Black Friday For VW; Black Friday For Saudi; US Schools Italy In Women's Water Polo -- August 19, 2016

Olympic women's water polo: For the gold, USA gives Italy a clinic in water polo. Led by 11 - 4 early in 4th period. Game ends with USA winning, 12 - 5. Early in the fourth, both teams pretty much played with the outcome known.

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Not Going Well For Saudi Arabia?

US ends support for Saudi in war against Yemen rebels? -- Reuters. It appears the decision to withdraw was made by President Obama based on reasons cited for the withdrawal.

The U.S. military has withdrawn from Saudi Arabia its personnel who were coordinating with the Saudi-led air campaign in Yemen, and sharply reduced the number of staff elsewhere who were assisting in that planning.

Fewer than five U.S. service people are now assigned full-time to the "Joint Combined Planning Cell," which was established last year to coordinate U.S. support, including air-to-air refueling of coalition jets and limited intelligence-sharing, Lieutenant Ian McConnaughey, a U.S. Navy spokesman in Bahrain. 

That is down from a peak of about 45 staff members who were dedicated to the effort full-time in Riyadh and elsewhere. 

The staff withdrawal, which U.S. officials say followed a lull in air strikes in Yemen earlier this year, appears to reduce Washington's day-to-day involvement in advising a campaign that has come under increasing scrutiny for causing civilian casualties.
The U.S. military personnel were withdrawn from Riyadh in June.

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VW Grinds To A Halt

 
VW production grinds to a halt.

Imagine if we saw this headline in the US: GM and Ford stop all production. That's about what this amounts to.

Bloomberg has the story.

VW stopped Passat production on Thursday and will halt assembly of its best-selling Golf on Monday if the conflict isn’t resolved.

VW has officially said the factories producing those models face slowdowns, as do plants that build chassis, the basic underpinnings of vehicles.

The supplier has essentially called the automaker a bully, prompting VW’s top labor boss to respond that he’s “furious” and the leader of its home state to say “coercive measures” by a court may be needed to end the conflict.

The production holdup threatens to reduce Volkswagen’s earnings by as much as $45 million a week at a time when the carmaker is trying to boost sagging profit at its namesake brand by lowering annual spending by 1 billion euros.

The conflict centers on a contract that VW signed with the supplier, then later canceled.

The parts maker, which builds seat and transmission parts, says it wants the auto manufacturer to pay for the plant alterations it made to provide the services.

Sounds like the supplier should have negotiated a clause in the contract that if VW....

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Blame It On The Bossa Nova

Link here.

GM's Opel to trim hours of German workers: workers at two assembly plants in Germany will be cut as auto maker faces negative effects from Brexit.

Already! The Brexit switch won't even be "turned on" this year, and it will take a couple of years to "unwind." Whatever.

General Motors Co.’s Opel unit is paring back the hours of German factory workers in a move aimed at blunting the impact of Brexit and breaking even in Europe for the first time in nearly two decades.

GM is scaling back work at two Opel assembly plants in Germany that make models popular in the U.K. Auto makers have said the U.K.’s decision to leave the European Union could result in currency headwinds and weaker British demand for light vehicles, potentially slowing momentum in Europe’s healthy auto market.

The Detroit auto maker’s European unit had been on track to end a long streak of financial losses in the region before the Brexit vote. Last month, however, GM executives have said softer vehicle sales and the negative effect of a weaker British pound could result in a $400 million hit in the second half of the year, endangering the break-even goal.

One wonders if there might not be more to the story, more to the decision-making process. But blame it on the bossa nova.


Blame It On The Bossa Nova, Eydie Gorme