GM Recall

2014-04-0309:10:01Free Enterprise at its typical best behaviour: Cry for a bailout when wou can't make it. Deny that anything is wrong. Take no responsibility when you screw up.

Says it all, in two lines.  Sad, but true.
....but you forgot.... "too big to fail"...which it is, for the people directly and indirectly involved.  An albatross that cannot be removed without pain.

Stop confusing OLDGM with NEWGM. The vast majority of decisions are OLDGM which doesn't exist with any money any more. Place to put the bad assets essentially. The OLDGM management are all gone. New leader of NEWGM is a woman and she and her teams are trying to pick up the pieces that OLDGM left. As far as the bailout. You would have let GM and Chrysler go under???? I kinda doubt it after they talked to you about what that would mean. Too big to fail is a political concept not a legal one. I am all for making companies small enough to fail but do you really think that is going to happen?

Why were the taxpayers bailing out private owners at Chrysler who then preceded to sell the company to another bankrupt auto maker, Fiat? One of the big reasons Chrysler was broke was the buyout by private hedgers who then proceeded to hand the bill for their bad judgment to the taxpayers. You didn't even have the benefit of helping retirement funds that had Chrysler stock because there wasn't any.

What would have happened if GM had been allowed to go chapter 9 and the parts of it worth saving were bought by companies and managements who actually know how to make good cars and a profit?  Like Ford, for example or Honda. Would Cadillac, Buick and the truck part of the company be better off on their own or under a company that wouldn't burden it with loses from crap like the Chevy Volt and the Cobalt?

Instead, GM is still saddled with contracts and liabilities it doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of paying off.  The taxpayers are out a lot of money and very little has been changed otherwise.

Free enterprise includes the right to go broke and get reorganized.  It shouldn't include government interference and bailouts.  And this particularly includes the banksters. This is one of the big reasons the super rich rich have gotten rich faster than ever before, thanks to money printing and bailouts that have created yet another balloon, this one the stock market.

Capitalism works far better than European style corporatist socialism. We should stick to it.

I agree Mainecoon but politically you know as well as I do that GM and Chrysler were not going to be allowed to fail because they were too big to fail.  Actually Fiat buying Chrysler was arranged and is a good thing for both companies.  Chrysler has access now to high tech small motors and small v6 diesels that are now going into Dodge 1/2 tons.  Fiat gets access to minivans and jeeps for Europe.  It is actually a good deal for both as they could not survive long term without each other or a different partner.  It costs a billion dollars to develop a chassis nowadays thus all the sharing going on.  Nissan shares platforms with three other manufactures. Toyota and Suburu make a sports car and share it.

Below is an article on the bailout and how the payback is working. This is from Ward auto blog. I admit it is from the auto industry mouth but it does mention
what is left to pay back.  I am actually surprised at how much is paid back.  I have no love for GM but I do think folks are too hard on NEW management and
I would look at the situation a year from now.  I think this NEWGM leader is a good one.  She does understand how bad the reputation of GM is.

Z

From Wards auto::::::::
General Motors has rejoined the Standard & Poor’s 500 and 100 after being kicked off the list when it went through a U.S.-government orchestrated bankruptcy. This has triggered another round of griping from critics who say the rescue of GM and Chrysler from liquidation was a waste of taxpayer money and a giveaway to President Obama’s union friends.

To these unhappy taxpayers I say: Relax, your $80 billion auto bailout loan is paid in full and you also have received handsome interest and dividends.

I also would like to tell unhappy taxpayers that it is true hundreds of thousands of Americans, many belonging to the United Auto Workers union, did indeed keep their jobs because of the bailout. But hundreds of thousands of non-union blue-collar and white-collar employees at auto-related suppliers, dealerships and small businesses also kept their jobs thanks to the bailout.

GM and Chrysler have paid off their outstanding financial obligations, but bailout bashers still complain about the potential loss taxpayers’ face when the government sells off the remaining shares of GM stock it owns.

The government took a $49.5 billion stake in GM in 2009 as part of the auto maker’s structured bankruptcy. It since has sold part of its GM stake in a late-2010 initial public offering, and the auto maker bought back another chunk of shares earlier this year.

The Treasury Dept. wants to sell its remaining 18% holding by early next year. Analysts say it has to sell the remaining shares for an average of $79 to break even on this part of the bailout.

