The private entrepreneur who is the heart of our system today will continue in the future. I don't think that's going to change. But there is obviously going to be a major change in a number of the parts of distribution.
It's a good quarter. Good progress. We're not at a level yet in the automotive business that we're pleased with, so we have a lot of work to do. But we had another record quarter in financial services and a record year.
This is our 11th quarter of year-to-year improvement in our earnings. For the auto business, that's a pretty good track record.
Probably by the end of the year, you'll see a charge. We are working on the program. It will happen.
We'll probably continue to lose money, primarily because the industry is going to be weaker this year than last year, ... We don't think the economy has bottomed out yet.
The cost reductions we've looked at are very tough to achieve. We're not doing it by cutting and slashing the business. We're growing it, doing the right things strategically and we're still getting the cost out.
In South America we're going in the wrong direction.
It's nice to be above expectations, but we're certainly not pleased with the overall results. They're not acceptable results in our view. We have a lot more to do.
Certainly the first quarter was better than anybody expected, but we're still looking for a very good year, ... The consumer is king right now and we're going to take advantage of that.
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