Monday, March 15, 2010
Business / Economy / Politics / Autos
Daniel Howes is business columnist and associate business editor of The Detroit News. His column runs Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. From 1999 to January 2003, he was based in Germany as The News' European correspondent and automotive columnist, reporting from more than 20 countries on three continents. Before heading to Europe, Howes was senior automotive writer and an investigative and projects reporter on the business desk. He came to Detroit in 1993 from The Roanoke Times in Virginia, where he covered business, politics and higher education. He can be reached at dchowes@detnews.com or through his blog.
More on Daniel Howes
- On media: He is a regular contributor to the Paul W. Smith Show on NewsTalk 760-WJR in Detroit. He appears often on radio and television locally, in the United States and overseas.
- On education: He holds a bachelor's degree in history from the College of Wooster in Ohio, and a master's in international affairs from Columbia University.
- On awards: Winner of multiple International Wheel Awards for column writing; a four-time winner of Northwestern University's Medill award for general markets coverage; and a three-time finalist for the prestigious Gerald Loeb Awards, including an honorable mention for commentary in 2007.
Podcasts
- On the UAW-GM tentative deal
- Why the Chrysler sale means merger was a failure
- Commentary on the return of Ford's Taurus
- On whether Chrysler is a better or worse company than it was nine years ago
- On The President's meeting with CEOs from the U.S. automakers
Resources
- Detroit Renaissance: Structural Reform Agenda (PDF)
- Road to Renaissance Report (PDF)
- University of Michigan Economic Outlook (PDF)
- Michigan Future Inc.: New Agenda for a New Michigan (PDF)
- U-M's Millenium Project: Roadmap to Michigan's Future
- Brookings Institution study: The Vital Center (PDF)
- Michigan Emergency Fiscal Memo
Blog: Business / The Economy / Politics
Wanna know why Michigan education's a mess? Look at the news
Who needs fiction when you have public education in Michigan? Exhibit No. 1: The president of the Detroit Board of Education, the very same body mounting a legal … Continued
- MI's chief Dem, Lansing wanna-be spar over dissing Toyota
- BHO's health summit showcases best, worst of Washington
- In Toyota recall, it can't be about cars when it can be politics
- Germany's gambit to save Greece tests limits of euro dream
- Amid fiscal crisis, Bing trafficks in hyperbole, hollow threats
- Toyota's expanding recall mess goes from global to cultural ...
- More in Daniel Howes' Blog
- Join the discussion in Daniel Howes' Forum
The Howes Blog Roll
More in The Detroit News blogs
Washington Bureau Blog
Deb Price: Rep. Dave Camp, R-Midland, will be one of three House Republicans on the president's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.
Camp, the ranking … Continued
Autos: Scott Burgess' Blog
Scott Burgess: In case you weren't up late on Saturday, you may have missed this particular commercial that is for Ford Motor Co. and it's all about Toyota.
Enjoy.
… Continued
Nolan Finley's Blog
Nolan Finley: Detroit's new City Council members haven't shaken off all of the peculiarities of the old body, which was notorious for weighing in on the side of leftists on national … Continued
Toyota changes must last
Don Esmond, one of Toyota Motor Corp.'s top sales execs in the United States, sounds like a man who's just got religion. - 03/12/2010
Money fueled evil in Detroit
Money is the reason Monica Conyers, the former City Council president, is headed for 37 months in a federal prison, convicted of taking bribes from Synagro Technologies Inc. in exchange for her vote. She wanted more of it, her "loot." - 03/11/2010
Toyota flexes its muscles to defend reputation
As much as many may quietly relish Toyota's troubles, the fact is that the Japanese juggernaut has the resources to launch the kind of incentive war Detroit cannot easily afford to play. - 03/09/2010
Old deal crumbles in fiscal crisis
The real Grand Bargain is dead. No, not the proposed trade-off that Gov. Granholm is seeking with Senate Republicans to balance Michigan's chronically underfunded budget with targeted structural reforms and extending the state sales tax to services. - 03/05/2010
GM's Whitacre not finished cleaning house
Three months into the era of Big Ed Whitacre and this much is clear about his General Motors Co.: Change isn't coming fast enough for the retired telecom exec-turned-auto CEO or for GM's active board of directors. - 03/04/2010
Dillon puts brakes on GOP plan
Speaker Andy Dillon's official bid to seek the Democratic nomination to succeed Gov. Jennifer Granholm is the kind of threat from the left that the warring GOP candidates need least -- a business-minded Democrat with statewide name recognition challenging their allegedly clear path to power. - 03/02/2010