That’s not going to happen. GM stock almost has doubled in price since last July to $35, but most analysts say the Treasury will take about a $20 billion hit when the government fully divests its holdings.

Even so, that shortfall already has been covered by more serious losses the bailout averted.

According to a study by the highly regarded Ann Arbor, MI-based Center for Automotive Research, more than 1 million jobs would have disappeared if the U.S. government had not rescued GM and Chrysler and their respective GMAC and Chrysler Financial credit units. The cost to U.S. taxpayers of those job eliminations in 2009 and 2010 would have amounted to $28.6 billion in lost income tax revenues, unpaid social security taxes and other negatives related to catastrophic unemployment levels.

“On a 2-year ROI (2009-2010), the government would be ‘made whole’ if it recovered all but $28.6 billion of the $80 billion extended to GM, GMAC, Chrysler and Chrysler financial due to the net public benefits,” says  Kristin Dziczek, director-Labor and Industry Group, CAR.

As long as the Treasury loss on GM stock is less than $28.6 billion, “It’s better than a wash,” she says. “The important piece that many critics (of the bailout) miss is the cost of doing nothing was not zero.”  

Indeed. The auto bailouts were not speculative investments aimed at delivering a fat return to John Q. Public. They were designed to avoid an economic apocalypse that would have rivaled the Great Depression, especially in the industrial Midwest.

“I didn't want there to be 21% unemployment,” former President George W. Bush told the National Automobile Dealers convention in 2012, explaining why he initiated the auto bailout with $17.5 billion in bridge loans prior to Obama taking office in 2009.

The plan worked.

New products such as the Cadillac ATS, Jeep Grand Cherokee and Ram pickup are piling up awards and raking in profits. Factory utilization rates are at all-time highs.

Skeptics who claimed wiping out the debts of GM and Chrysler would put Ford at a disadvantage because it did not receive bailout money were wrong. Ford has emerged from the dark days of 2008 and 2009 with some of its most stylish, fuel-efficient and profitable vehicles ever and its factory utilization rates are among the highest in the industry.

Soaring light-vehicle production has been a primary driver of employment and gross domestic product growth for the past three years. For the first time in decades, Detroit Three labor costs and quality are competitive with Toyota, Honda and Nissan.

So let’s review. A Republican President and Democrat President both agreed to save two failing iconic U.S. auto makers because they believed it was the right thing to do for the U.S. economy and the good of the country.

The strategy worked. Both auto makers now are the healthiest they have been in decades. The government loans are paid back, and there even is a few billion extra left over. Let’s call that interest, because that’s what it is. And the U.S. economy now is getting back on track, thanks in no small part to the reviving U.S. auto industry. That’s a whopper of a dividend.

It is sad many Americans are so blinded by ideology they no longer can recognize success when they see it.

dwinter@wardsauto.com

Keep reading on this Zed. The taxpayers lost money and the unfunded pension liability of GM is way beyond its ability to pay. Respectfully your fluff piece is just that.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/briansolomon/2013/12/09/treasury-sells-final-gm-shares-sticking-taxpayers-with-10-million-loss/

Treasury recouped a total of $39 billion from their original GM bailout of $49.5 billion, losing just over $10 billion on the initiative.

That's a 20 percent loss.

Then last month, The Economic Times reported that "GM's pension obligation to UAW-represented workers in the United States was $71 billion at the end of 2011, the last time the Detroit company detailed its blue-collar pension obligation. That exceeds GM's current market value by almost $20 billion."

http://www.investmentu.com/article/detail/34693/nyse-gm-more-trouble-for-general-motors#.Uz2ojqjmxwc

Had GM been allowed to fail, it would have ended up with labor contracts that it could afford.

BTW, you might also want to notice that the bulk of GM's profits are coming from either Cadillac or sales of those big honking trucks. Now they have this recall which is going to be very big and financially damaging.

