This also comes on the heels of DoJ's memo saying that they were going to criminally prosecute individuals within the next corporate rule breaker. I don't know if this was an open investigation prior to that memo, but it seems like a really good test case, because unlike Toyota's and GM's recent suits, which were bad but still sins of omission, this is definitely 100% a sin of commission, and really fuckin' depraved on at that. I can't imagine that this doesn't go all to the way to a c-suite of some sort. You can't, nor would you even try to, pull something like this if your bonus doesn't depend on it directly. It also is a really good reminder of Occam's razor. No one else in the industry could ever figure out how VW got those power numbers with those emission numbers at that price. It looked like magic. It's too obvious to think fraud and has too much hubris. But in the end, it always remained the most likely explanation and seems obvious now in retrospect.
It'll be really interesting to see how this whole thing is handled. On the one hand, VW is a foreign company. A huge hit to them won't be a huge hit to American jobs like it would if this were GM. They're big, but they're not too big and local to punish, if that makes sense. On the other hand though, Germany is strong diplomatic ally to the US Government and probably a pretty strong trading partner to boot. It wouldn't be hard to imagine the German government encouraging The US to go easy on them, if not openly then at least behind closed doors.
Euro concerns led to the Fed not pushing interest rates last week. Meanwhile, as I mentioned earlier, the Euro is rippin' weak right now giving Europe a potent trade advantage. Remind me - how old were you when Toshiba sold electronics to the Soviet Navy? There were congressmen smashing boom boxes with sledge hammers. Expect some epic pageantry.
I think we are gonna be in for a hell of a ride. Seeing as how Autoblog and The Truth About Cars are two of my mainstay blogs, I think I'll get a pretty good view of the action too. I'll try to refrain from inundating Hubski with posts on the subject. ;)Expect some epic pageantry.