Here's what I don't get: why doesn't the government say "****, you can't afford your plants? Then SELL THEM!" I'll use myself as an example: I have to go back to school, and I have an RX7. I only have money for one so what do I do? I sell the car. What kind of ******* retard doesn't get that? And I mean the public here, the UAW and those corporate fatcats are all super-stoked to get bailout money to perpetuate their laziness and fund their golden parachutes. Obviously. But taxpayers should damn well be storming the White House. God damn, sheeple suck.

 

52 year old retiree makes more than me per month multiplied by two.

 

As soon as I heard about the bailout that's what I said. You dont think if GM puts itself up for sale there's not going to be a buyer? Everyone wants everyone to BUY AMERICAN but the car industry has been global for years. GM, Ford, Chrystler, they all share platforms and have bits of themselves sold to foreign car companies. You're buying a car half-made in korea when you buy an Optra...how is that buying American? Not everyone knows cars like car guys do...you buy an Aveo you're pretty much just buying a REALLY ugly version of a Yaris. BUY AMERICAN is a slogan, one they use to sell their cars, there's no pride in it there never was the car companies are willing to do absolutely anything in their power to stay rich and dont give a crap about the junk their spewing out. For the longest time it was all about cheap american cars...its the only way they can sell anything.



Obama comes along and whispers "Hey guys I have this great idea where I can just hand you over BILLIONS and you dont even have to sell!!!"



What the **** would you say? "Giddee up?" "******* right?" "LETS DO THIS?"



While the first thing my bank told me when I went 3 days a week at my job and couldnt afford to stay afloat anymore...OH WHY DONT YOU SELL YOUR RX7.



Why dont you let GM die, let Buffet buy it...how could it be worse off?

 

At least by the end of selling factories, brands and switching employees, the "sell your ****" method has produced workable businesses. The only problem here is the sheer size of these organizations and the idiotic directions they take. Even if someone does hire an old CEO and they run it into the ground, they'll only be in charge of a few thousand jobs.

 

Yeah but the thing is it's not so much so in the auto industry. Eventually things work themselves up if a company is for sale for a while...check out Ferrari or MG. MG was destroyed by its own employees in the 70s, now its backish but the quality of cars is definately way better. Same goes with Ferrari and Lambourghini both owned by chrystler at one time but now one is owned by Audi and one by Fiat...they are definately doing very much better than fine and Ferrari even managed to bring Ferrari to a new level of amazingness with absolutely astounding vehicles...



Sometimes **** happens like when the Russians bought TVR...maybe we'll see them again someday...and Morgan is wicked now...their new idea for a car is brilliant some fatcat CEO has had to have retired!

 

I don't work for GM or Chrysler, but I do work in manufacturing and my customers build machinery for all automotive manufacturers. Last year Chrysler demanded a 5% price decrease from my largest automotive customers AFTER taking delivery of machinery they had spent a year building but which had not been invoiced.



Where would the investment money come from this mysterious someone to buy up all these factories and get them going again? From a bank, who would be spending you tax money anyway. Chrysler was offered for dirt cheap what 2 years ago? Not many takers were there?



Their problems are relatively simple. It costs them too much to build cars. The reason for that is simple, they pay their employees too much over their lifetime for too easy of a job. Yes they are retiring at 50, and no they shouldn't be. They are getting early retirement becuase factories don't need as many employees as they used too. in fact my customers have to meet mandates that equipment they build must use NO LESS than a specified number of people. Emergency stop times for machinery must be calculated so that when the average employee RUNS AND JUMPS AT THE MACHINE it has stopped moving before he lands.



So yah, the real solution is that they go into bankruptcy and totally eliminate having unions. period. not very american, is it? Our government up here have handed over cash to GM. And then GM closed the factories here.



Toyota pays $30 an hour and opens new factories. But hey, look in the news, they're laying people off too. So is Honda. So all these people you say can get another automotive job can't get another automotive job.