This reliance on truck sales is true of both of the U.S. automakers, GM and Ford. Chrysler is no longer a U.S. company. It is a cash cow that is ripe for bleeding dry by bleeding Fiat. That's a separate topic that is quite interesting to read about as well.

fiat will be just fine

I beg to disagree the Forbes article says 10 billion not recovered . If GM and Chrysler would have gone under I assure you much more than 10 billion would have been lost in GM, Chrysler, Delphi, and all the other companies that supply parts for the automakers. I don't understand why you don't understand this Mainecoon. Both articles said the same thing. You just liked the title better on the Forbes article because it supports your argument. Besides do you hate the Boeing subsidy from the federal government... Oh yea that is different. No its not.  So what if Chrysler is not a US company it use to be a german company before some awful company bought them. Fiat is a good partner for Chrysler. Both companies were too small to survive.  Also they did end up with a much
better labor contract without going under. If you want to push the Midwest into depression just make GM and Chrysler go under.  Now I agree they should have been made to go under but they have to be small enough so that we can survive them going under. We don't have this situation right now and won't ever as long as corporations in the US have rights which they do. We don't really have a free enterprise system when you or I go broke we go broke when GM goes broke we pay for it.  That's not free enterprise but we have to fix the size problem otherwise a big company going down will take the economy with it. We don't disagree that much. I just don't have as much faith in free enterprise when only small/medium companies and people are allowed to go broke and large companies get a pass just like rich folks avoid paying taxes. I probably would have let Chrysler go down and saved GM as a lesson for companies. It still would have been very bloody for the Midwest If Chrysler alone had gone down and I would be the most hated person in the Midwest for doing it so why would you expect a politico to do the right thing? They can't. Bush did the same thing as Obama. No political choice.

Zed, I can only suggest you do more reading on this topic.  The money was lost.  GM has a lot of unresolved issues that would have been resolved with a normal reorganization.  Those issues are going to explode in the next recession.  They include huge pension liabilities on overly generous union contracts and excessive dependence on high margin gas guzzling trucks.  And a bunch of very marginal leases are counted as sales which will start to come due shortly and those vehicles will have to be recycled.

Sorry, but I don't think the taxpayers should have been bailing out wholly private companies like Chrysler whose balance sheets were screwed up by the financial bandits who took it private to begin with.  I really don't think U.S. taxpayers should be doing back door foreign aid to Italians.

When it was sold to a foreign company American taxpayers lost money on that.  That is not OK with me.  Worse, Fiat may suck the thing dry and a lot of jobs get lost anyway.

Here's a pretty dispassionate analysis of those losses and the problems here that remain with these companies.

http://www.heritage.org/research/testimony/2013/08/auto-bailout-or-uaw-bailout-taxpayer-losses-came-from-subsidizing-union-compensation

I can't imagine why you are getting emotional about this.  It's over and done with.  You can beg to disagree all you want but the numbers don't change, the basic problems that put these two companies into the crapper don't change and the reality they face as middle class incomes continue to fall under current policies in the U.S. doesn't change.  The country lost an opportunity with both the auto companies, wall street and the banks to straighten out a lot of distortions in the system and hand a little payback to the guilty parties, which definitely includes management, unions and banks.  Instead, huge sums of money were printed to bail them out and at some point the bill is going to land on the young people of America.

" You would have let GM and Chrysler go under????"

What should be done about Crosley, Studebaker, Hudson, etc. Has the earth shifted on its axis with their failures? It surely would have been interesting to see what filled the void if things were allowed to work themselves out. GM is on the way to insolvency again.

Why is it assumed they would have gone under? There's this thing called Chapter 11. It allows companies like GM and Chrysler to reorganize, shed the deadwood and move on. It would have worked the same way for the banks. Instead, many of the abuses and weaknesses have been papered over only to return when the inevitable recession comes back.

All those manufactures you mentioned had such a small percentage of the market that it didn't matter when they went under. Now I understand statistics can be played with but the following quote makes my point about daisychain economic collapse. Also GM cars are selling very well. Look at the latest sales reports. It is far beyond trucks. Also the real debt number is 12 billion not paid back due to GMAC which was bailed out though I don't know why we bailed out a finance company. Also Mainecoon if you won't accept my Wards auto article why should I accept your Heritage article. A well known right wing lobby organization.  Just being fair. As far as GM and Chrysler making it through the BR process they would have gone under. Tell me what assets they had??
No company with GM and Chryslers bottom line after 2007 would make it through BR. Maybe for GM Trucks, Cad and Corvette might be resold. Do you think in our own words that somebody would want to buy the Cobalt assembly line? Now Chrysler could sell Jeep, Dodge, and maybe the minivans. Nobody would want to buy the current 200 model for example. The world has about a 10% overcapacity kept up by political pressure. Saab was the last one to go bye bye and no one cared because it was a very small percentage of the market share. I do wonder why Sweden didn't bail them out. Good for them.

