selected Related Articles: "They’d Rather Be Flying" [] "Contrite Over Misstep, Auto Chiefs Take to the Road" [] "Corporations, Tending to a Tattered Image, Clip Wings of Private Jets" []


 * RED HERRING**


 * Red Herring: a red herring is a fallacy in which an irrelevant topic is presented in order to divert attention from the original issue. Basic idea is to "win" an argument by leading attention away from the argument to another topic. This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because merely changing the topic of discussion hardly counts as an argument against a claim.**


 * ISSUE BACKGROUND**


 * **"Big Three"- Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors**
 * **The automotive industry crisis of 2008-2010 was a part of a global financial downturn.**
 * **Crisis affected European and Asian automobile manufacturers, but it was felt the most in the American automobile manufacturing industry.**
 * **Crisis in the U.S. is mainly defined by the government bailouts of both General Motors and Chrysler, Ford secured a line of credit in case they require a bridging loan in the near future.**
 * **The automotive industry was weakened by a substantial increase in the prices of automotive fuels, which was linked to the 2003-2008 energy crisis.**
 * **The price of oil began to rise in 2001 and** **The Big Three's fortunes began to sink, due to the economic slowdown. Car sales plunged, affecting both U.S. based and foreign car manufactures. Led to great scrutiny of U.S. automotive industry in addition to criticism of product range, product quality, high labor wages, job bank programs, and healthcare and retirement benefits.**
 * **The iconic "Big Three" had been downsized to "The Detroit Three."**
 * **Sales for the Big Three started falling in the spring of 2008 as gas prices soared. In the fall, as the current recession took hold, sales plunged, including a dismal 31.9 percent drop in October, to the lowest level recorded in 25 years.**
 * **They were once the global symbol of U.S. productivity and consumerism were once teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.**


 * POTENTIAL MICROCOSMS**


 * **Potential microcosms for this include the Big Three brands themselves because regardless of whether they are a big part of the automobile industry, they are only the external perspective of how the industry failed to sustain itself.**
 * ** the fact that the private jets the three automotive leaders had flown in to Washington is just a microcosm in itself; people are paying more attention to the fact that private jets. Although they show strange behavior, it is not the central concern of the automotive industry. **
 * **“There’s a delicious irony in seeing private luxury jets flying into Washington, D.C., and people coming off of them with tin cups in their hands saying that they’re going to be trimming down and streamlining their businesses”**
 * **Couldn't you all have downgraded to first class or jet-pooled, or something, to get here? It would have at least sent a message that you do get it.**