How Much of this "Success" Can We the Taxpayers Take?
Last week we cataloged how much General Motors (GM) likes firing people.
As we pointed out, 2009 was not a good year if you were a Republican-donating GM or Chrysler dealer.
(M)ultiple dealers who have been closed are found to have contributed millions to Republicans and mere hundreds to Obama….
“It became clear to us that Chrysler does not see the wisdom of terminating 25 percent of its dealers. It really wasn’t Chrysler’s decision. They are under enormous pressure from the President (Obama)’s automotive task force,” said attorney Leonard Bellavia.
The $82 billion automotive bailout was supposed to “create or save” American jobs. But this Republican hunt killed 100,000 gigs right out of the gate.
And Europe has (again) become a GM employee graveyard.
GM intends to shed another 500 managers in Europe, adding to the 8,000 factory workers let go over the past three years as part of a massive though only modestly successful push to cut costs.
GM is serially throwing people over the side in part as a personnel bailing of the sinking ship. But it appears the Bad Ship Bailout is going down even faster than we knew – or they can address.
Sit back and take in the additional cavalcades of terrible Government Motors news.
Dan Akerson Runs GM With A Tight Fist, But Appears To Be Losing His Grip
Series Of High Level Executions Paint A Picture Of GM in Turmoil
Two weeks ago, Opel chief Karl-Friedrich Stracke presented numbers to Dan Akerson. Akerson fires him. Opel gets two interim chiefs in a week. Last Thursday, Opel’s new design chief Dave Lyon doesn’t even start his job….A day later, global marketing chief Joel Ewanick suddenly leaves. Instead of wishing him all the best for his future endeavors, GM spokesman Greg Martin puts a knife in Ewanick’s back: “He failed to meet the expectations the company has of an employee.”…
It all looks like (President Obama-appointee CEO) Dan Akerson is panicking. The GM stock is at an all-time low. GM is losing market share. When July numbers will be announced this week, GM won’t look so good, industry oracles say. Mass executions always are great to deflect criticism – for a while.
Speaking of that “all-time low” stock:
We are still stuck with 500+ million shares of the stuff. For us to break even, they must be sold at $53 per. They debuted post-bankruptcy at $33 per. They closed on Tuesday at $19.71 per. Setting us up for a nearly $17 billion loss – just on the stock.
Speaking of those “industry oracles”:
General Motors Faces Head Winds Ahead Of Q2 Report
For GM earnings, analysts forecast 74 cents per share, down 52% from a year ago.
Akerson…is getting impatient with the slow pace of GM’s revival.
“Earnings…down 52% from a year ago” isn’t a “slow pace revival.” It is a free fall implosion. Remind you of anything else?
U.S. Growth Falls to 1.5%; a Recovery Seems Mired
GM is “recovering” – like the entire Obama Economy is “recovering.”
Wait, wait, wait … according to their commercials, last year was GM’s best year ever. Why would they lie???
If the banks wrote off all your household debt, and a third party sugar daddy stepped in to fully fund your retirement with a gold plated pension and insurance plan, and then gave you $20 billion in spending money – you’d have had a pretty darn good year too.
Honestly they really have to tell Obama to stop shilling for the company. How many sales do they have to lose because that peacock has to go on and on about ‘his’ success in continuing the Bush policy of bailing out GM?
GM really needs new ideas. They’ve really got to hire some outside people with new ideas who are not reliant on the Obama people. That will never happen as long as the government owns the company (so it’ll never happen, the US gov’t will always continue to own GM).
Ben, as I recall (and as related by Wikipedia), the Bush involvement in the GM bailout was pretty much limited to a “bridge loan” in December, 2008, to avoid having GM go bankrupt over the holidays and before the new administration had time to determine a course of action. Minor point, except that the left is determined to obfuscate the bailouts and the Tarp program and blame all the subsequent problems on Bush.
ben h, you cracked me up. Right now I own a 2007 Chevy Tahoe and a 2000 GMC pickup. Both of them have well over 100,000 miles and have proven to be very good vehicles with few issues. I intended to buy a new Tahoe for my wife and a new Chevy Silverado for myself, and I still might. If Obama gets booted out of the WH, and GM goes through the legal bankrupcy process, I will be a buyer again. If Obama gets re-elected….I don’t want to contemplate such a thing.
Hey Mr. Knight. Here is a news flash. 100,000 miles on a modern auto is nothing. My last 3 cars (jeeps and a volvo) went well over 200,000 with only minor repairs.
Thanks for proving that PT Barnham was right. There really is a sucker born every minute.
