Automakers Form Suicide Pact

DETROIT — The chief executives from Ford, GM and Chrysler, fresh from groveling to Congress to bail their respective firms out from under their mismanagement and poor judgment, have issued a statement today outlining plans for their joint suicide. Should any of the Big Three automakers be unable to repay the billions of dollars they are requesting from the federal government, all three CEOs have vowed to kill themselves.

“If we can’t turn this thing around with this much money,” said GM chief Rick Wagoner, “we’ve all pretty much agreed that our only option is to rid the world of our pathetic lives.”

“We’re in this together,” added Ford’s Alan Mulally.  “If Rick turns his company around, but Bob and I can’t: we kill ourselves. If GM and Ford become profitable, but Chrysler goes under: we kill ourselves.”

Chrysler chief executive Bob Nardelli agreed. “It makes it a level playing field,” he said. “We all have equal incentives to succeed.”

Each of the executives has proposed a different method to do himself in.  Mulally has chosen to drive one of his own company’s vehicles in extreme weather conditions.  “It’ll probably be a 2007 Ford Focus,” he said, “which received a poor side-impact rating from Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and boasts a ‘substantially worse-than-average frequency of injury claims filed.'” 

Mulally said driving the Focus in upstate Minnesota in the winter would mean certain death.  “Live by the Ford; die by the Ford,” he joked.

Nardelli’s plan is to walk into a meeting of the United Auto Workers and announce that everyone will be receiving raises, “and then tell them I’m just joking and they’re all out of a job.”

Wagoner wants to be bound in leather, stripped naked and taken to an S & M parlor in Tehran.

Representative Barney Frank, Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, responded enthusiastically to the proposal.  “This is the first solid, pragmatic course of action these guys have proposed yet,” he said. “I’m going to recommend to my colleagues that we move forward with the bailout.”

The Dow jumped over 900 points on news of the suicide pact.  “Investors are going crazy,” said one stockbroker.  “The potential deaths of these assholes has brought new hope to the markets.”

The Las Vegas gaming industry is also rebounding, as odds-makers predict the outcome of the pact.  “It’s a hundred-to-one they’ll all be dead within six months,” said a spokesperson for Caesar’s Palace. “We’re completely sold-out; eveyone wants a piece of the action.”

A TV commerical began airing today featuring all three CEOs telling consumers: “Buy our cars — or we’ll kill ourselves.”

Unfortunately, the commericial seemed to have the opposite effect.  After the spot aired, sales of American vehicles plummeted to an all-time low.