The union did not give up much when compared to the shareholders. I don’t see this company being around ten years from down because customers like me are tired of supporting the UAW.

What we should have done, what we should do:

Get the Gov out of the hook asap. Create a self-sustaining fund that keeps domestic (USA based) auto companies in business based on “true” mpg scorecard, and gets the money from aid fee (not tax) that is added to imported gasoline.

They produce bad cars => they get less money from the fund.

Americans want heavier and bigger cars => they want more aid fee on each gallon of gas.

Oil prices go up too much => Americans demand better cars.

Auto companies screw up more => Treasury does not robbed.

Solve three problems all at once, and make automaker execs accountable to the guy who is pumping the gas.

Why not?

I’m not a big fan of the UAW but the fall of GM was brought on by management. They were only interested in the bottom line and did nothing to make good solid cars, like the Japanese and Germans did. This is the company which invented “planned obsolescence” so please spare me the anti-union BS. This companies executives drove GM into the ground and ruined Detroit and the surrounding communities while doing it.

The question is now what?

How about these factories being retooled to build light rail and high speed trains. The question of alternative energy will come up, I’m not sure how this can be done, wind and solar do not seem to be able to deal with our demands. The other issue with wind is the turbines, I can’t imagine living near a site with hundreds of these things.

What happens to the common stock holders now? If you hold onto the stock to prevent further losses and the company recovers will the old stock still be valid?

The stockholders are toast. It’s worth .75 cents today.
By the time the bankruptcy is over it will be close to 0.

I agree with Putney. Now that we own it then let’s push it to make what we want.

By the way, GM is trading under water right now: -.15

We should pay attention to the robbery that is going on as part of the bankruptcy. Steve Rattner is raiding the GM worker’s pension fund to give Citibank and JP Morgan Chase a 100% payoff on their loans. The banksters get $6 billion and the retirees get a few shares of useless stock. This is absolutely illegal. The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 explicitly outlaws this kind of maneuver.

It’s not GM’s money, it’s money that the workers accepted in lieu of wages. Neither GM nor the U.S. government can legally take it away, even in bankruptcy.

Putney’s made some good points and to add to that we need vehicles that can handle carrying a family comfortably along with their equipment, cars that can handle inclement weather, face it when 1/2 an inch of snow can cancel school we do not have vehicles that can travel our streets!

Not everyone that works for GM is part of the UAW. We keep hearing about the affect on the unions. What about the white collar workers? There are quite a few that are not part of upper management. What about those retirees. What is happening to their benefits?

Come on!!!!! Give me a break!!!!! A person who made tens of millions off the auto industry while he and executives like him drove the auto industry into the ground now whines about the work benefits that auto workers get, like health insurance?

What about replacement parts? I would be happy to purchase a GM car if I know I can get it maintained and I never hear comments about that part of GM’s future.

Has anyone done the math on how much it would have cost the fed govt if GM had been allowed to bankrupt? Employment insurance benefits (GM AND feeder industries), welfare, fed health care, etc.?

Detroit makes crap and uses bully tactics to sell. It only works with idiots, like those in my state of Michigan. If you meet enough Big Three employees, you will definitely look elsewhere for your major purchases. Detroit is the “get over” capital of the world, and Michigan is the “get over” state of the union.

Here’s how you, as GM, can motivate me to support “the home team:” Stop outsourcing labor to foreign countries, stop building cars with zilch for gas mileage and vehicle lifespan, and stop expecting the government to bail you out when you fail to do those things. It’s funny how everyone talks about letting an unregulated market sort things out, and then screams for protectionist measures when the market doesn’t swing in their favor.

Last year we bought our first “foreign” car — a Toyota (in fact, we are first generation foreign car owners). We went to our neighborhood Chevy and Ford dealers, who both told us that the best car (camry) was better than their Chevy Mallibu or Ford Focus. Our Camry was assembled in the USA — the Focus was assembled in Mexico. I disagree with the possibility of “incentives” for Americans to buy to American cars — the company won’t change their agenda of building big, ineffecient, gas guzzling cars, if they aren’t forced to build competitive vehicles. They need to build cars Americans want to buy, and that has not been the big cars or SVUs for several years now.

If American made products and autos were quality products, more people would buy them! What happened to capitalism and superior products and companies succeeding and inferior ones being allowed to fail and go away? GM and the others should have been allowed to fail.

It is incumbent upon American manufacturers to design and build desirable products people want. The idea that we should buy American simply because it IS an American product seems to fly in the face of our vaunted capitalistic value system. Let the market determine which businesses survive.

Do we know of any businesses that the gov’t got involved in like GM that have become successful? Will US get in trouble with WTO because of its investment in a company that competes globally?

Personally, the American industry is not at the forefront of my mind when purchasing a car. It’s about how much the car will cost now, how much it will cost to maintain it, and the quality of the product. I’m not going to buy a car produced by a glutenous bottom-line mentality company with lack of focus on customer satisfaction when other foreign companies have higher quality goods. What the Governor of Michigan is pretty much asking for a public assistance hand-out. “Give us money, although your industry isn’t deserving based on past business behavior.” I used to be the “Buy American Cars” type, until I threw that blind ideology and grew up from my adolescence.

