Bailing out GM vs. Banks

[saveliberty]

US operations for GM are currently very profitable. It is results in Europe that are dragging them down. Its the economy people. Liberals have messed it up globally.

 

[iamwhatiseem]

yup...creative destruction.


and not every co. does or is meant to or should survive 100 years.....I read somewhere that there were only 45 older than 40 years.....whats that say?

(My emphasis)
What does it say? It says there has to be losers before there can be winners.
When no one loses - no one wins.

 

[saveliberty]

yup...creative destruction.


and not every co. does or is meant to or should survive 100 years.....I read somewhere that there were only 45 older than 40 years.....whats that say?

(My emphasis)
What does it say? It says there has to be losers before there can be winners.
When no one loses - no one wins.

It tells me technology, productivity, global markets and marketing have changed companies and their ability to compete.

 

[Underhill]

The other part of this equation that everyone is ignoring is the competition. Virtually every auto company in the world gets either direct or indirect subsidies from their governments.

It also helps that while GM and Ford have huge legacy cost, most of the other automakers who build cars here have relatively new plants with a younger workforce. Honda was the first here with a plant in 1982. Toyota opened it's first plant here in 1988. Most were built in the 90's.

That means there average worker is younger, and more importantly, the number of retirees they have on the roles is much smaller in this country.

So why is it surprising that the US automakers are struggling to compete?

 

[saveliberty]

Domestic automakers HAVE been making a better product than most of what is here from overseas now. The old mindset just hasn't caught up yet.

 

[PaulS1950]

yup...creative destruction.


and not every co. does or is meant to or should survive 100 years.....I read somewhere that there were only 45 older than 40 years.....whats that say?

(My emphasis)
What does it say? It says there has to be losers before there can be winners.
When no one loses - no one wins.

I find it very difficult to believe that there are only 45 companies more than 40 years old when there is a hardware store in Seattle that is over 60 years old, a burger place that is over 60 years old and several restaurants that are over 50 years old. I would like to see what it was that you "read somewhere".

Amway, Tupperware, Mitchell fishing gear, Eagle Claw hooks, Remington, Singer, and on and on have all been in business since before the 1950s.

 

[Mad Scientist]

Used to be foreign businesses had to pay Tariffs to enter the US Market place and America was awash in Money!

Now you have "Free Trade Agreements", "Income Tax" and a declining Society.

Gee I wonder how that happened?

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

It's all welfare for the rich & poor by screwing the middle class makers & job creators.

All our business are being sabotaged by the big government business cronies. We have to subsidize them as they use political loopholes to undermine ours. The big banks got a huge bail-out & have left us holding the bag for $2.2 Trillion that they will never re-pay even though they say they paid us back. Even after the Big Bank bail-out the 18 biggest banks get a constant $83 billion a year welfare subsidy. The rest of the banks got no subsidy or bail-out & 475 of them have failed in this country since 2007. We are also forced through the tax code to subsidize the rich making over $2 million a year.

Bailing out the UAW was also a stupid idea. Having a unionized export manufacturer spells doom. Unions are only useful in import business like dock workers & import big box retail stores.

The big banks got a huge bail-out & have left us holding the bag for $2.2 Trillion that they will never re-pay even though they say they paid us back.

The banks say they paid back TARP, the Treasury says they paid back TARP, where's any proof they didn't?

The banks paid back the short term loans from the Fed, the Fed agrees, where's any proof they didn't?

the 18 biggest banks get a constant $83 billion a year welfare subsidy.

Thanks for the link, but that's a silly claim as well.

Kenichi Ueda of the IMF and Beatrice Weder Di Mauro of the University of Mainz -- estimated that as of 2009 the expectation of government support was shaving about 0.8 percentage point off large banks’ borrowing costs.

Government support of the banks, TARP, was profitable for the Treasury.
Government support of Fannie and Freddie, run into the ground by liberal Dems, has cost us more than $100 billion, so far, that we'll never recover.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

I'm often puzzled by those on the left. For example, those on the Occupy Wall Street side wish to destroy corporate America but favor larger governemnt. What do they want, do they want to destroy them so that the government can bail them out again?

Then there is GM. Everyone on the left supports bailing out GM, however, when you talk about bailing out the banks it makes their blood boil.

Why?

Trillions of dollars in welfare to wealthy bankers that didn't save any jobs vs a few billion in loans that saved millions of jobs.

TARP loans to banks that were repaid, at a profit to the Treasury, versus "loans" to GM and GMAC that will cost taxpayers billions, because they'll never be repaid.

 

[Listening]

A bump for this thread since it has come up again.

I see two discussions.

One on the philosophical side.

The other on the pragmatic side.

I would have let GM go under, been broken up or resold.

You don't make and sell as many cars as they do and have demand fall off. Somebody would have made those cars.