FORD = First On Rubbish Dump...Rest of Auto Industry will not recover either

Ford Motor Co expects industry-wide December U.S. auto sales to drop by some 35 percent from a year earlier with no sign of a turnaround in the first quarter of this year. - YAHOO

NVDL: There are a few reasons the auto industry won't recover, but I'll provide just one. We've entered a period known as Compressed Debt Deflation. In many decades from now, people will remember 2008 as the year money all over the world, dried up. The only cars and houses that will be sold will be to people flush with cash. That's a sizable chunk of the market - the majority in fact - gone. All industries that require loans will do very badly from now on (that's a lot of industries, from energy, to banking, to construction, to property and auto markets).

clipped from news.yahoo.com "The sales rates have declined like a lead balloon, really," Pipas said. "I think when December comes in every segment will be down. Not one segment will be up versus a year ago." The sharpest sales declines in 2008 came in full-size SUVs, a gas-guzzling category that U.S. consumers abandoned during the spring and summer spike in oil prices. The No. 2 U.S. automaker, which borrowed more than $23 billion in 2006, has attempted to use its better financial position and recent quality gains to distinguish itself from its battered competitors in the eyes of car shoppers. But Pipas said Ford's sales planners expected to see industry-wide U.S. auto sales declines of between 20 percent and 30 percent in monthly sales reports in the first quarter. Ford does not expect U.S. auto sales to begin to stabilize until the second half of 2009 based on the view that the U.S. economy will begin to improve late this year, Pipas said.