On Sat, Sep 18, 2010 at 2:07 PM, P N Stenquist <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Sep 18, 2010, at 12:49 PM, William Robb wrote: > >> >> -------------------------------------------------- >> From: "P N Stenquist" >> Subject: Re: OT: Civil Rights Photographer Unmasked as Informer >> >>> >> >>> Both of those actions helped prevent the country, and the city in which >>> I live, from going belly up. In terms of the auto bailouts, GM is now >>> thriving, and hiring people. Chrysler is close to being on an even keel as >>> well. Without the bailouts, Detroit would have become a living hell. >> >> Has it occurred to you that the reason GM and Chrysler needed bailouts is >> because they make junk vehicles and because they have an unsustainable >> business model? > > Who are you to contend is right! GM has made tremendous progress. Their > previous "business model" was the result of big labor beating them up for > half a century. No more. > > I'm engaged in some deep research on new engine designs. You'd be surprised > to learn who the laggards are. > > In any case, this discussion ended amicably, and in the interest of > preserving that truce, I'll have no more to say. > > Paul
And Big Labor has more say now with GM than they did before the Bankruptcy due to their pull with the Democratic Party and their partial ownership stake in GM itself while consumer confidence in GM is severely down. The fact that Lordstown is still a working plant tells everything you need to know about how much pull the UAW retains. A lot of the bailout for GM was simply a bailout to the UAW via the illegal preference towards the UAW over stockholders and debtors who would normally have precedence in a bankruptcy. GM may recover and become a successful company once again but they will never recover their reputation. A lot fewer people are interested in buying from Government Motors than were interested in buying from General Motors and sales over the last year show it. The best part of the GM and Chrysler bankruptcies is that they likely mean that there will be one major domestic brand in the future. Ford. Chrysler will eventually be subsumed into Fiat (or spat out like Daimler did, to fail again). GM's pretty clearly doing good engineering but retains lousy overall designs in the small car market and at best their midsizes are comparable to the competition (Malibu? Good car. But I can get just as good a car from Toyota or Ford and have more confidence that my warranty will matter and my dealer will still be there to fix it in a year). GM's continuing overabundance of Brands doesn't help it much either. GM completely lacks a standout product in the consumer car market. Yeah, they've got a good crossover SUV and great trucks but those don't matter as much as they did 5 years ago. Frankly, I expect to see GM back in bankruptcy within the next 10 years. And next time it will be worse than what would have happened if there had been no bailout. -Adam -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