Center for Automotive Research article

According to a study by the highly regarded Ann Arbor, MI-based Center for Automotive Research, more than 1 million jobs would have disappeared if the U.S. government had not rescued GM and Chrysler and their respective GMAC and Chrysler Financial credit units. The cost to U.S. taxpayers of those job eliminations in 2009 and 2010 would have amounted to $28.6 billion in lost income tax revenues, unpaid social security taxes and other negatives related to catastrophic unemployment levels.


Here is the latest form GM on sales last month. FYI

March Retail Sales Highlights (vs. 2013)
•Deliveries of the Chevrolet Silverado, the 2014 North American Truck of the Year, were up 14 percent and the GMC Sierra was up 23 percent.
•During the month, Vincentric, which uses a proprietary model to measure cost of ownership attributes including depreciation, fuel, insurance, maintenance and repair costs, said the Chevrolet Silverado family has the lowest cost among full-size pickups.
•Deliveries of Chevrolet passenger cars were up 10 percent. The Spark was up 17 percent; Sonic was up 20 percent; the Volt was up 7 percent; the Impala was up 103 percent; and the Corvette, the 2014 North American Car of the Year, was up 221 percent.
•Deliveries of the Cadillac SRX were up 37 percent. In addition, the CTS family was up 11 percent on the strength of the new 2014 CTS sedan, which is the 2014 Motor Trend Car of the Year.
•Sales of the Buick Regal were up 52 percent and the Encore was up 71 percent.
•Sales of large SUVs were up 62 percent, with availability of the all-new 2015 models building, per plan.
•GM’s incentives as a percentage of average transaction prices, or ATPs, were 10 percent compared with 10.3 percent for the industry, according to J.D. Power PIN estimates through March 23. That is down from February and year over year.
•GM’s ATPs set a new record of about $34,000, up about $2,000 per unit from February and more than $3,800 from a year ago, according to J.D. Power PIN estimates.

The OP is getting exactly what he wanted - a political discussion.  Imagine that!

No I think it is a good discussion and everybody is making good points. You can't talk the auto business worldwide without talking some politics.

Mainecoons has echoed his same style of argumentation that he used when litigating the LCS debacle.
Easy to see why he never joined the bar as an advocate trial attorney. Doubt if he would have won many cases, but would have kept many juries and judges confused.

Zedinmexico wrote:No I think it is a good discussion and everybody is making good points.  You can't talk the auto business worldwide without talking some politics.

Everybody???  Basically there are only two people debating and the logic and facts seem to be a little one-sided.  
Zed, your analysis seems to bear weight, albeit, a little choppy in articulation.

What is the title of this OP? Let me help you out - GM Recall. Wasn't this dealt with extensively in a previous post where the actual topic was followed? Fact of the matter is that people were killed or injured due to GM negligence and calloused indifference to human lives!

It has since evolved into a discussion on the merits, or lack of, of the government bailout, and whether GM owes nothing, a little, or a lot.
It was a choice between the bad and the ugly, as there wasn't any "good", that would have made everybody happy.

Personally, I am just waiting for Zed to turn this into a discussion about TSA or the Border Patrol and how unfair the US Govt. is!

CheenaGringo wrote:Personally, I am just waiting for Zed to turn this into a discussion about TSA or the Border Patrol and how unfair the US Govt. is!

Why don't you hold your breath while you're waiting? 

slainte39 wrote:Mainecoons has echoed his same style of argumentation that he used when litigating the LCS debacle.
Easy to see why he never joined the bar as an advocate trial attorney. Doubt if he would have won many cases, but would have kept many juries and judges confused.

Too bad you can't address my points as usual so you start with the personal commentary, the last refuge here of the factually challenged.  I'm sorry that you find concepts like pension liabilities exceeding the value of the business or the implications of sales based on gas guzzling vehicles and lease sales to shaky buyers hard to grasp.  Perhaps you should refrain from participating in threads where things are not all determined by your personal likes and dislikes.

