Volkswagen AG (VWAGY)

[ronk]

Affected (infected?) cars in the US is around 480,000 and the fines in the US have potential dollar amounts of up to $37,500. Most are claiming that the figure will not be nearly this high, but the disclaimer is that the company knew the emissions results would not meet standards in EU & US so they knew they were actively being fradulent by installing the chip; coupled with the number of cars affected worldwide which is said to be 11 million. So fines will vary from country.

The total estimated amount of $34.5 billion factors in the cost of recall, lawsuits, gov't fines and future loss of sales. However, I heard on NPR that some German economists equate this to the Greece economy collapse if the worst should happen. VW is such a huge part of their economy, a maximum penalty, I'd imagine, would mess with the Euro; that's how big this thing is. I would think there would be some mercy shown if only to keep people employed. But the governments will certainly use this as an opportunity to set an example to every other car manufacturer worldwide.

I was reading a Forbes article about it and they shared a link to a trefis chart, where you can flip year by year to see the projections of a worst case scenario.

http://www.trefis.com/modeldemo/admin/18204/cm3KD/VLKAYE

I just think there's a lot of dust to settle here.