REF: By Bilejones, June 2 at 3:56 pm #

Your post about citizens the new owners of GM is a jewel. Not one voter bought a share of that shoddy, wicked organization. It was the king of a market-driven company and has failed for the same reason so many other USA market-driven (create the demand) corporations. RCA TVs, PCs, etc. are examples.

The politics of this nation have become the same. Sell the sizzle, nevermind the actual product, nevermind the actual service. Just sell the idea, no matter whether the product is frought with defects or the peanut butter contains a bit bacteria, just stimulate the f’ing economy. The wealth will just trickle down, magically!

If you can’t understand absolute loyalty to God, Mother and the American Dream, you just might be a commie or a terrorist. There are new laws being passed everyday to protect the good guys from your kind. You better get on board with Big Brother because things are moving pretty fast these days.

Here you go.  Michael Moore has written about this twice in a blog on HuffPo.  Robert Reich talked about this same solution for GM on Marketplace this week.  Does anybody else think this makes sense?  It certainly sounds like a dream come true to me, but I don’t live in Michigan and I have nothing to do with the car industry.  I drive an ‘87 VW Cabriolet and I have never bought American cars.  I can’t afford the “planned obsolescence” —although I have to admit, VW was doing that for a while, although my ‘76 Rabbit lasted 180,000 miles before the body gave out.  My little cabriolet is much better in that regard. 

Moore’s blog, if you’re interested: 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-moore/goodbye-gm_b_209603.html

People, especially compromised, short-sighted politicians, cannot see the connection between needed health care reform, retirement and the bankrupt auto companies.

With a one-payer health care system and government-sponsored retirement plans, the big three would not be in the position they are in today.

In fact, the amount of outsourcing, the loss of our manufacturing industry, the trade imbalance—many of our problems would have been milder if leadership had the balls and the foresight to provide one-payer health care, improved education, promotion of technology, and retirement plans that all Americans are entitled to.

I own a Ford Escape it’s a POS, like every other ford We’ve owned. A F-150 Diesel that couldn’t be serviced in Tahoe because they had no diesal mechanics in the area. I regret my buying that Damn Escape everytime I get in it.
We also own a Chevy Silverado- a 1000 times the Truck that shitty F-150 was. I also gave my daughter my 100,000+ Chevy Cavalier which weathered the MI Winters like a champ.
In fact I also owned a Chrysler Jeep- which I too gave later to my daughter at 115,000 miles. Awesome Vehicle.
So please don’t sing the glories of Ford to one who has owned at least 1 model from all the Big 3.
What I have yet to hear from those who poo-poo the idea of helping out GM is exactly what they wanted to see happen? What they forecasted the effects would be on an already devastated economy.
I am Thrilled We Saved GM, Are majority Owners with the UAW,and Canada as Co Owners!!
As for those who blame this automotive meltdown on the Obama admin and claim it will effect his ‘12 relection with the Rust Belt voters- they obviously have not lived in the Rust belt for the last 3 decades!Nor have the memory or cognitive abilities to comprehend the Term Rust Belt!
GM wil pick it self up, dust itself off as will the rest of US after 3 decades of Greed and corruption.
the Same people who are talking shit about this life line and the Obama Admin, are the same people who have been screwing the Midwest manufacturing base and the US economy since the ‘70’s!

“Build cars that people actually want to buy”.

Today that depends mostly on the price of gasoline.

And remember, “new models” were always the same model of last year in a new dress. The deception will continue.

A Cadillac anyone? What madness. I do not want one if one were given to me.

Nannie—thanks for link—-everyone should listen to it. Geithner and Summers, eh? What a (non) surprise.

B-b-b-ut—the working class only needs to make a couple more sacrifices and we’ll be back on the road to unregulated Capitalism!!

I dont think that most people know the effect this is having on the Rust Belt..

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/6/2/ralph_nader_and_labor_professor_harley

Ralph Nader and Labor Professor Harley Shaiken Discuss the Bankruptcy and Future of General Motors

..................
Nader is AWESOME as usual…

ref: kdelphi

Me, too!

KJ Ro,

The Solstice is a decent looking car.  The bigger problem is probably that it took GM so long to bring out the GXP.  The 177hp it originally came with turned into one of those cars that looks like a sports car but doesn’t act like one. (And it can’t have helped that the majority of US buyers probably paired that engine with an automatic transmission.)

Plus it’s too heavy by at least 500 lbs.

What most don’t know is that GM talked about selling off the automotive division of the company some years ago, only they couldn’t find a buyer.  That’s basically what’s happening now, only the Obama administration is talking about saving the “viable” portions…those being all the bits GM planned to keep when it sold the car business.

One of the reasons GM found itself in this spot (and, realistically, the reasons are myriad) is that it stopped being a manufacturing concern.  It was taken over by the internal bankers to a great degree.  The writing on the wall for both bankruptcies came during the first “bailout” ballywho when all the “journalists” were talking about private jets.

GMAC (the finance arm of the corporation and a big player in sub-prime mortgages) is half owned by Cerberus Capital, the private equity firm that bought Chrysler from Daimler.  GMAC petitioned for, and got, “bank holding company” status.  That staus allowed GMAC (and those private equity folks) to get in on the TARP funds.