If we all drive electric cars does that really help the environment? Electricity runs on coal in this country.

I think moving away from cars is the answer.
Light rail, trolleys and high speed trains.

Communities that are built without sprawl, that are energy efficient.

On another note the buy American idea put forth by Governor Jennifer Granholm was nothing but political rhetoric. GM has been out sourcing jobs for decades.
Give me a break. What about the fact the GM has huge factories in Europe and China?

Buy a Cadillac over a Lexus? That would not have saved GM. Please the corporate world uses every trick in the book to undermine this country from tax loopholes to lobbying against paying for cleaning up toxic waste sites. Look at the banks, they took billions and are now lobbying against regulations that are designed to prevent the very BS that brought on this mess.

Give me a break, buy American? What does that mean? As far as I’m concerned corporate America acts as if the are at war with the people of this country. It’s all about their bottom line.

President Clinton used a modest amount of taxpayer money to provide the automakers with the research needed for high-profit hybrids that are the best selling cars now.

People want to make money. Gas guzzlers no longer make money as fuel efficient cars like hybrids do. When the car makers make money again with fuel efficient cars, the government will not have to have an ownership share anymore.

Are the Execs at fault? Yes. Is the UAW at fault? Yes. Both went for big money and protection for themselves, in different ways. The (used to be) Big Three spent hundreds of millions (if not billions) of $$ in the past 30 years fighting any sort of MPG increases.

They hung their businesses on high profit margin gas hogs advertising that “safety only comes with size” bull leaving us with ever bigger pickups and SUVs used to commute to work or the kids’ school events. Most of the time 1 to 4 people in a vehicle. Bigger means LESS safe, MORE damage, HIGHER insurance costs.

Advertising “ONLY fast is fun, 0-60 under 7 seconds is mandatory” and making cars used no differently (other than being driven irresponsibly by some) than any reasonably powered vehicle. 350, 450 550HP? PLEASE! Nothing more than wasting energy all for the “I should be able to buy whatever I want – it is all about MEEEEEE” attitudes without thought to the repercussions and their actual need and use of a vehicle. Gas gets expensive (not exactly a SURPRISE!) and the gas hogs are suddenly less desirable. All the smaller fuel efficient cars they make are really re-badged Asian cars (Aveo, Vibe, etc).

Buy America! BULL. Why NOT buy American? Because they don’t make what a LOT of us want to buy!!!! Those of us NOT buying American cars voted with our $$, the Detroit 3 ignored that vote for 30+ years. Now WE are blamed because they didn’t make viable products and had a ‘next fiscal quarter profit’ horizon? I’m supposed to buy a Cadillac even though there is NOTHING about any Cadillac I want? Sorry, I have no guilt on that score.

Tom,
It’s interesting to hear the claims from Detroit re: patriotism and to buy American. Hard for working class people to buy cars that break down, get poor gas mileage and lose their value so quickly. We all make choices every day in our personal lives and our businesses and if you chose to buy a product you couldn’t depend on, we’d all be broke and out of work!

GM’s downfall was poor quality. Starting in the early 1980’s, they put out shoddy products compared to the competition. Everyone knew it. Toyota and Honda prevailed with better cars.

Interesting show. Monumental problems for Mich and US.
1. Cash for Clunkers — But what to do with the clunkers? Would they be recycled effectively or just be more clutter?
2. Now that we are rethinking the auto industry and worldwide auto-sales are slumping, maybe, just maybe, we don’t need to have/buy so many cars. We all want cars that are well built, so we should not expect or need to replace them so frequently.
3. How many us auto employees bought foreign models in the past? Recently there’s been a bigger push to get employess and suppliers to buy what they make!
FB

People seem to dislike Detroit and the way it has done business but the American middle class was build on the automotive industry. There has not been one report that says foreign reliability is any better than American built autos. In fact most of this opinion is media based. I am disgusted at the outcry of people at this move to help GM while we just GAVE away 170+ billion dollars to AIG. This upsets me. At least Detroit makes something tangible, something worth value. Not something in space that has absolutely no value. Every auto company is hurting. The question we need to ask is do WE (Americans) want to produce anything at all? This bankrupsy is tragic but is the same that any company would be faced with…

Just this weekend I attempted to buy a new car. Presently, mine will do but it’s approaching the 200 K mark. No luck at the purchase attempt. Guess Detroit doesn’t need the business afterall.
I wanted to order a 2010 model; offered (right now!) 25% down with $1,000 monthly payments during the interim period…. until I picked up the car next March. Guess “Layaway Plans” are too different from the opus operandi that got detroit in trouble in the first place.

Way too late now.

I bought a 1968 Dodge Dart and a few years later I wrote to Chrysler and told them that if they continued to make a car of the same quality I would buy another when the current one died, even at a premium to a foreign car.

Terrible show! What a disservice to your listeners. It’s great to hear from the naysayers and the critics, but to stack the show with only naysayers and critics is no service at all. Could you really not find one person in all of America to talk about the beneifts of government intervention? Come on! You can do better!

