Auto manufacturing shows signs of turning around

Economic news has been up and down for some time now. Mostly it's been down, but we occasionally see sparks that give us hope. One of those sparks is news that General Motors is turning a healthy profit this quarter. Chrysler and Ford are doing better, too. This is a wonderful story that we hope keeps going and going.

According to a New York Times story, Ford made more money in the first six months of this year than it has in the last five years combined. Chrysler is hiring new workers and G.M. is profitable and getting ready for a huge public stock offering.

It's too early to say all is well with U.S. automakers, but there are some promising signs that they've done necessary changes to become healthy again.

Strangely enough, GOP critics of Washington, D.C.'s bailout for the auto industry are keeping quiet, or trying to say it's too early to tell if this recovery. We agree, it's way too early to know if these profits are just a fluke or the beginning of something great. Several business experts believe this is a real change. We hope so.

These experts say that American automakers have cut employees, models that don't sell well and tossed many of those costly rebates they were using to sell cars. That's made the companies much more profitable.

Perhaps the most important thing these automakers have done is bring non-automotive CEOs in to change the direction of these companies. They are seeing inefficiencies that inside folks cannot. The sacred cows are being slaughtered and business is running better as a result. The gap between American autoworkers' pay compared to Japanese autoworkers has narrowed to just a few dollars.

We are excited to see that American automakers apparently have turned things around so quickly. We need our country to be makers of things, not just brokers. Auto manufacturing has been a huge part of our economy. It's not as big these days because foreign automakers account for more than half the cars sold here, but it's still large.

Let's hope this continues to improve, and not care a lick who gets credit for it. That doesn't matter. Putting people back to work and showing the world that American manufacturing can compete is what's most important.