Bean counters rule, ok?

When I was cutting my teeth in this profession, I worked for seven years in New York for Reuters, the British news agency.

Like The Associated Press, Reuters is a wire service where speed and accuracy is of the essence. This especially applies to covering the day-to-day news on Wall Street which is where we junior reporters were thrown.

Among many directives hammered home by irascible editors was never to quote any analyst's projections beyond a few months on the grounds that it was wishful thinking. There are just too many variables.

As Scottish poet Robert Burns put it: "The best-laid plans of mice and men/often go awry."

So I was interested to read in a report prepared by an advisor to Chrysler which claimed the company is expected to make $3 billion in 1916. That's seven years in the future!

Indeed, Capstone Advisory Group projected losses and profits for every year, starting with a loss of $16.8 billion this year.

Thereafter, a loss of $4.7 billion in 2009; a loss of $900 million in 2010; a profit of $300 million in 2011; a profit of $100 million in 2012; a profit of $1.6 billion in 2013; a profit of $1.8 billion in 2014; a profit of $3.2 billion in 2015; and the $3 billion profit in 2016.

These numbers are apparently based on the assumption that the company emerges from bankruptcy in short order.

But what sense do they really make?

Less than a year ago, gas prices started on their infamous climb to $4 a gallon last July. That totally unanticipated development turned the entire auto industry on its head as consumers sought small cars - which Chrysler did not have.

Prices then fell back to $2 a gallon, but the so called Great Recession hit in the fall and consumers backed off buying cars altogether. Now both Chrysler and General Motors are fighting for their lives.

And all that happened in less than 12 months!

So I confess I take Capstone's Robert Manzo's findings with a pinch of salt. But who am I to question the findings of an accountant who earns between $570-$795 an hour!

At the same time, I do appreciate the fact that Manzo cited his findings as evidence that there was a "low likelihood" that Chrysler, which is part of secretive financier Stephen Feinberg's Cerberus Capital Management, will ever be able to pay back its government loans.

That is no doubt a relief to Feinberg and others involved in Cerberus, including former vice president Dan Quayle and J. Ezra Merkin who is currently facing charges associated with Bernie Madoff's billion-dollar Ponzi scheme.

I confess that I had no idea such neo-cons and free marketeers were so supportive of government involvement in the private sector.

Or is it the rattling of a stick in a swill bucket that brings them scuttling to the tenets of a mixed-market economy?

- Peter C.T. Elsworth