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The New York Times reports that the Justice Department has concluded that there was criminal wrongdoing by General Motors as the company covered-up a deadly ignition switch defect for years. That defect has now been blamed for causing the deaths of at least 104 motorists. While many observers may have been able to come to the conclusion that GM was guilty long before the Justice Department’s recent epiphany, the bigger question now is, what’s next? GM still faces litigation risks as ongoing lawsuits seek justice for the victims’ families that suffered as a result of GM’s criminal actions. Full...

Today, we requested that the House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform undertake an "independent" investigation of the General Motors ignition switch recall delay, in light of newly obtained emails by lawyers suing GM. Those emails suggest that the Treasury may have timed its final sale of GM shares to precede public knowledge of the ignition switch fiasco. They also cast doubt on GM CEO Mary Barra's previous account of what she knew and when she knew it. Here is the text of a letter I sent today to Rep. Jason Chaffetz, in photo, the incoming Chairman of the...

General Motors will likely be prosecuted over ignition switches linked to deathsFederal prosecutors are closing in on criminal charges against General Motors Co. over a faulty ignition switch linked to more than 100 deaths, but they are still weighing whether to charge individual employees, according to people familiar with the matter. The Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office has determined GM likely broke the law by making misstatements about the ignition-switch glitch in older Chevrolet Cobalts and other cars for more than a decade and will likely extract a fine exceeding $1 billion from the company, the people said. GM will either...

General Motors Co will not have to face dozens of lawsuits accusing it of concealing an ignition-switch defect that has been blamed for more than 200 deaths and serious injuries, a U.S. bankruptcy judge ruled on Wednesday. Plaintiffs in the lawsuits said the company violated their constitutional rights by failing to disclose the defect, while GM had argued it was protected from claims on vehicles pre-dating its 2009 exit from Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The decision by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Gerber means GM may avoid potentially billions of dollars in liability, as well as the cost of defending those lawsuits,...

Depositions for General Motors’ executives, including CEO Mary Barra, will begin in May, according to the Detroit News. The testimonies will be at the center of class-action lawsuits (set for trial in January, 2016) against GM for its ignition switch defect cover-up and are slated to conclude in early October of this year. It will not be the first time Barra has testified under oath about the recall debacle which is now blamed for having caused 74 deaths. Attorneys for plaintiffs now claim they have evidence that GM executives knew about (and covered-up) the defects long before they admitted...

General Motors is recalling the extended range electric Chevy Volt because of a possible carbon monoxide risk. When the Volt is in electric mode it’s very quiet so it’s easy for a driver to forget to shut it off and when that happens the battery drains and the gasoline generator starts and if the car is parked in the garage the fumes can get into the house. Two people have been overcome by carbon monoxide after fumes built up in their houses reports WWJ AutoBeat Reporter Jeff Gilbert. The fix will limit the time that a parked Volt can be...

NLPC Associate Fellow Mark Modica was a guest yesterday on "Closing Bell" on CNBC. We will post the video soon, but here is a transcript: Sara Eisen : At first it seemed like it was just another activist investors at work but our next guest says something else is in play here. We're talking about Harry Wilson, the restructuring expert who served on President Obama's auto industry task force during the financial crisis and was instrumental in bringing GM out of bankruptcy. Now Wilson is a GM activist investor and represents hedge funds holding a total of 34 million shares...

General Motors Co (GM.N) said Thursday it will build the Chevrolet Bolt electric car at an assembly plant near Detroit, where it will invest $200 million for the project. The compact Bolt, shown as a concept vehicle at the Detroit auto show last month, is designed to have a range of 200 miles, and will cost about $30,000 apiece after tax breaks. GM's announcement confirms a report last week by Reuters that the Bolt would be produced at the under-used Orion assembly plant in Michigan. The only electric car currently available with a 200-mile range is the Tesla Model S,...

Conventional Chevy Silverados being transformed into plug-in hybrid trucks at VIA Motors’ high volume assembly plant.Think of it as a Volt with a flat bed. Via Motors’ “electrified” 4WD Chevy Silverado entered commercial production last month. That’s a first for the company — founded in 2010 — that retrofits GM pickups and vans and turns them into $85,000-plus plug-in hybrids that can also function as roving generators. (More on pricing below.) It’s no coincidence that the concept is similar to the Volt. The chairman of Via Motors is Bob Lutz, father of the Chevy plug-in hybrid. It’s also no coincidence...

At least 40 major U.S. companies have substantial exposure to Venezuela’s deepening economic crisis, and could collectively be forced to take billions of dollars of write downs, a Reuters analysis shows. The companies, all members of the S&P 500, and including some of the biggest names in Corporate America such as autos giant General Motors (GM.N) and drug maker Merck & Co Inc (MRK.N), together carry at least $11 billion of monetary assets in the Venezuelan currency, the bolivar, on their books. The official rate is at 6.3 bolivars to the dollar and there are two other rates in the...