John, I think Knight meant that he will not be a customer of GM in the foreseeable future. And that’s the point of the boycott that no one is talking about . I own a 06 Denali. Since 1980 I have bought a total of 8 GM cars. The Denali is my last and a lot of people I know are doing the same thing. I bought another car in 2011, it was a Mercedes.
Its the unions dragging down the company. US automakers will always need to deliver a skank version of the competitors car to pay for a lazy and innovation stiffeling workforce.
GM Channel Stuffing
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/latest-parabolic-chart-gm-channel-stuffing
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/channelstuffing.asp#axzz22OhiD5k7
“the New General Motors is using increased subprime lending to power its recent sales”
http://washingtonexaminer.com/watchdog-article-new-gms-turn-to-subprime-loans-could-mean-taxpayers-will-never-be-paid-back/article/2503516
This poster seems somehow appropriate
http://www.zazzle.com/airship_ballast_poster_16x20-228593802940046856
“Fungible” means one item of the group is indistinguishable from another — i.e. money, a quantity of identical bolts or washers. I think you meant “flexible.”
Other than that, good piece.
I love my Kia.
I love my non-union, American-made Hyundai.
And I just used “i.e.” instead of “e.g.” Ack!
Thank goodness the implosion could still be covered up until after Nov.
Btw, he’s tooting the Italian Chrysler now.
“I didn’t wreck GM! Somebody else made that happen!”
Yeah, they’re coming back baby!
Gotta say, I love my GM vehicles (2 Camaros, 1 Avalanche) – but the last one I purchased was a 2003 model.
Yes, they will last you a very long time if you perform at least basic maintenance.
However, I refuse to purchase one manufactured during the current Government Motors era. Plenty of aftermarket manufacturers out there too that can keep my supplied with any replacement parts I will ever need, so GM ain’t getting my money on service or repair work either.
I may consider a 2013 or later model if elections go the way I hope – and that Government Motors gets its collective head out of its nethermost body orifice and realizes that there are a majority of Americans out here who are not so enamored of the Union Label.
Otherwise, I may have to look at a Ford product in the coming decades as GM goes the way of Studebaker, American Motors, DeSoto, etc.
Good for you, Scott. I agree.
In fact I just got rid of my 205,000 mile Jeep Cherokee and bought a Ford Taraus.
It’s a great car, Consumer Reports gives it high marks for reliability it and was made without benefit of taxpayers money.
Replaced a Caddy with a Ford. Darn thing parks itself. Not buying Obama Motors products any more.
When the car market sneezes, GM gets a cold.
The entire new car business is slow, mirroring the economy in general.
I have 2 GMs, 1 Ford, and 1 Honda in the driveway; all daily drivers.
Our next car purchases will be the best value vehicles available for the task, regardless of source.
Say Good-bye to American Leyland, it’s fate will be the same as its British cousin –
done in by union intransigence, management myopia, and government interference.
GM should have reorganized under bankruptcy, and they should have dealt with their exorbitant union salaries and benefits. Systems were already in place.
Only Obama, the Great Uniter, could have made most Americans hate venerable old GM on its deathbed.
Communism, it does the body politic good. Well, until reality and close inspection set in.
One aside: the Chinese “glorious revolution” that had its 90th anniversary last year was the fall of the Qing Dynasty and the founding of the Republic of China by Sun Yat-sen. It’s usually called the Xinhai Revolution in China.
It wasn’t the Communist Revolution of 1949 that launched the People’s Republic.
(Not that GM China wouldn’t likely sponsor a movie about this too, but it’s always good to get facts out.)
Aren’t GM fortunes tied to Obama’s economic performance? GM Europe, is it not tied to Eurozone implosions? Or is it safe to say that GM stands out, alone as a loser in this economy?
Ticked off about the GM bailout? Fine. Rant. But don’t muddle the issue by divorcing the present economic conditions of the nation or Europe from this one company.
Being privvy to employee level internal communications, I will say that U.S. domestic profits have been good so far. In fact GM encouraged a company wide debate to peruse opinions about how best to use the profits. One option was to pay down the debt to the taxpayer. Unfortunately, that didn’t win out. Bad PR. But still, that occurred in a profitable environment.
First thing, don’t claim insider knowledge without sharing the sources for it. Until you do that then your “nothing to see here, move along” is less than worthless. For a company that in your mind at least, is doing well, there sure is a lot of management turmoil and airing of dirty laundry in public. Alos you forgot to mention how much of that success is due to the bending and outright breaking of laws and rules for the sole benefit of GM. The best example being the granting of huge tax loss carry-forwards that broke years of corporate tax precedents.