That there would be a bankruptcy that gutted the automotive division was pretty well sealed when GMAC got TARP funds.

Whatever comes out of the restructuring in terms of automobile assembly will probably be lackluster and will fail with finality after enough time has passed to cushion the blow somewhat.

The Washington, Wall Street, and Media folks act as if they believe their own propaganda.  “This recession will go away if we just improve people’s attitudes.”  Huh?  People are mostly broke and cannot buy new cars.  Will GM be shocked when the $40,000 VOLT fails to sell?  Apparently so!  GM is going down and so is America.  Avoidable stupidity is the cause.

The LAST of my elderly neighbors , in this blue collar neighborhood, where I have lived for 15 yrs, just announced that he is being foreclosed. They will all be abandoned or rentals, or short term people looking to “move up”. What did I do to deserve this? They all played by the “capitalist rules”.

I want revenge.

REF: peterjkraus

You said it, buddy!

Not only bad leaders in industry, bad leadership in every segment of the USA. This leadership vacuum will likely lead to a dictator, eventually.

This is the natural culmination of a corporate culture that values only quarterly profit. Incompetent leadership of a once-great manufacturer comes up with the scheme of “planned obsolescence”, making the products it produces become unusable after a short period (and destroying any chance of its marque being bought for its reliability in the future), then it changes visuals in an annual cycle, making the proud owner of a “new” car the ashamed owner of an “old” car within twelve months, then it realizes that huge, expensive cars have a higher profit margin than do small, economical cars (duh!), so they build and build and build what buyers don’t want. Which forces the manufacturer to add dealerships, which will have to buy and finance ever larger inventories of those products which the market says should not have been built in the first place, thereby making individual dealers less profitable and therefore easier to control and dictate to. Cars must now be sold by tricks: factory rebates, “incentives” such as additional rebates by dealers, irrational pricing of trade-ins, which again lowers the dealer’s margin, “low” financing rates, leasing, and the ever active help of Madison Avenue, suggesting that only owning continually new cars of certain profitable types denotes the true successful patriot.

Workers are a buffer against inevitable market corrections. They can be forced to do almost anything, from agreeing to wage cuts and loss of benefits to mass firings (even here, the agreed-upon nomenclature is “layoff”, although layons are hardly in the plan), and when their loyalty and hard work has finally been repaid by the corporation caring not a whit for their well-being, the government must step in to save the company from its natural demise.

Here’s where Econ 101 should step in. Economic theory holds that a producer who is too dumb to produce must go out of business to let other, slightly more intelligent producers have a shot at the market. But Econ/Free Market theory/Capitalism only counts when defending abuses to enrich the abuser. In situations that would require bankruptcy courts to step in, our noble Capitalists become raving Socialists. Theirs is the life that must be saved. And it will. Politicians are people with needs, too. At almost a billion Dollars a pop for a good presidential campaign, politicians love donors.

Phew. The whole system, being corrupt through and through, will inevitably be replaced by a benign social democracy, like it or not (or, in most cases, know what a social democracy IS or not). There are 300+ million of us, of whom perhaps eight or ten million have a lot (of wealth) to lose. Which means the 290+ million of us have a lot to gain. It’s past time to think of ourselves again.

“Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

In 1968 the British Govt stepped in to save a flagging auto industry. They poured about 9 billion Pounds into that endeavor and failed abysmally, losing much of their investment.

UAW and the Democratic Party—-“for the People”
Did Obama & Co. even look at GM’s books before throwing money at mgmt and “asking” workers to give major concessions? NO. We gave Wall St more than $2 trillion—no questions asked.

How would the GOP have done this differently? And I should vote Dem, why??

14 more plants will close in Ohio, Indiana and Michigan. 100s of 1000s will lose jobs worldwide.

Obama kept saying he would NOT be making major decisons, for them—wtf not?! We bought the damn place! Doesnt anyone outside of the Rust Belt have a clue what this is doing to the Midwest, or do you just not care?

I am sure that they appreciated Obama’s thanks for their “patriotism”...what a load of crap. And, of course, “sacrificing for their children”—THEIR children (?!) will never be able to afford college now!!But those are not the “children” that the Parties care about!

Do you have any idea the type of concessions that older retires, had to make in pension and health care coverage? What are they supposed to do at 65 yrs old, “buy into the pool”???

White House has relies on the United Auto Workers to block any resistance by workers. The UAW—which emerged seventy years ago in the sit-down strikes against the exploitation of GM workers—has been complicit in returning auto workers to conditions not seen since the 1930s. In return for functioning as a corporate-government overseer,the overseers of this organization are receiving billions of dollars in shares and a 17 percent stake in the “New GM.”

“The transformation of the UAW into a business—whose material interests are antithetical to the “members” it claims to represent—is the outcome of decades of anti-socialism and support for the profit system..”

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jun2009/pers-j02.shtml

Gettlefinger needs to step down—he made $162,000 last year. If the workers werent like frogs in cold water that has been heated up by mgnmt and the UAW over the years, they might have the cajones to take over the business…

It shows that , while Obama and both parties respect Wall St’s bonus contracts, if youre working class, forget it!

I wont even talk about Hendrerson, who still makes $1.3 million a year, which is still a pittance , compared to what Wall St STILL makes..the Democrats are officially the party of Wall St.