There’s a reason buyers are on the sidelines

To the editor:

In your Friday article, "Nevadans not in buying mood," Tyler Corder, chief financial officer of Findlay Automotive Group says potential car buyers "read so much negative news that they're sitting on the sidelines. ... waiting to see what the economic news is like." As the Bard once said, methinks thou doth protest too much.

As an active new-vehicle shopper for the past several months, I have found that I am priced out of the quality new car market by high prices and nonexistent financing for the average Joe. So I started shopping for a similar low-mileage, near-new vehicle only to find that prices are going up -- some way up -- rather than down.

From my almost daily studies of vehicle availability and prices, it seems that it can cost nearly as much to buy a near-new quality vehicle as it does a new one -- if you can actually get financing.

So upward financial adjustments to near-new, low-mileage vehicles may have the unintended consequence of helping to keep the consumers Mr. Corder wants on the sidelines.

I know that's the effect it's had on me.

Guess I'll get old Betsy washed and tuned up. She's still a good ol' car.

Howard Balduc

LAS VEGAS

Governing by decree

To the editor:

What a surprise: The Obama administration has removed the chief executive officer of General Motors (Monday Review-Journal). Where federal money goes, so does control.

Politicians are now running a business. Need we say more?

And in the Review-Journal's Sunday Viewpoints section, Robert Kennedy Jr. says its a good thing that the president has suspended coal mining permits when a perfectly legal permit system already was operating ("Finally, hope in the mountains").

Of course Mr. Kennedy didn't note all the jobs that will be lost as a result of that decision. But don't worry, I'm sure that some government dole program will be developed. And guess who will pay?

Harvey Goldstein

LAS VEGAS

What ethics?

To the editor:

The latest developments in the Bob "give myself a pay raise" Loux scandal show, once again, that the use of the words "Nevada state government" and "ethics" in the same sentence is indeed an oxymoron.

Walter F. Wegst

LAS VEGAS