You maybe could have avoided detection as a troll if yo uhadn’t used the word rant too. That is a dead giveaway for your type.
In short, GM is failing and will need another bankruptcy soon. Management is incompetent and the unions are still corrupt. No one there has learned a thing and has kept the old GM arrogance and combined it with Democrat arrogance, a toxic combination.
http://pointsandfigures.com/2010/11/17/gm-ipo/; http://pointsandfigures.com/2010/11/17/who-is-buying-the-gm-ipo/
It’s worth revisiting sentiment back then. All I heard was how great this was. Suckers play.
Actually, it was the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Communist party in Shanghai. I was in Shanghai at the time; it was everywhere.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_China
The revolution overthrowing the Empire was in 1911. 2011 was the hundred year anniversary, not ninety year.
Oops – off by ten years – guess I should have clicked the link
Guess GM China _does_ sponsor movies celebrating Communists after all…
Until they stop blocking efforts to create jobs, every republican should be unemployed. Perhaps then they would “get it”.
I agree. The Republicans need to get to work repealing job-killing regulations NOW! For starters, they should abolish the EPA, and repeal Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank. The Repubs in the House already voted to repeal Obamacare, which is stopping so many small businesses from hiring, so the Democratic Senate needs to get to work on that one.
Sorry Jackson, but you are full of crap. Try reading something besides MoveOn.org and the NRT. The republicans are trying to stop obama from pissing away tacpayer money and trying to get the Marxist EPA back off on its onerous regulations.
I guess you are too ill informed to realize that Obama’s “saving” GM and Chrysler resulted in over 100,000 jobs lost in car dealerships that Obama closed down because they donated to the Republican Party. BTW, GM still owes 40-50K dollars to the taxpayers. …. Fool
The Republicans in the House have been very diligently passing bills to encourage employers, incentivize hiring, and reducing regulatory costs. They pass the bills – and the bills all promptly die on Harry Reid’s desk. (P.S. Harry Reid is a Democrat, in case you didn’t know that, and is of the same political party as President Obama. Senator Reid is also Majority Leader in the Senate, which means he controls the Senate agenda. You might want to look that up.)
The much-touted “do-nothing Congress” is actually a do-nothing, Democrat-controlled Senate. But Obama didn’t tell you that, so you probably didn’t know it. You really do need to broaden your reading list.
Smart move there. That’s right, destroy the productive sector of the economy and see how well that works. Go for it. You’ll get all those golden eggs as once!
There is a reason the prisons are full of Democrats.
Don’t forget that GM sales were inflated in June by the federal government boosting fleet purchases:
http://www.theblogmocracy.com/2012/07/07/gm-fleet-sales-to-the-government-up-79-in-june/
GM is probably faring worse than the numbers suggest.
“Hey Mr. president…We didn’t build GM as it is presently constituted.
Your Divine Comments please?
Its ironic that one point has been missed altogether, and that is even before the bailout money was given to GM, many knowledgeable people in the financial sector said that GM should be left to go under, because it had basicly left itself with no answers to ‘errors’ in judgement concerning thier trend in vehicle designs, the serious downturn in thier sales because of that, and the time it would take to come out with all new designs to suit the current markets. I also find it ironic that GM is still happily sacking ‘staff’ worldwide, outsourcing products/parts etc. As I see it, the CEO’s of GM should be charged with any number of crimes regarding the bailout money and failing every condition of taking it
Um, did you miss how GM is loading up on bad credit customers? Sub prime all over again.
I am curious as to what percentage of GMs total sales was purchases by the US government?
GM like the rest of America is on a downward spiral under Obama’s hand. The economy, GM stock is at an all time low, unemployment at GM and throughout America is at a ever increasing high and Obama has the gall to say “It’s working”. This plan of his that is working is killing everything in it’s path. The Chicago crime family has got to GO!!!! NOvember 5th, 2012 is taking out the trash day in America. Make America the once strong and proud Nation it was before Obamanation sunk it socialistic hooks into the country see the greatest defeat across the Nation with the most CONSERVATIVES in BOTH houses and the White House. Show the establishment DemoncRats and Republicans their NWO ways like them suck. NOvember, NObama, NObamney 2012
This story is now posted on our home page.
More on the history of the Gov’t Motors Takeover and Other Obama Crimes here: http://www.commieblaster.com/obamacrimes/
the a government is a joke kennedy said there were secret groups ready to subvered the USa and that is why kennedy and at least 12 people were assassinated and no one court wantx to get to the bottom of it cowards .
sounds like communism to me . these things that have been going on since eishower or roosvelt we are at the grease rail
ready to hit bottom and everyone acts like they dont know what the heck is going on. retards