It was American manufacturing that helped the US win WWII. It also saved alot of American lives.

Maybe, if it had gone the other way. Alot of these naysayers would not even exist. They would have no parents or grand parents.

GM cars dont last?

We have..

2001 Cadillac DTS 182k miles.
2003 Saturn VUE 147k miles.

Just bought a new 2009 Chevrolet Traverse. (01/03/2009)

Others we have had..

1992 Pontiac Bonneville. 232k.
1993 Cadillac SLS. 224k.
1987 Buick turbo. 230k.

http://nomedals.blogspot.com/2008/11/gm-bailout-makes-no-sense.html

Without the THREE U.S. automakers combining into one there is no rationality to bailing out GM. GM’s cash burn is triple the street estimate and has lost all control over its sales, its product development and its future. The executives and the unions have the company hostage to government capital infusion. Bankruptcy is a viable answer that can push off creditors and force unions and management to make concessions that are impossible unless a loaded gun is at their head. There is too much capacity, too many models, too many plants, too many employees producing products that are more easily produced by others. The VW bug was the first indication that the Big Three did not have a clue to the needs and long-term preferences of the U.S. consumer. And today we have a glut of SUV’s that will ultimately have to be sold at a first-ever half-price sale. GM has already built them, they have already paid for them and no one wants them. You need cash, blow them out the door ½ price or less and they are out of inventory and cash hits the balance sheet.

But to infuse GM with cash to keep it afloat without bankruptcy is no answer because next in line will be Ford and Chrysler. These three should be forced to combine and re-form to use their talents and capacity to building something we all need and that is energy independence.

There is one industry that has a payback that cannot be overlooked as a place to re-train and invest and that is in renewable energy. Train those people, insist that the manufacturing capacity of GM be converted to energy and produce, once and for all, a source of energy that once in place CAN NEVER GO UP IN PRICE. In World War II Ford built a massive number of B-24’s in their new Willow Run plant in Ypsilanti. That change in production and product proved that it can be done and Ford did a spectacular job producing that airplane to the considerable consternation to the Nazi war machine. Fast forward to 2008 and our enemy is our own waste and inefficiency; energy independence is crucial to our national safety and we can actually budget part of our national defense budget to this end.

I am not against giving money to GM…but I am against giving them money to build products that have no measurable or important upside to our economy long-term. I am against giving money to GM with Ford looking like that doggie in the window. Force them into solar, wind, wave and nuclear. Support them in their endeavor to re-tool and you got my money. Absent that, you will not get me to suggest giving them, their workers or their bloated retirees belly-aching about their co-pay when millions have no health care a single dime.

The side benefits are obvious: our defense structure is enhanced because we no longer have to depend on a cartel of Bedouins in the Middle-East to determine for us how much oil we are going to use and our environment actually can become healthy in L.A. vs. choking to death sitting in traffic on the five. We put a pin in our energy costs once in for all and bankrupt our dear friends in the middle east forcing them to drive Chevy Cobalts and trade in their Bentleys.

Here is what we said about the Chrysler/GM merger talk=
“Two drunks walking down the street
holding each other up…
until they hit the curb,
then they both fall down”

I agree that Chapter 11 may be preferable to a bailout, but then there a lot of degrees of bailout to consider before we pronounce this as cut and dried. Just as it’s silly to go into panic mode and throw money at every problem I think it’s equally so to stamp *let ‘em fail* on every struggling industry as if the risks of failure aren’t immense. The complexities of the current crisis and the way they seem to undermine almost every corner of our economy with a termitic inexorability isn’t going to be answered with broad stroke ideology. The dismal science indeed.

See now ,this is where I’ve got to put my lawyers hat on and say Chapter 11 does not mean “let `em fail.”

Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code is all about reorganization, mostly for corporations (I won’t get into the exceptions to that rule) and while not all of them are successful, many of them are.

When you’re talking about a company like G.M. that has a tremendous asset base but is saddled with enormous debt, reorganization under the Bankruptcy Code is exactly what’s needed to save a company that otherwise would collapse into nothingness and leave workers, shareholders, pensioners, and (if we go forward with this foolhardly bailout) taxpayers with absolutely nothing.

I agree that Chapter 11 may be preferable to a bailout, but then there a lot of degrees of bailout to consider before we pronounce this as cut and dried. Just as it’s silly to go into panic mode and throw money at every problem I think it’s equally so to stamp *let ‘em fail* on every struggling industry as if the risks of failure aren’t immense. The complexities of the current crisis and the way they seem to undermine almost every corner of our economy with a termitic inexorability isn’t going to be answered with broad stroke ideology. The dismal science indeed.

A General Motors Chapter 11 would admittedly be big and complex and I wouldn’t envy the Judge assigned to preside over it, but there’s absolutely nothing about Chapter 11 or General Motors that would suggest the two are incompatible.

In fact, I would say, and have been saying for weeks now, that the situation that GM is in right now is precisely what Chapter 11 was created to remedy.

As for gerry’s comment: I’m a tricky one to pin down. I’ve always thought trust busting can be a useful government tool to preserve the market. I kinda think that, if you believe it’s a great idea to have concentrated wealth and power in specific industries, you’re not a capitalist. You’re an oligarch. Trust busting is an extreme remedy, but if a company is seriously abusing the free market, it’s one we should have available to us. I kinda think asking the government for billions in bailout dollars is abusing the free market. But I could be swayed away with a good counter-argument.

I agree completely

Yea, there will be a price to pay in either case but the real question ought to be what the best method for cleaning up the mess. Bankruptcy can do that, a government bailout most assuredly will not.

And we’ll pay in higher unemployment, and we’ll pay in lost economic production and reduced consumer spending on the pat of all who lose their jobs. It would be a huge and painful waste of currently existing labor and manufacturing capacity to just let such a huge enterprise collapse.

If there’s anything to criticize Alan for, it’s for not explicitly talking about labor costs. If we split GM up into 3 companies who pay their workers $25+ per hour plus great benefits and generous pensions, we’ll just replace 1 big uncompetitive company with 3.

[B]reaking GM into more companies means more competition, more opportunity for dynamic decision making and less chance for one company’s failure to bring down the national economy.

How do we know that ? Because some guy from the University of Chicago said so ? And who’s to say that Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel, or some government bureaucrat have any idea how to run a car company ?

What we’d like to ensure for the future are U.S. automakers that, in the event of failure, would be obligated to use the same Chapter 11 rules available to all other failing businesses. Right now, GM’s immense size means we have to give it special treatment.

If we allow G.M., and by extension Ford and Chrysler, to bypass the already existing mechanism of Chapter 11 reorganization in favor of a taxpayer-funded bailout, then you’re essentially guaranteeing that any future “big” company will also be deemed “too big to reorganize”

And one other point — this idea that the “American auto industry” isn’t diverse enough for GM to go into bankruptcy only makes sense if you think that the auto industry that existed in the 1960s has any relationship to the way that industry is today. The auto industry is more than just GM and Chrysler, it includes a host of “foreign” companies who build and sell automobiles in the United States.

The main reason that GM is hurting is because it can’t compete with the likes of Honda and Toyota. That’s not reason enough to make taxpayers who don’t want to buy their cars bail them out from their own mistakes.