Granholm needs to call budget summit
Time to call everyone's bluff, governor. Borrow a riff from President Barack Obama and call a budget summit that would put you, Speaker Andy Dillon, Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop and the leadership in both houses of the Legislature around a big table to break the logjam that is hurtling the Big Mitten closer to a fiscal abyss. - 02/26/2010
Toyota executives' testimony comes off as clueless
Akio Toyoda's story doesn't add up. The president of Toyota Motor Corp. told a congressional committee Wednesday that he didn't know about mounting sudden-acceleration complaints with Toyota vehicles until late last year. - 02/25/2010
U.S. officials may share hot seat with Toyota
The hot seats at the congressional grillings of Toyota Motor Corp. brass, set to begin today on Capitol Hill, aren't just reserved for the Japanese automaker's executives. - 02/23/2010
People in power have trouble seeing solutions
The problem with blue-ribbon commissions given grandiose charges -- such as President Barack Obama's panel to find ways to reduce the national debt, introduced Thursday -- is that they can be ignored. - 02/19/2010
Toyota's no-show CEO loses credibility
Congress, wanting to know what Toyota knew and when, has scheduled hearings. Yet the CEO whose name is on the building, Akio Toyoda, reiterated again Wednesday in Japan that he has no plans to testify to Congress. - 02/18/2010
Granholm's budget could extend Michigan's 'Lost Decade'
Don't know if Gov. Jennifer Granholm is much of a baseball fan, but one look at the final piece of her three-act budget roll-out -- and the reaction to it -- evokes the legendary Yankees catcher, Yogi Berra: - 02/12/2010
More dirty politics not what Michigan voters need
The Republicans who would be governor of Michigan are locked in ugly internecine warfare -- six months before a primary to pick the nominee -- and I can't stop thinking about Mark Brewer. - 02/11/2010
Toyota's ties to Congress face their first big test
We're about to see who Toyota's friends really are. For the better part of two decades, the Japanese automaker used its steady U.S. expansion and sterling quality reputation to woo new allies in Washington and state capitals around the country. - 02/09/2010
Toyota finds it's mortal after all
Recent gaffes make Toyota the mortal maker of cars and trucks that have problems (its people have trouble acknowledging) instead of an invincible clarion of the future. - 02/05/2010
Toyota struggles to stop runaway crisis
Remarkable doesn't begin to describe what's happening to Toyota. Its reputation for delivering safe, reliable, quality-engineered vehicles is in tatters. - 02/04/2010
Granholm finally shows her muscle
The biggest problem with Gov. Jennifer Granholm's reform package, under assault by labor groups before she even unveils it Wednesday in her final State-of-the-State address, isn't that it avoids the dicey subject of taxes. - 02/02/2010
Delphi retirees lose out
Next week, the federal government's pension agency is set to begin paying sharply reduced benefits to thousands of salaried retirees from the former Delphi Corp. The check stubs likely won't have the word "travesty" or "discrimination" printed on them, but they should. - 01/29/2010
Toyota missteps give rivals a leg up
Toyota's recall crack-up is more than a crushing blow to the Japanese automaker's sterling reputation for quality. It spells opportunity for Detroit. - 01/28/2010
As CEO, Whitacre may bring stability to General Motors
GM's third CEO in less than a year is a Texas telecom retiree who says he's "sort of learning" the car business and will be commuting to his job atop Detroit's Renaissance Center. - 01/26/2010
Bash big business at a price
At some point, the business bashing from Washington will end, exhausted and spent by the pressures of reality, popular frustration and an incumbent's instinct for political survival. - 01/22/2010
As Massachusetts voters speak, Lansing leaders should listen
Hey Lansing: The electoral aftershock from the special U.S. Senate election in Massachusetts sends a clear message to those of you in search of higher office or rescuing a legacy: Ignore the basic economic worries of folks at your peril. - 01/21/2010
Bing must put actions behind words
A new tone at City Hall may be refreshing, necessary to steering Detroit out of a ditch deepened by its own digging. But it's not sufficient without action. - 01/19/2010
New life for dead industry
On the back wall of my office cubicle hangs a front page from the New York Post of Dec. 5, 2008. "Rust in Peace," it says, attributing the sentiment with the words "Bush to Detroit." - 01/15/2010
UAW boss challenges Toyota plant closing
When I stopped Ron Gettelfinger on the auto show floor this week, I figured the union president might gush about Ford Motor Co.'s award sweep or the fact that General Motors Co. is showing signs of sustainable life. - 01/14/2010
