GM To Taxpayers: Bail Us Out Or We'll Liquidate
With two weeks to go before the government deadline to approve GM's restructuring plan, the AP says that GM's CEO Rick "The Station" Wagoner told the press that if GM is allowed to go into bankruptcy, it will simply be liquidated.
Wagoner says restructuring out of court would accomplish 99 percent of what could be achieved in bankruptcy. But he says it wouldn't have the risk of scaring away customers or the huge expense of Chapter 11.
GM CEO says bankruptcy would cause liquidation [AP]
(Photo:alyates44)
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Let them liquidate. If we taxpayers wanted to pay this company they would have bought their cars.
It's been said a thousand times: If you can't keep yourself in business, you don't deserve to be in business. End of story.
time for GM to go the way of the dodo bird
If I wanted to pay someone to keep their job I'd have them actually work for me.
Nope, just pouring moneying into a bucket with a gaping hole in the bottom...
We need to let these "big" guys die off and be replaced smarter, more efficient companies - Survival of the fittest
Is it just me or does this seem like a playground fight....
Kid 1(GM): Let me play with your toy
Kid 2(Taxpayers): No it's my toy and I will do with it what I want
Kid 1(GM): Well if I can't play with it I'll just break it so no one can!
Let em fail and use the money it would take to bail them out (again) and use it to re-educate the laid-off workers so that they can find jobs in new, sustainable industries.
moneying... really? ugh
DO EEEEEEEEEEIT!
Bailing them out sounds like a bad idea because it uses tax payer money, but if you stop and think about the ripple effect that a car manufacturer shutting down would have, the chunk of money we would be sending them would be small.
If GM shuts down, all their part suppliers will likely shut down. If the part suppliers shut down, the raw material suppliers shut down. Not to mention all the car dealerships, aftermarket parts dealers, and the indirect loss of the income of these people helping to create economic growth.
This is like the Rex Banner episode of The Simpsons where ex-Chief Wiggum tried to rob Homer with a gun that was missing the trigger and most of its handle.
"Chief Wiggoner."
@waybaker: Right, but you are also ignoring the opportunity cost of giving them all that money. That can go into infrastructure, education, health care, reform. Nothing is free, and the trade-off in this case is too severe.
Why prop up an antiquated, inefficient, gaping money pit when you can give money to something that is effective and working instead?
@waybaker: That may be but the stance they are taking is wrong, have they made ANY of the changes that were requested of them to get the bailout money?
On the one hand, if they Liquidate lots of people will lose their jobs and the economy will plunge itself nose-first into the substrata for another 5-10 years.
On the other hand, if they Liquidate... CHEAP NEW CARS FOR A FEW MONTHS!
I'm torn.
I prefer a Keynesian approach. Bail them out this year because it keeps unemployment down and Keynes would suggest high government spending, then arrange a takeover by ford next year and let the companies profitable brands be re marketed and the crap brands be scraped. You'll lose 30,000-40,000 jobs maybe, but you won't see the effect ripple.
they'll liquidate, sell off the debt, then we'll say prove it and then we'll have free cars.
sounds like a plan to me.
na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, goooodbyeeeee.
This is supposed to be a free market society. These companies were allowed to drive us into debt with no hope a bailout. Now it's their turn to bail themselves out. It's time for some good old-fashioned Darwin economics.
@waybaker:
Why is North America (especially the US) in such a mess that the only company that is really supporting the raw materials suppliers and parts suppliers is GM?
Well, I know the answer for the raw materials suppliers: Protectionism. The US keeps using it and it keeps hurting the US in the long term as other countries tell you to keep your steel (and other materials) in your own buildings if you want to play it that way.
Let GM fail. Let the rest of the chain fail. They will rebuild the US government by lobbying them to stop this protectionism bullshit and the US will be better for it in the long run.
Or keep cutting yourselves off from the long term global trades market by protecting local business in the short term and let the rest of the world pass you by.
Just my 2 cents.
just kidding. it read it as GMAC, not actually GM.
Let them liquidate. Use that money we would have wasted bailing out GM and instead use it as govt. financing for Tesla to take over one of GM's plants and start making that mass production sedan they are talking about.
Use the rest of that money for enticements to get other businesses to operate something useful in GM's old factories. Wind generator manufacturing, solar panel manufacturing, battery manufacturing, other car companies. Do something to get those parts suppliers and employees first crack and working for these new companies.
GM can't fight their way out of a paper bag.
I think I speak for most taxpayers when I say,
FUCK GM.
