Why are Mercedes cars so expensive?

DaimlerChrysler moved to undo the most expensive and one of the least successful mergers in auto industry history Monday as it agreed to essentially pay to dump the money-losing Chrysler unit which it paid $37 billion for nine years ago. DaimlerChrysler (Charts) announced it will sell an 80 percent stake in its U.S. brand to Cerberus Capital Management, a private equity investment firm that will pay $7.4 billion. But the German automaker, which will be renamed simply Daimler, will not actually get most of the money that Cerberus is paying for the once proud automaker. Instead Cerberus will contribute $5 billion to the Chrysler auto operations it will now control, with just over another $1 billion going to Chrysler's finance arm. While Daimler will receive the remaining $1.4 billion of Cerberus' capital contribution to the sale, Daimler expects to have to cover another $1.6 billion in Chrysler losses before the deal closes. So Daimler estimates that it will end up paying out about $650 million to close the deal, and that its earnings for 2007 will take a $4 billion to $5.4 billion profit hit due to charges related to the transaction.

I am in favour of giving development aid to poor countries, but am not sure that the US qualifies......