Goodbye GM

[mocksluzer]

GM declared bankruptcy today. It's been a long time coming, and something that needed to happen, imo, for this economy to get turned around. For no reason should failing companies that have employed failing policies for decades be allowed to survive, much less held up by tax money when it's clear the taxpayers do not want their money spent that way. It's incredibly unfortunate that about 20,000 more people are going to lose their jobs because of this. For that reason alone I wish this hadn't happened. As much as I hate to say it, here's an opinion article from Michael Moore that makes some decent points about GM prior to bankruptcy, and what should be done from here on out with the factories and the workers. His points about the light rail is dead-on. It is a travesty that the technology for light-rail trains, which can almost triple the speed of the average train, has existed for nearly 6 decades, yet the US has not one. single. light-rail train. I'll probably regret this later:

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?id=248

[billyez]

That article is why I'm so ambivalent about the government owning General Motors. That article is basically asking President Obama to nationalize the auto industry and "never let a good crisis go to waste" as Rahm Emanuel would say. It's begging the Obama Administration to turn the government's ownerhsip of General Motors into a liberal wishlist. No one's going to complain about light rail, but I sure would complain about that two dollar tax...

Best case scenario, President Obama means what he says: He doesn't want to be in the auto industry and wants to get out of the business as soon as possible. I hope that's true.

[crl529]

The UAW economically strangled GM to death and then begged the government (aka you and me) to pay for an enormous bailout. Not to hate on auto workers, but how could the auto companies in Detroit have possibly been competitive with the non-union Japanese auto plants in the South while paying out such luxurious benefits to their workers?

[Rane]

The UAW economically strangled GM to death and then begged the government (aka you and me) to pay for an enormous bailout. Not to hate on auto workers, but how could the auto companies in Detroit have possibly been competitive with the non-union Japanese auto plants in the South while paying out such luxurious benefits to their workers?

Maybe, if they produced just one or two reliable/good cars. But that's a big maybe.

Don't forget that the first Hybrid designs, were created by a US car company, and then sold (to a japanese automaker) in order to expand the company's SUV productions.

How do you get to such a high position in a large company and lack such basic foresight?