***$52,000 - the price of a well-equipped Chevy Tahoe sport utility vehicle***
There’s one of the problems. A gas-guzzler for $52,000? No wonder they’re circling the drain.
Their white-collar employees might also be a problem as well...
Unless they are going to completely change their business plans, there is no reason to bail them out. Nothing will change.
I’m trying to remember when GMC ever came to my aid, nope never did. Any of you business owners ever get help from GMC?
Oh the false blame game and diversions start already. With a heavily dem senate and house the can do it by themselves. The dems play this hard ball so much better than republicans.
The sad thing is the public will buy it all as it is spoon fed by the MSM and incoming bHo.
Well Hey Auto Workers Union folks... you can always get a job in the lucrative coal industry!
Good Luck!
Wouldn’t bankruptcy allow them to get out of the ruinous benefit and pension plans the negotiated when times were good? You would think GM would welcome that, I don’t understand why they are begging for money when they could end up more efficient in the long run if they don’t beg for money. Perhaps it’s just a publicity ploy for GM execs to play CYA with the unions?
I am not laying that blame on them right, people paniced when gas prices got high, gm was building SUVs because they were selling, sure cobalts sold but not so much, one of the reasons why the camaro/firebird were canceled, people were not buying them. I think most of gM's problems is UAW
Germany is going to bailout GM subsidiary Opel with 1.3bn $.
http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/0,1518,590557,00.html
I was just reading an article at a blog called Carpe Diem, the blog of an economics professor at University of Tennessee (I think it was Tenn. may be mistaken).
Anyway, I was shocked at the wages and benefits that UAW has squeezed out of the Big Three.
UAW average worker pay, including benefits is $72.31 an hour or a whopping $150,404 per year.
Auto workers at the US plants of Toyota, BMW and Nissan average $44.20 per hour, or $91,936 per year.
UAW is pulling down 65% more annually than the non-union plants.
Nancy and Hairy will certainly wish to subsidize more of this to keep the campaign contributions coming.
Who’s going to force people to buy their output?
Free enterprise means that entrepreneurs are free to be successful and make a profit and free to fail. The Federal government has no business paying for bad decisions by GM, especially since the decisions include adding $8,000 in union-inspired costs to each and every vehicle, for health insurance, Viagra, pension benefits, etc. Now GM is failing and the Democrats want more stealth socialism so the taxpayers can pay the $8,000 for each and every car manufactured by GM.
I do not think that the country can afford to do that without making the coming recession into a full scale depression. Let the chips fall where they may. The trillions in bailout money already committed by our government has doomed our economy already. Of course the Democrats are excellent at implementing failed policies.
See, "The Pinball Bailout?" here on FR.
Congressman Billybob
Latest article, "The Barack Obama - King George Connection"
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“Maybe the first energy crisis in 1973 should have awakened them to the need to build fuel efficient, reliable, affordable and safe vehicles. 35 years later, it might just be too late for the Big Three.”
It did and they did, except for the fuel thing, which has been such a violent roller coaster that nobody could follow it, much less predict it.
It will be beyond irony if the Detroit three, now that they have fixed quality, reliability, safety and even pleasing design, now go under because no one notices the fixes. It sounds like you haven’t noticed them.
Why is GM going bankrupt? In 1994, I bought a Chevy Lemon. When I demanded, after 5 major repairs in its first year of life, that they take it back, they only wanted to know where I financed it (not with GMAC - too bad).
I talked to the VP for Customer Service in Detroit. I said, “You promised that the pride and quality was back in American autos, and you didn’t deliver.”
His response, I kid you not, “If you wanted quality, you should have thought about that before you bought a Chevy.”
THAT’S why GM is on the verge of bankruptcy. I’ll NEVER EVER buy another GM product. In MY driveway at this moment: A Toyota and a Hyundai, both of which I own, outright.
GM needs to be bought out by a company like Hyundai that will get them back to making quality cars and stop producing vehicles no one wants. At out local dealerships I see rows of unsold large sized pickups with gas guzzling V8 engines. American car makers have the knowledge and technology to produce high mileage quality cars, but just no the leadership.
we are arguing the wrong target.
the bailout is NOT about GM.
not a single bit.
The bailout is ONLY about union POWER, period.
If it were about the company we would have done Ch 11 debtor in posession financing.
They should go into Chapter 11: retain the profitable
sectors and sell the other assets. Also, they need to
get out of the horrific union contracts and offer workers
the same deal foreign car manufacturers, making cars in
this country, offer their workers.
So be it. The market is working as it should, punishing companies who make bad decisions.