re: #21 Occasional Reader

Well, thinking about it… arguably, it represents an ALIGNMENT of interests.

Now If the UAW members act in ways that will undercut Chrysler’s share price, they’ll be very directly shooting themselves in the foot.

That was what I said a few threads back; in fact I used the term “aligned”.
The UAW has lots of money, and invests. Investors in capitalism get to buy stock. Employee-owned companies have been known to reform and do amazingly well. If UAW buys a majority stake in Chrysler, then Chrysler is an employee-owned company*, and this should get all of the hamsters running in the same direction.
The biggest problem I have with the whole deal is that the gummint will have a large chunk of it. Get the government out, and tell UAW that if they want to buy, they can have the government’s proposed share as well. After all, the whole purpose of government involvement was to provide cash when nobody else would.
The real conflict of interest, IMHO, is the fact that now Ford and GM employees are also in on Chrysler’s board, in an incestuous deal that smacks of Japanese “Zaibatsu” style cross-ownership. It’s part of what created in Japan a system which, when things went well, went very well, and when things went poorly, utterly collapsed. The opposite of a check & baance system, instead, it is a positive feedback loop. I don’t know if that applies (just rambling), or if that effect would simply be washed away by skullduggery (“Let’s torpedo Chrysler and divvy up the assets amongst ourselves!”).

Still, in general, I have nothing against UAW ownership, so long as it can be made to work as employee ownership. Could an arm which represents Chrysler’s portion of the UAW be the actual shareholders?