Comments on: GM, Bankruptcy, and Uncle Sam

By: Putney Swope

Putney Swope — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 23:27:17 +0000

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

By: gerry kenneth

gerry kenneth — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 01:21:59 +0000

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.

By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 22:42:55 +0000

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 !

By: david

david — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 21:51:12 +0000

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.

By: Bernice

Bernice — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 21:37:26 +0000

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.

By: Joe B.

Joe B. — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 20:43:25 +0000

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?

By: Foxwood

Foxwood — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 17:28:47 +0000

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

By: John L

John L — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:33:25 +0000

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.

By: Drew Horn

Drew Horn — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 15:20:19 +0000

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.

By: Dennis K

Dennis K — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 15:11:51 +0000

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.

By: jonas

jonas — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 15:08:41 +0000

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?

By: Eric

Eric — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 15:03:32 +0000

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

By: Anthony

Anthony — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:59:59 +0000

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!

By: howardr

howardr — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:59:02 +0000

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.

By: Richard

Richard — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:54:14 +0000

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.

By: Robbie Black

Robbie Black — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:50:55 +0000

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…

By: Fred

Fred — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:50:30 +0000

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

By: Tom

Tom — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:49:14 +0000

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.

By: Dawne B.

Dawne B. — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:48:39 +0000

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!

By: BHA

BHA — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:48:15 +0000

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.