It would be nice if GM and Chrysler were viable companies. It would have been nice if people making $10 an hour weren`t being offered $500,000 mortgages too.



If the government were to take over the pension and healthcare of UAW employees of course it couldn`t be at the current ridiculous offer they have going now.



The government is trying to protect GM, Chrysler and Ford because there are no other global brand names left for the USA. Close them down and you`ve got who? Microsoft? Boeing?



It took Hyundia 20 years to produce a quality car, despite copying japanese cars right down to the last bolt.



In all you guys comments I must have seen , "someone else will take over and do it!" written about 3 different ways. Who? Who's going to do 'it'? There's a cement factory not far from here with a Brazilian flag flying out front, what flag do you think will be flying in front of all those re-named GM factories we're talking about? China? India? Saudi Arabia?





Describe a solution that makes even a little bit of sense. Rather than a bunch of random bitching.

 

Way to completely ignore what I wrote and respond with jibberish.





Ok so just so i've got this strait, the canadian gov't gave GM money and they went ahead and laid everyone off anyhow and that is somehow a defense for your argument to burden the taxpayer with GM???? REALLY????







I am REALLY having a hard time wrapping my head around this one, please help me out. You are saying that the people have no money, there is no venture capital all the money to start a business must come from a bank, however the bank has no money, so he must get the money needed from the taxpayer that has no money????? It almost sounds like there isn't going to be anyone to buy the cars anyway, i mean lets face it, the people are broke, the bank is broke, where's the money to buy all these cars come from???







Where in the US constitution does it say the american taxpayer is burdened with the responsibility to bail out large corporations???? Where is that outlined as a function of capitalism? also please enlighten me as to what is "american" about an $8 per hour employee giving up his his wage to keep a $40 per hour UAW employee living in the manner he is accustom to, that's the opposite of American, thats theft by the government. And if you REALLY, REALLY want me to I can provide an overwhelming argument that the feds printing money on debt is in direct violation of the constitution and I would need to go no further then that, there shouldn't be any money available to them to do the bailout in the first place and IMHO there is NOTHING more un-american then trampling our constitution.



It almost sounds to me, with toyota laying off, etc... that it's a shrinking industry and the only way for any of the player to survive is for a couple to go away, why not let the ones that couldn't make a profit when the industry was growing go broke and the others pick up the slack, you said yourself those 1 million workers won't get jobs because no one needs them, well guess what even after we pay assume their pension debt, even after we hand them billions they are still going to have 1 million too many employees, so if GM doesn't lay them off someone will, so please please tell me why the GM autoworkers are more vital then the Ford ones, more vital then the Toyota ones and more importantly more vital then the 1.45 million people that got laid off in Feb/March because you said it yourself, either way 1 million people need to get laid off no matter what we do. It honestly seems that your only effort here is to save the 1 million GM connected employees and the pensioners and **** the rest of them as long as they don't work for GM.



So now that you yourself have established it's "un-american" for any company to go bankrupt regardless of their profitability as it would result in layoffs one can't help but wonder at what point the income or the cost of never letting any american company go bankrupt exceeds the taxable base of those actually paying to prop these entity's up, my guess is with the motivation to make a business profitable it would happen quite quickly, let's face it the entities sucking on the taxpayer tete will inevitably be making more then the people busting their *** to pay the tax man to prop these companies up so it would seem to me we would see an exodus of employees to high paying, taxpayer funded companies. My basic question is.... how long do you think it will be before there is no one paying taxes, all working off the vanished taxpayer? Then what? What's the end game here?



Also Tyson, i'm not trying to be a dick here, I'm actually trying to wrap my head around your perspective, so I appreciate the post and I apologize if I am treating you as a hostile witness LOL Like I say, I rarely find anyone willing to share their perspective on these taxpayer funded bailouts, so I do appreciate your point of view, i'm just having a really, really hard time seeing it from your perspective, I think to some extent if you would have said you worked for GM or Chrysler I would have been able to see it from your point of view, but now that you've made a statement which equals, Canada did it and it changed nothing, they left, laid off employees, etc... I find it almost impossible to stand on your side of the fence.

