After nine years as CEO and all of his career spent at GM, Wagoner was certainly in the wrong place at the wrong time, with higher oil prices bringing the death of SUVs and trucks, and foreign companies bringing in more competition and innovation.

Auto parts suppliers want $18.5 billion in guarantees for loans owed to them by GM and Chrysler. Auto dealers want $5 billion to $20 billion in loan guarantees so that they can finance their inventories. While Ford has said it doesn’t need federal help right now, it initially asked in December for $9 billion in loans and could re-submit the request.

Finally, the “Cash for Clunkers” tax credit, in which owners of inefficient vehicles more than 10 years old would receive a $10,000 tax credit for buying new efficient vehicles, is still floating around Congress is various guises after being stripped out of the stimulus package. The estimated cost to taxpayers is about $16 billion for the tax credit. Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland has trumpeted a proposal to allow car buyers to deduct interest from their auto loans on their taxes, which was also taken out of the stimulus bill in favor of a deduction for sales taxes on new car purchases. The auto industry has heavily backed these bills, believing that they would stimulate demand for new cars.

GM and Chrysler have made dire predictions for what might happen if they go into bankruptcy. They said that if they were unable to find loans or the government did not lend to them, the move could cost the federal government hundreds of billions of dollars in lost tax revenue. CNN’s xperts agree with this analysis, and say that a bankruptcy of the magnitude of GM’s has not ever occurred before.

Ford appears on a few automotive magazine covers next month, and although sales are still slipping badly as they are for all carmakers, Ford’s new line of products is garnering favor among early reviewers. Its Ford 150 pickup won 2009 Truck of the Year. This spring, the Ford Fusion hybrid will hit the market. Ford is refitting a Mexican assembly plant to produce a small car for the American market, the Ford Fiesta, and next year will create a line of small cars with a small delivery truck and electric car.

Forbes gushes about Ford’s CEO, Alan Mulally:

Let us not forget the contributions of Alan Mulally, Ford president and chief executive. This ex-Boeing executive may not have known the car industry but seems to have given Ford the stability, purpose, focus and common sense that had been lacking for years.

The negative side to all this good news for Ford is that the company is blowing through cash, its sales in Europe had been strong but are getting weaker, and because it already mortgaged all its assets for the massive credit line that has put it on more solid financial footing than GM and Chrysler, it has no way of gaining more credit after tapping its final $10 billion credit line. Stock prices are down, and of course auto sales are skyrocketing to unprecedented low levels.

Despite all this, Ford is better off right now than its Detroit rivals.

Should a couple of other Detroit icons go down–not that anyone wants them to fall–then Ford would be the last American standing, which could be an advantage.

In order to begin negotiations with Ford on the matter, the UAW required the Detroit company to enter negotiations with its bondholders for concessions. GM and Chrysler are required to undergo similar bondholder concession talks by terms of the federal bailout. With no bondholder talks yet, Ford can’t announce a set date for an end to the jobs bank; UAW allowed Ford to announce an agreement had been reached to settle concerns about the company. The UAW wants the bondholders to split a “shared sacrifice.”

The UAW has also asked for its own representation on the Ford board of directors, in exchange for the union agreeing to allow retiree pensions to be bonded through company stock rather than outright cash.

According to The Detroit News, Ford actually has little chance of succeeding at renegotiating debt with its bondholders, because it has little to offer those bondholders in return.

GM and Chrysler are required by the federal bailout to renegotiate terms on two-thirds of their debt obligations, a process they’re undergoing right now; if they are unable to settle on terms with their lenders, the companies would be unable to qualify for further bailout funds and will sink into bankruptcy. Ford cannnot threaten bondholders with the prospect of bankruptcy, since it is on more solid financial footing than either GM or Chrysler.

Insiders point out that Ford needs only to win small concessions to take to UAW President Ron Gettelfinger to in turn show its union workers that they’re not the only ones conceding terms.

Shelly Lombard, a Gimme Credit analyst, responds that bondholders have little reason to concede terms to Ford at this time; they could wait and see if the bonds decline in value, at which point in time Ford might ask for its own bailout from Washington, which would probably mandate (as with GM and Chrysler now) that Ford restructure the debt. Although bondholders might object to taxpayers receiving equity in the company and having to follow federal mandates in order to receive the bailout cash, Lombard says: “If I was a bondholder, I’d wait it out. There’s almost an incentive not do anything now.”

A Ford insider concludes: “Everything is trickier for us because we’re not doing this under the auspices of the federal government. But we still wouldn’t rather be GM.”