Goodness, as pointed out above, this show was stacked and unbalanced. Please prove how this benefits your listers.

On Point does it again. Its two supposedly neutral analyist/experts are two right wing nut jobs spouting the usual blame it on the unions and the free market will cure everything nonsense.

Hey, you forgot to do a fund raising pitch that only NPR give us a full range of opinion.

Just for a change how about a left wing nut job who will give a more honest analysis?

If you look at the ways GM products have improved, it has been in quality and reliability. That means, when given permission, American workers will work hard to make good products.

A bad board of directors, elected by the shareholders, failed to follow through on President Clinton’s modest taxpayer investment for high-profit fuel efficient cars.

Those CEO’s were not simply working for the GM share holders. They were also on the boards of Texas oil companies.

During this century, they decided to follow the direction of oil company share holders over the rank and file share holders such as 401k, retirement funds, and regular small investors.

I reject blaming the union workers who are not day trading investors, but rather skilled workers who invest a LIFETIME of effort and focus for the shared success of a company.

GM has the symptoms of many companies that are trying to squeeze more profit from mature industries with obsolete technology. Their fate was predictable if not inevitable. I expect that they will continue to decline simply because those in charge have no incentive to innovate. The current owners (governments, unions, and hedge funds)see only the risks of innovation as being too great. They don’t have the vision to forsee the next generation of cars.

There is an opportunity here! That is to establish a consortium to design a better approach to transportation ex. a change from using oil as the primary source of energy to electricity. The technology exists, but there is little vision and no consensus about the direction to be taken. Until the US “innovates” a better system we will find that our lunch will be eaten by others who do innovate.

If President Obama was my fund manager — I’d fire him. GM has succeeded in doing nothing but squandering the billions of dollars that investors have entrusted to it over the last decades (generations???). Has it has failed to generate an acceptable return on those investments, in the few years when it even turned a profit. It’s time to wrap it up and let those resources be used by others who will make better use of them.

Instead President Obama has taken the tax dollars that the citizens of the US have entrusted to him and sent good money after bad. If GM was liquidated, it wouldn’t be the end of the world, but only of GM and maybe the UAW. The customers wouldn’t go away. They would just buy their cars from other manufacturers. The suppliers would not go out of business (as long as they they were doing business with the other car companies), they would just sell more components to Ford, Honda and Toyota.

The reality is that in business there are winners and losers. Our President has chosen to invest taxpayer money in a company that the market place and investors have deemed to be a loser. For President Obama to believe that he knows better all of those people who actually understand what they want, and how to invest money is the height of hubris.

You may have already read this info on the death of Capitalism, but you might check it out in case you missed it. USSA

Thanks to the terrible (free-market) trade deals and Policies that Washington has been handing down, The U.S. has lost the textile industry, the electronics industry, the steel industry, and the shoe and garment industries. The auto industry was next on the chopping block. China,India, and South Korea are allowed to “dump” their products into our U.S. market while we barely have access to their markets. And we wonder why this country is going to the dogs?

Everyone keeps saying that there are great cars built in the US (Toyota, Honda, VW, BWM, etc), just not by US companies.

So, what has kept the these great car companies from setting up in Michigan?

The UAW of course! They have done a great job scaring away any company who would want to give their workers an option. Competition for their workers would cause their salaries and benefits to go up naturally taking away power from the Union management.

Just imagine Detroit with 10 car companies domestic and foreign – GM going out of business would have been painful but wouldn’t have been catastrophic. Ideally everyone would get hired into a Toyota plant!

At the end of the day, the ability to change jobs is the most powerful bargaining chip that worker has in any industry.

The reverse is also true – which is also why letting banks fail directly addresses executive compensation – why would you pay a guy $10M a year, when there are ten guys just as experienced without a job?

It’s also a myth that manufacturing jobs are high paying with great benefits – the global competition makes a $1 a day, and that’s what these jobs will tend toward.

These jobs were great for high school drop outs in a previous generation, and we need as few of these jobs as possible.

The UAW has been a job killer and now they have killed off two great American companies. It’s a sad day in America to see these lazy union guys walk away with something they never earned. I’ll never buy another UAW car.

They should allow the automakers to fail in the first place, taxpayer’s money is totally wasted by the governement. The burden is transferring to the general public !

GM is a an American icon that stands for greedy manangement. The collapse of ENRON, Bear Stearns, Lehman, Countrywide, AIG, Merrill Lynch, Wachovia, WaMu, Chrysler, and now GM all have something in common. Very bad management. Greedy bottom line driven failed executives with huge compensation packages!! What is wrong with this picture? Board members should be held accountable for their bad decisions. We can not continue to reward bad behavior. Corporate America sold the manufacturing base to other countries to maintain the gravy train of compensation. We all participated, just not equally. It’s all about a reversion to the mean. You can not have runaway everything and not expect it to come back. The world is very dependent on a strong US. Obama is the wrong guy at the wrong time. He will set this country back 30 years with his tax and spend focus. He should maintain the stongest defense in the world and get out of the way. The rest is noise.

Gerry I could not have said it better, amen to that.