 

Fiat has bought a percentage of Chrystler, recently, during the entire mess...so it shows there's companies out there willing to take on projects like this as long as companies are willing to bend. GM only wants to sell itself to Toyota because they have been buddy-buddy for 30 years so they know Toyota will not be doing anything drastic enough to **** with their honey pot. But of course Toyota is smart enough not to even touch GM with a ten-foot pole. So who will buy GM? Well right now the company is going to be owned by the American people...partially government run but noone gets to elect who actually runs the operation or controls where money is spent... All they are doing right now is politely asking GM to "completely re-structure its internal problems" and give a "broad speculation as to how they can fix the problem they are in" well...noone in history has ever gone out and bought a car because it was for the good of the country. But that will be exactly what GM's marketing ploy will be and by your rant that is perfectly fine by you...



So who SHOULD own GM?



If the American people own GM they better start acting like real owners, complain about the smell. If GM is willing to accept any proposal other than a gigantic influx of money YES there is someone out there who WILL buy it. They make good cars and they have alot of potential.

 

Hasn't the government down there handed over a trillion dollars to banks? Just to try to get them to invest and spend money? You complain that they violate this document written in the 1700s? Did they allow people to spend money that didn't exist back then?



North American automotive companies are in the ******* because they have over-committed to what they have offered their employees. The building of the American Dream, work in a factory and afford a beautiful home in the suburbs, mom stays home with the 2.3 children and a dog an a cat.



Somewhere along there another problem came along. Someone told EVERYONE to buy a house, it would increase 10% in value every year without doing anything. Someone told everyone to invest in the stock market, their money would increase 10% every year, without doing anything. Thanks to human greed the obvious end result is publicly traded companies that have never produced a product or service of value being 'worth' hundreds of millions of dollars. It has resulted in houses with pieces falling off them 'worth' $500,000. It has resulted in mortgages that any idiot can see could never be paid back, and borrowing money to gamble on the stock market.



You've complained about it yourself. Credit being used to gain more credit. Imaginary money being thrown around like it has some kind of value. Hell, GMAC offered mortgages even.



This investment capital money you seek for 'someone' to start up replacement car companies would have to be largely secured by imaginary money or the goverment freshly printed money you consider to be worthless, or soon to be worthless. With the way investment banking works down there, I'd bet the government would have to hand a bank 10 billion in order for any manufacturing company to receive 7.



You quoted some unemployment figures in one of your responses. I'm not sure why you think doubling those numbers would be better.



My only point was that if the government wants to burn through money like they are, covering the pension and healthcare costs of automotive retirees would be more effective than what they are doing.



Allowing the company to totally fail would destroy those people's pension AND layoff people currently working and paying taxes.



Covering pension and heathcare of retirees at a reduced rate would keep working people working, AND provide something for the retirees. WITHOUT writing a check to the corporation.



Handing over a trillion dollars to the same banks that told people working in Walmart they could afford a $500,000 house is bullshit. I find it disgusting that they did that literally at the drop of a hat, with no one being called on the carpet. Compared to what the car companies are having to deal with to get a fraction of that amount it truly is disgusting.



It would be nice if someone had the stones to actually identify what the problem is in the big three in these sounds bytes from washington. But what we're going to end up with is a half assed limp along situation that carries on for a while yet, because no one would dare risk votes by indentifying a labour union as a serious problem.







BTW, there's a brand new Fiat parked on the lawn in front of the Chrysler Technology Center in Detroit. Just showed up this week I'm told.



Maybe the Chinese government will buy up GM, who knows. Won't have to worry about labour unions then, will they?

