"THAT'LL BE 9 BILLION...THANKS AND HAVE A GOOD DAY"

Reports indicate that DaimlerChrysler has received offers of up to $9 billion with a b for their Chrysler arm. Any cheque with 9 zeros on the end of it sounds good enough for me, whether its from Magna or General Motors.

But oh must it sting. When Jurgen Schrempp orchestrated the 'merger of equals', the cost for acquiring the Chrysler Group was approximately $40 billion in 1998. With inflation, that works out to about $48,000,000,000. I'm not a mortgage specialist, but if that's your house aren't you really, really, really upset?

Let's take a look.

Purchase price - $40,000,000,000
Profits made (9 years) - don't laugh
Selling price - $9,000,000,000

It seemeth to me that what we have here is a loss of billions of dollars. $31 billion. Put that in perspective: If Mercedes-Benz had gained $31B and handed out freebies to every individual in the world, we'd all get a few bucks.