Free Republic

Detroit's money troubles are starting to put a key part of the American dream -- a pricey new car -- out of reach for some people. Squeezed by falling used-vehicle prices, as well as continued tumult in the credit markets on Wall Street, Ford and General Motors are significantly scaling back their auto-leasing business. Ford this week began telling dealers that it is essentially ending leasing deals on most trucks and sport-utility vehicles. GMAC, GM's financing arm, is also expected to soon rein in leasing offers in the United States. On July 29, it said it will no longer offer...

Chrysler is getting out of the auto leasing business. The company, now privately held, told its dealers on Friday that its financing arm, Chrysler Financial, would stop offering leases as of Aug. 1, a move that comes as plummeting resale values of gas-thirsty trucks and sport utility vehicles turn lease deals on those vehicles into big money losers for the Detroit automakers. On Thursday, the Ford Motor Company took a $2.1 billion write-down in the second quarter, part of an $8.7 billion loss for Ford over all, related to unprofitable leases held by its finance arm, the Ford Motor Credit...

SACRAMENTO – Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger unveiled new health care legislation yesterday that relies on leasing the state lottery to a private company to generate new revenue. Schwarzenegger's plan to lease the lottery is considered more popular than raising the sales tax, which had been considered the most likely new funding source to expand health care. The governor said his $14 billion proposal to cover the state's 6.5 million uninsured residents offers the best chance for comprehensive health care reform. “We all know that the nation is watching us,” he said at a news conference yesterday. Schwarzenegger is trying to jump-start...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Los Padres National Forest will allow companies to drill for an estimated 17 million barrels of crude oil or natural gas within its borders but roadless wilderness areas and critical habitat of the California condor will be preserved, forest officials announced Thursday. Forest Supervisor Gloria Brown will allow oil and gas leasing on only 52,000 out of 767,000 acres of land that were included in a decade-long study of Los Padres, a nearly 2 million-acre forest that spans 220 miles from Big Sur in Monterey County south to near western Los Angeles County. On all but...

WHAT'S NEXT VEHICLES that move slowly down the street, pausing regularly to take photographs with remote-controlled cameras, tend to make the police a bit nervous. But one trailer loaded with imaging equipment that made its way through the streets of central Philadelphia wasn't spying - although at first, Secret Service agents had their doubts. Both the vehicle and a plane that flew over the same area were taking authorized pictures of each building and its surroundings, at the behest of the downtown improvement district. Now the terabytes of imaging data are being used to build a three-dimensional model of central...

Amtrak is in trouble again. Congress didn’t give Amtrak the money Amtrak says it needs to solve many of its problems. Recently the majority of members of the Amtrak Reform Council, which went out of business a couple of years ago, returned to Washington to make a plea to Congress to consider the reforms which the council had recommended. (I was a member of the council.) Among the reforms was a call for public/private partnerships. One member of the council, Jim Coston, has formed a company that could be the basis for public/private relationships not only with Amtrak but also...

When Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain opens a hearing today [Wednesday] on an Air Force proposal to lease 100 Boeing 767 tanker aircraft, he will cast himself as a defender of the public interest against wasteful defense spending.  It is, therefore, no small irony that this hearing – and the dilatory, many-months-long process it culminates, is the real waste of time and energy, to the detriment of the national security.             After all, as members of the Commerce Committee surely know, most Americans understand full well the nature of leasing.  Tens of millions of them have taken advantage of this...