But I like buying over priced low quality junk so some union jackass with a GED can make more than many university grads...and have better benefits.... Granted it is not the unions fault that management is retarded enough to allow the UAW to exploit the company...
GM has made decades of bad choices and has no real plan for the future. If they were a person, they could easily get elected Congress. Since they aren't they need to just pay for their actions. Enough rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
I don't think we have a choice but to let them fail. This is really horrible and will be really painful, but their brand image is so tainted by failure and they have done nothing research/development wise to save themselves. Bailing them out would just be delaying the inevitable. Of the big three, GM did the least to improve their image and quality of their vehicles. They instead kept trying to cut costs, trying to improve the margin on each vehicle. They wound up producing a whole lot of garbage.
Tapping Daewoo for their small car was just dumb. Daewoo's design and business had already been rejected in the U.S.
@k6richar:
That being said if the taxpayer is suppose to bail them out, they should all be given a GM made vehicle. Seems fair to me.
Allow Saturn to throw away its GM imposed chains and be the small efficient car line it could have been...
Viva Saturn...though it may be too late.
What a coincidence, the liquidators for Circuit City just cleared their schedule.
While I agree that a bailout would infact save the company would help the economic recovery of the nation, I cannot see the justification of saving a company that has so many times failed us in the past at either providing a decent vehicle or the continuation of producing cars that people cannot afford to drive. I site such cars as the Aveo and the Cobalt as examples of taking a good idea and cheapening it anyway possible. And this isn't just recent. About 15 years ago, my father bought a Chevrolet Cheyenne brand new. It wasn't but 4 years later did the radiator go out. My father had it replaced by Chevy 4 times before he took it to an independent mechanic who replaced the unit with a better radiator. That radiator lasted another 5 years before my dad traded the vehicle in for a minivan. Its things like that incident that leave a sour taste in my mouth about the brand.
If they want bailout money, they need to first show us that they are willing to put the customer first this time around.
I have read that around 1 in 10 jobs would simply dissappear if the domestic auto makers collapsed. Granted we are only talking about 1 domestic auto maker here but I am not sure we want another few percent surge in the unemployment rate right now.
That being said, I think they need to declare banruptcy so they can rid themselves of their unions and their crippling contracts, and start over. Foreign auto makers are able to make a profit assembling cars in this country and part of the reason for that is that their employees are more reasonably compensated for their work.
I don't think you all understand, they will be bailed out because if GM fails and it will unless kept on life support the Unions will be hurt and the Union Restructering is why they will be bailed out because the Unions basically are an arm of the Democratic Party
And the Lord Art God Obama will not let his Unions fail though they have destroyed Michagian and the rust belt as it's now known
Don't you threaten me, you top-heavy wasters of copious amounts of cash. Do it! Liquidate! I effin' dare you. Double, nay TRIPLE dog dare you. Then maybe some other, hopefully better-structured company can move in and take over.
The gall! The utter gall... Just get on with it!
Saturn is dead. And, it's soul died between 5 and 10 years ago.
wishes she could put in that comma she forgot. Right. Up. There. *inserts imaginary comma*
Let them liquidate. Whoever buys their assets would probably do a better job running them than GM does.
It's a bluff. I say stop bailing them out and make them make the hard decisions. People will buy their cars regardless, heck look at Chrysler. People have been buying their crap for years now knowing they are a weak company.
That won't solve anything. It will just create another "Too big to fail" company and we'll be back to square one in 10 years.
@bohemian:
That's not a bad idea. Or maybe give Honda and Toyota 20 billion each to woo them into uprooting their HQ to America. Even that would accomplish more than throwing good money after bad.
Taxpayer to Rick Wagoner: DIAF
@Naturefreak1985:
Who's asking to play with GM's toys these days?
If GM can't be run in such a way as to be profitable, GM should die. It's no different than Circuit City, Virgin Records, or any of the other companies that are going down. Liquidation is appropriate. Giving taxpayer money to a company that has proven itself unable to manage itself responsibly is not appropriate.
Is that a threat or a promise?
I hear Sepuku is all the rage these days.
@wgrune:
I wonder how many actual jobs would up and disappear as a result of this. Most large suppliers already outsource their work to China or Mexico.
I'm not sure *what* General Motors does to make money. I saw news footage from 1987 when Ford was disbursing record profit sharing checks (their profit for that year was something like 4 billion dollars) and even then GM didn't make any money on the cars they built.
I was just a few blocks from GM headquarters on Monday, and the GM employees were out along the river for a lunch walk. Lots of H1B employees, which made me wonder why again I should "buy American"?
Good bye!
Liquidate!