Lawson links to The Wall Street Journal, which details how the Big Three of Detroit have continued budgeting for federal lobbying expenditures while accepting federal bailout funds. As one example, General Motors (GM) spent $3.3 million on lobbying in the final quarter of 2008, a time when they also received over $13 billion in low-interest loans from the federal government in a bailout. GM spent $13.1 million total on lobbying Congress in 2008. That was less than they had spent in 2007 on federal lobbying, $14.3 million. GM spent a bit less on lobbying than Ford and Chrysler combined for the year.

The WSJ writes:

“‘Lobbying is the transparent and effective way that GM has its voice heard on critical policy issues…that companies should not be required to forfeit if they receive federal funding,’ said GM spokesman Greg A. Martin, who added that no funds lent from the Treasury would be used for lobbying.”

Lawson writes:

“Last year’s climactic payouts resulted from years of lobbying investment — considering the balance of funds received over the past several decades, annualized return is likely much less. However, in a year when traditional investments available to most Americans (including their shareholders) were severely damaged, lobbying as an investment strategy demonstrates excellent uncorrelated performance from the overall market.

Perhaps institutions who have diligently positioned themselves as ‘too big to fail’ could open up new hedge funds that would let sophisticated Americans invest in lobbying efforts for a direct claim on the funds received? Forget about even using those funds to run a business, let’s just set up alternative investments to see who can turn their lobbying prowess into cash as adroitly as possible. Come to think of it, perhaps that’s a better way to describe bondholders in these storied institutions.”

Ford urged the federal government to take a more proactive role in “incentivizing” new car sales, moves other countries have already done (France, for example, is paying cash to consumers who trade in old cars for new ones, and Brazil has lifted taxes on new vehicles).

What is Ford’s reasoning in asking for money for its competitors?

“It certainly helps Ford indirectly if the consumer can get some help and suppliers can get some help and, to some extent, it helps Ford if the industry as a whole starts doing better. It’s an interesting strategy, because we’re not 100 percent convinced that they won’t need money at some point in time.” –Auto analyst Rebecca Lindland of IHS Global Insight

Ford cut 1,200 jobs at Ford Credit and negotiated an end to the United Auto Workers’ “Jobs Bank” program, which provided laid-off workers whose plants have closed with 90% of their previous salary for life. The move affected 1,500 union workers. GM and Chrysler, which were mandated by the federal government as part of their bailout conditions to seek significant concessions from UAW (including the end of the Jobs Bank program), had already ended their own such programs. Ford, while not bound by the federal bailout terms like GM and Chrysler, said it still hopes to gain the same concessions from the UAW.

Honda announced today that it experienced a 90% drop in revenues for the third quarter of 2008. Honda’s December car sales fell 35% in addition to its 90% third-quarter downturn.

Ford, meanwhile, suffered its worst loss in company history– posting a record loss of $14.6 billion on all of 2008 and losing $5.9 billion in just the fourth quarter. The company went through $19.5 billion in cash for the year. This represented a 20% decline in revenues for the company that Henry Ford started at the beginning of last century.

Despite losing $21 billion in cash reserves, Ford still has more than $13 billion in cash reserves, but it lost $800 million in cash when Lehman Brothers collapsed last year. As a result of its 2008 losses, Ford announced that it would draw the last of its credit line– $10.1 billion– to keep as cash reserves as the economy grows worse. Ford has benefited from a late 2006 decision to take a mortgage and use its credit reserves before the credit markets dried up in the 2008 economic downturn.

Ford’s CEO, Alan Mulally, said that Ford was on a “very different path” than its crosstown rivals GM and Chrysler, which resorted to federal bailout funds due to dwindling cash reserves. According to Mulally, Ford dealerships have reported to headquarters that shopping customers felt they could have more confidence in Ford, compared to other American automakers.

Ford originally joined with its fellow Detroit companies GM and Chrysler to ask for $34 billion in loans, but changed its mind and believes not taking loans is a “marketing advantage.” Despite dire predictions for markets in South America and Europe, and little better predicted 2009 sales in Asia, Mulally asserts that Ford will become profitable by 2011.

Lewenza said that he hoped incoming American President Barack Obama would rescind requirements that the auto companies cut wages and benefits when Obama takes office on January 20th.

Lewenza stated:

“I’m hoping on Jan. 20 president-elect Obama will recognize that the challenges in the auto industry aren’t the result of collective bargaining issues. It’s a global financial crisis, it’s market conditions. The wage rates that the UAW have are competitive.”

Mark Meldrum of the University of Windsor in Canada pointed out that UAW workers’ jobs require few skills and those workers will probably see pay cuts of $10 an hour: “They will be paid what they’re worth.”

The CAW split off from the UAW in 1985.

Meanwhile, a friend (a longtime Democrat) tells me that he never thought that “Senate Republicans” would be his heroes, but they are today.