I had posted in June that The End of Saab Cometh and it seems now that I might be right after all. Koenigsegg has backed out of buying the carmaker from GM and the only real option left is to shut it down.

Saab has been a loss making proposition ever since GM purchased it in 1989. Manufacturing cars in Sweden is expensive, and thus a bad idea, and making unreliable cars such as Saab is even worst.

Time indeed to shutter Saab.

Even if a company is a bail-out recipient, it still needs to retain talent and compete with other companies to hire the best workers. With onerous pay restrictions, no firm can be expected to hold its own with competition that is not functioning under the same conditions. Why would I want to work for 200k a year with Bank of America when I can get 400k with Goldman Sachs for the same job?

Fed and Treasury are coming around to this painful truth:

In recent weeks, officials from the New York Fed and the Treasury Department have urged Mr. Feinberg, to avoid making 2010 pay similarly restrictive for some top AIG executives and employees, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Fed and Treasury officials told Mr. Feinberg that tough restrictions could ultimately jeopardize the government’s ability to recoup its roughly $90 billion in loans because key employees would leave. Unlike other firms subject to Mr. Feinberg’s review, AIG isn’t expected to pay back the government’s investment for several years, making it subject to the pay czar’s rulings for the foreseeable future.

U.S. officials made a similar argument to Mr. Feinberg ahead of his 2009 decision, these people said.

But will Kenneth Feinberg and his White House overlords realize that socialism isn’t gonna help AIG and Bank of America return to profitability and independence?

Barack Obama shall now turn his hallowed attention to comprehensive immigration reform, according to Janet Napolitano. We’ve already heard the word on healthcare, Iraq, Afghanistan, energy, the environment, Portuguese water dogs, Gitmo, military tribunals, terrorism, and many more issues.

The only thing remaining was immigration and, lo and behold, it shall be dealt with. Don’t get me wrong, I do agree with the administration’s thinking on the issue, especially on the last point:

Laying out the administration’s bottom line, Ms. Napolitano said officials would argue for a “three-legged stool” that includes tougher enforcement laws against illegal immigrants and employers who hire them and a streamlined system for legal immigration, as well as a “tough and fair pathway to earned legal status.”

The problem that I have right now is that unemployment has crossed 10%, companies are shedding employees every single month, private spending is frozen just as it was a year ago, government waste is distorting the real state of the economy, and Obama is focusing on what are, really, peripheral issues.

What does an unemployed guy care more about? Health insurance, immigration, or saving his mortgage, his car, his whole life?

Furthermore, the Congress just passed an extension to UI, but what they should really be thinking about is giving the private sector incentives to hold on to their employees – for instance, targeted tax cuts – rather than extending the unemployment insurance tax to pay for a program which doesn’t save or create jobs.

Alan Mulally, erstwhile of Boeing, is doing a swell job for Ford. The company posted a profit of almost a billion dollars this part quarter, including:

The company’s earnings of $357 million in North America broke a streak of 17 consecutive quarterly losses there.

Mulally had earlier established a $10 billion credit line for the company, which allowed Ford to avoid bankruptcy and government intervention. In addition Mulally also successfully negotiated with the UAW earlier this year, with pay cuts for senior management.

Boeing, on the other hand, has posted $1.6 billion in losses. It seems that passing over Mulally for the CEO position in 2005 was quite possibly the worst decision that the company has made over the past few years, in addition to its more obvious issues with airplane production.