 

WOW are serious or are you just ******* with me? Amazing that it is so out of date and yet countries like canada drew so much from it when establishing their own bill of rights 230 years later isn't it? My guess is you won't answer it since you fail to read or address anything I've asked in the past. Actually this entire post is just an exercise in futility you pass right over anything I say and continue on with the same banter, saying the same things.



If you get a chance I'd be really interested to know what sections of the constitution you feel are dated and/or should no longer apply?





Did you take the time to read my post at all? I very clearly said that money creation on debt was IMO in direct violation to constitution. In reality I would go as far as saying that we wouldn't be in this mess if that "outdated" document had been adhered to.





Again you don't seem to associate any of the risks or burdens involved with bailing GM out, you act as if there is no risk involved as if it's a win win and it simply is not, it's not even close. Maybe you need to look back over what I stated, your math doesn't add up 1 million GM employees is not twice the number of unemployed americans, I broke down the percentages very clearly, if you re-read them you will see, but since i doubt you will, 1 million IS NOT two times 6 million, which is what you are stating. You previously stated that in "in one week one million people would lose their jobs" to indicate that it would be some catastrophic event, the numbers I gave you were merely to prove that it has already happened and was not catastrophic.



You call my constitution a worthless outdated piece of paper, but something tells me you'd be pretty pissed if I suggested your government take away your rights. Maybe they should start with the first section Fundamental freedoms, since I believe you will find ALL of those freedoms in the outdated document made in the 1700's.



The only real defense I see you laying out is that they printed trillions for the banks, so they should print trillions for GM, why you aren't concerned about the other defunct corporations that are shutting down is beyond me, but then i can't grasp the logic of defending an action that will ultimately bankrupt a nations citizens. You admit that it did no good when canada gave GM money, yet for some reason you are convinced it will have the opposite effect if the US does it (again sorry if I am being redundant but you don't seem to read what I post). What is being done by the fed right now is inflationary, in fact it's hyper inflationary, if you get some time PLEASE, PLEASE read the history of the WEIMAR REPUBLIC, they did the very things you are suggesting and the nation fell.





Yea and i guess my point is that the downside risk to the bailing out of GM overwhelmingly outweighs the upside potential. As you already stated, Canada already gave it a go, the outcome was just as I would have expected, no jobs were saved, the factories were still shuttered and taxpayer is out billions, who did that help?





You'll get no argument from me there, I've been screaming the same words for months and the outcome will make 1 million jobs laughable I am afraid. But as the age old saying goes.... two wrongs don't make a right.





Again I for the life of me cannot figure out why these people can't trim their budget and go medicare like the rest of the over 65 year american population, it sucks, but guess what they are most likely headed for this scenario regardless of how much money the taxpayer throws at them. What you are asking is the poor mcdonalds worker to pay more out of his paycheck each month so that someone can afford to live a lifestyle he cannot. Is it the same scenario with giving the money to AIG and the banks HELL YEA IT IS, but just because it's wrong to give his money to AIG, doesn't make it right to give it to GM. JUST ASK HIM!



Honestly Tyson it bothers me that you don't seem to read my replies because I really am honestly trying to wrap my head around you perspective and the only thing I am able to ascertain is that since they gave money to AIG and the banks then they should give it to GM. While there may be some truth to the statement that it would be "better spent" giving the money GM, the reality is it's crime that any for profit corporation is being propped up by the american taxpayer. How would it make you feel if you went to work everyday busting your *** to keep a roof over your family's heads, buying less and less with each paycheck, you haven't been able to afford to take your family out to a nice dinner let alone a vacation and some AIG exec gets an all expense taxpayer funded ski trip? Now ask yourself this, would it make you feel any better if it were a GM employee with a house a lot larger then yours, a nice car and an income 2 or 3 times yours shrinking your paycheck? It's quite doubtful that either would be a comfort when you are explaining to your son that he'll have to put duct tape on his jeans cause the guy making pontiacs needs to eat at the Outback 3 times a week, it's pretty much the same view from the bottom