Nothing personal other than addressing your conclusions which contain a lot of mays/ifs/assumptions/printing money references that are speculation at best, hence my saying "confusion".
There isn't any charted course for the future, especially in the world of business and finance, so your predictions are.....nothing more than predictions. The style I refer to, is the certainty, that you seem to believe that your analysis is correct. It's a logarithm without possibilities.
No need to address your points/facts as Zed did a good job without need for further refutations. If futurists held to your style of thinking, there would be little room for maneuvering for business or political leaders when the present caught up with the future.

PS...I think the last sentence of your last post applies more to you, than me.

Zed posted an op ed, I posted sources with actual numbers that show GM is hardly a sound business.  The 71 billion dollar unfunded pension liability is not speculation, it is fact just as it is fact that this amount exceeds the market value of GM by 20 percent.  It is also not speculation that GM's revenues depend on large part from the sale of trucks and the "sale" of vehicles through leasing, which isn't a sale at all.  Again, these facts are readily found in the mainstream financial press.

You didn't address my conclusions, you addressed me in order to hide the fact that you can't address the data and sources I posted and you are obviously confused as to the difference between present, established data and future speculation.  I would suggest that Zed's piece is engaging in a lot more speculation and offering little substance to back it up.

Here's what the financial press thinks of GM:

http://blogs.barrons.com/stockstowatchtoday/2014/02/13/general-motors-it-just-gets-worse/

The government got in the way of a sound reorganization of GM and in the process, illegally stiffed secured creditors including pension funds.  The loss of over 13 billion on the close out of the government's GM stock holdings was admitted by the Obama administration yet we have Zed here denying it and you apparently not understanding it.

And of course you wouldn't want to admit that your post was much more reflective of your personal dislikes than it was of your grasp of the topic.  That's why you trotted out LCS, which has nothing at all to do about this topic but does serve to illustrate your confusion on that topic as well.

Mainecoons wrote:
And of course you wouldn't want to admit that your post was much more reflective of your personal dislikes than it was of your grasp of the topic.  That's why you trotted out LCS, which has nothing at all to do about this topic but does serve to illustrate your confusion on that topic as well.

Ok....I'll admit it??? for whatever that is worth, but it has nothing personal (as you keep saying) to do with you or me, as we don't know each other personally. It has to do with the style of your argumentation; whether this topic or the LCS topic (which I haven't dog in the fight), that is the bone of my contention. You are never wrong, even when what Zed wrote vs. your prognostications, is much more the realism of the day.
People are working, automobiles are being manufactured, and satellite industries are thriving; but you go off on what is going "to happen" as though you had some sort of crystal ball.
This isn't a personal insult but an observation and opinion of your delivery...."arrogance without substance"

Again, most of the sources I posted are stating current numbers.  I don't know how much more substance I can give you, I've cited credible references.  Did you read them?  Why do you feel the need to address your personal perceptions of the delivery rather than to post your analysis/rebuttals of the facts I've cited. Really, that is all that this was, you didn't address the topic at all:

Mainecoons has echoed his same style of argumentation that he used when litigating the LCS debacle.
Easy to see why he never joined the bar as an advocate trial attorney. Doubt if he would have won many cases, but would have kept many juries and judges confused.

I can guarantee you I'll read your citations.  If I'm wrong, let's see the proof.

GM may survive or it may not but the business press is pretty clear that the problems that would have been dealt with by allowing it to go into Chapter 11 reorganization have not been dealt with in large part, particularly the pension liabilities.  GM is still overpaying the help and covering for it with a temporary boost in sales from those big, gas eating trucks.  When will those chickens come home to roost?

I can't see the future anymore than you can, for example I didn't foresee the stock market balloon that Bernake's money printing would cause.  I do believe that like the housing balloon caused by easy money, this one is going to unravel at some point.  I would suggest that if you've profited by a right call on this situation that you not wait too long to take the money and run.  The fundamentals aren't there.

As for LCS, again, I cited the factual basis from the organization's governing laws and from the original 2009 minutes of how the Board at that time decided to turn a lump sum grant into an ongoing fund.  You may be interested to know that the entire Gillespie thing is being reviewed by the professional and qualified auditors that LCS has retained to move their book keeping up to the next level as a prelude to dealing with the new tax law.

This is just another indication that our elected LCS governors understand their limits and keep an open mind.  I don't see any of them posting the personal attacks and rants on these boards that this small handful of protagonists have entertained us with, do you?

May I suggest that the arrogance comes in when people substitute personal attack for honest debate of factual information and the interpretation thereof?