I'm not one for boycotts, but I am one for data. And I like this kind of data. It's just good to have data when spending money. That's all. I mean, if I have no choice in keeping a SIGNIFICANTLY large portion of my money from being squandered by the folks that I've freaking employed up on the Hill (like drunk girls on Spring break with their Daddy's credit cards), I'm going to be as informed as possible with what's left of said money. Thus, the data thing. You know. According to the source article above and the New York...

2014 is the Year of the Liberal Lie By Kyle Smith Bowe Bergdahl. The IRS’s missing e-mails. Lena Dunham. “Hands up, don’t shoot.” Jonathan Gruber. GM and that faulty ignition switch. Andrew Cuomo and that anti-corruption commission. The Secret Service and that White House intruder. Rachel Noerdlinger and her “disabled” son. Rolling Stone and gang rape. 2014 was the year when truth was optional. 2014 was the year when convenient fabrication was the weapon of choice for celebrities, activists, big business and politicians. 2014 was the Year of the Lie. In each case, the liars used their powerful positions to...

The evidence continues to mount that General Motors has been less than transparent, if not outright culpable, regarding its ignition switch recall fiasco. As the death toll mounts (from the original 13 casualties reported by GM to the just revised 32 deaths) for victims involved in crashes of GM vehicles with defective ignition switches, new evidence has emerged that GM actually ordered replacement parts for the defective switches a full two months before they even reported a problem. A Wall Street Journal article published on Sunday unveiled the damning evidence that GM placed an order for half a million replacement...

Today I sent the following letter to Dr. Gretchen Green, the Acting Chair of the National Women's History Museum: We ask the National Women's History Museum (NWHM) to withdraw its planned award to General Motors CEO Mary Barra. As you know, Barra is scheduled to receive the Katharine Graham Living Legacy Award on November 17 as part of your annual de Pizan Honors at The Mead Center for American Theater at Arena Stage in Washington, DC. Barra has indeed made history - of the wrong kind. Just three months ago, she sat in front of Congressional Committees and desperately tried...

It must be difficult for the Mom and Pop investor to make sense of General Motors' recent earnings announcement and subsequent drop in share price. On Thursday morning, GM reported earnings that were trumpeted as being "impressive" by one major financial TV network. In fact, early in the day, headlines at the network stated that the entire market was being driven higher by strong earnings at GM and Caterpillar. That hyperbole came into question when GM share price dropped about 3% on a day that the broader markets were strong. It was unfortunate for many investors who bought into the...

General Motors told dealers to stop selling its 2015 Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon mid-sized pickups on Friday. The trucks have only recently started rolling off assembly lines. GM says a wiring problem with the trucks' airbags could keep the airbags from deploying properly when needed. The trucks are so new that only few of them are currently in customers' possession, GM said in a statement. The vast majority are still at the factory and were about to be shipped to dealers. A few more are sitting on dealer lots....

Truth001 wrote: No John GWB destabilized the region by marching into Iraq in the first place all in the name of Oil. Obama was only trying to clean up the mess President Bush and VP Cheney left behind. Remember "mission accomplished" 10 years later, 4000+ soldiers dead and 1.5 trillion dollars later. Obama has been trying to avoid another Iraq disaster like every since he has been in office. - The Foreign Policy of the Three StoogesDear Comrade Pravda,How do you explain the destabilization of Libya, then? Or Afghanistan? Or Pakistan? Or Egypt? Or Ukraine? Were those all George BushÂ’s...

General Motors said Thursday that its second-quarter earnings fell 85 percent, as recall costs chopped $1.5 billion from the bottom line.

For much of the spring, it seemed as if General Motors issued a new round of recalls every other day, but the automaker has been largely quiet on that front for over three weeks. Could the recall party be coming to an end? Based on a new press release from GM, the answer is probably "no". The release outlines six new recalls, some big, some small. They cover a range of recent models from GM's surviving four nameplates and affect roughly 823,000 vehicles. This brings the total number of vehicles recalled by GM since January 1, 2014 to 28,767,143. Here's...

General Motors reported earnings today for the 2nd quarter of 2014. The early prognosis is not good with share price falling after the report. While it is difficult for the Mom and Pop investor to sort through GM's myriad of one-time charges, special items and various smoke and mirrors, there are some key take-aways that give a glimpse of GM's financial health. Primarily, debt continues to grow at the company, now exceeding $40 billion while earnings are propped up by special items. Analyzing the levels of cash compared to debt at GM is probably the easiest way to get to...