Ford Motor Co.’s management and board are staring down their shareholders, much as they stared down the UAW -- and for exactly the same reasons. The question is how long they’ll get away with it. Ford has enjoyed a spate of good news over the past two weeks. The UAW ratified a contract that will raise Ford’s structural costs only 1 percent a year over its four-year duration. Standard & Poor’s raised Ford’s credit rating two notches to just below investment grade. And yesterday the automaker posted its ninth straight quarter of pretax operating profits, and 10th of net profits.
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