GM to shut most US plants during summer

[garyd]

How the hell do you know if you are buying American any more? Toyota makes more cars here than they do in Japan. Half the parts in a Chevy, Ford, or Chrysler product are made overseas.

 

[Zoomie1980]

The parts workers, with only Ford left standing, not going to hold. You can wish all you want, those jobs are going overseas.

GM is going nowhere. Bankruptcy cp 11 is merely a reorganization, not a "going out of business" act. In fact, GM will continue operations throughout the entire process and the workers still employed will continue earning their wages. There will be new union contracts brought mostly in line with what Toyota and BMW are paying in Tenn and S. Carolina and they will divest themselves of their pension obligations. The Feds may pick up some of the pension load, but much of it will simply be lost.

The only way those jobs go completely away is if GM gets in such bad shape it goes Chptr 7 (going out of business), which is not in the cards at all......

Shutting down for 7-9 weeks, w/o declaring bankruptcy, you think they are doing what?

They will be doing that whether or not they file Chp 11 on June 1, which is pretty much inevitable. GM and Chrysler will be filing chapter 11, not much they can do to avoid it. Most analysts fully believe it is the best thing that could possible happen for them and should have been the route taken back in December, as they'd be done with it, under new management, with all new labor contracts and the whole thing would already be behind us by now.

People need to come to grips with the fact the American Automobile industry of the last 80 years is gone forever. It will NEVER be the same type of business it was, not ever. It's simply the way it is.

 

[foggedinn]

If GM and Chrysler file Chap, 11, they will effectively disappear as major car manufacturers. If they manage to survive at all (and that's a big if), they will end up as niche players.

The reasoning that Chap. 11 is the best thing that could happen to them doesn't take the current economic envirnment into consideration. Perhaps thirty years ago the reasoning would be valid. Not today. Once they file, their gone. It may take five years for them to stop moving completely, but once they file, their dead.

 

[del]

If GM Goes Bankrupt, Obama can expect to be a one term president.

They have a plan, it includes the banks, natch:

GM Is Becoming a Royal Debacle - WSJ.com

APRIL 22, 2009
GM Is Becoming a Royal Debacle
By HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR.

It's good to be the king -- until you start tripping over your own robe.

So King Barack the Mild is finding as he tries to dictate the terms of what amounts to an out-of-court bankruptcy for Chrysler and GM. He wants Chrysler's secured lenders to give up their right to nearly full recovery in a bankruptcy in return for 15 cents on the dollar. They'd be crazy to do so, of course, except that these banks also happen to be beholden to the administration for TARP money.

Wasn't TARP supposed to be about restoring a healthy banking system? Isn't that a tad inconsistent with banks just voluntarily relinquishing valuable claims on borrowers? Don't ask....

They've already seen that the rights and privileges of shareholders are not worth diddly when the king is throwing his prerogatives around. He dispensed with the services of GM chief Rick Wagoner, though the king owned not a single share of GM stock at the time. His minions communicated the king's pleasure that GM consider discontinuing its GMC brand, maker of pickups and SUVs that offendeth the royal eye -- though these vehicles earn GM's fattest profit margins.

His minions haven't asked GM to give up the Chevy Volt, even after determining it will be a profitless black hole, because of the king's fondness for green.

No wonder the king's mediation of 40 years of stalemated labor and business issues in the auto sector isn't going so well. There's a reason royal discretion has long been outmoded as a way to run an economy: Things just work better if a realm's subjects are left to resolve their own disputes and interests through the impersonal mechanism of the markets and the law.

His current bailout strategy amounts to asking thousands of bondholders and GM retirees to buy stock in a GM that the king's own policies mean they'd be loony to buy. Add the fact that passenger cars and trucks in the U.S. are a trivial source of greenhouse gases in any case -- they could all become carbonless and it would be irrelevant in the face of China's and India's coal use. King Barack has only been on his throne for three months. His policies already have devolved into savage incoherence....

Wow, and people laugh when I suggest the Murdoch Street Journal isn't "fair and balanced".

pssst. opinion pieces are supposed to be, wait for it........














opinionated.