Why can’t we let it go bankrupt if it’s not making money? Why would you give money to a company that can’t make money back?
Is it possible that at some point a foreign auto company could take over GM with 51% by their decreasing stock price?
Nobody really cares for American cars nowadays except those rental companies, so what’s the point of keeping it?
welll.. with GM gone, they can get jobs at Japanese auto plants based in US.. so they can expand and make even nicer cars for the consumers.. American cars suck anyway.
Letting GM and the other domestic automakers fall into bankruptcy would just shift all the current obligations to the taxpayers. Pensions, health care, debt, unemployment from the job losses, etc. Not to mention there would be tremendous loss of tax revenue from the federal down to the local level. Plant closings don’t just impact the people working at the plant, but the towns around them. Restaurants, small & large businesses, schools and hospitals all will end up getting hurt.
All the Tier I,II,III parts manufacturers for GM will go under. The real estate market and the advertising market will be severely impacted if they were bankrupt. This will end up costing the taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars. Giving them a low interest loan is what they are asking for. And that will have to be paid back. With the current credit markets frozen, businesses can’t get the capital they need to get them through tough times.
You can argue that GM made mistakes in their product plans but they were responding to market conditions (as did Toyota, Nissan, Honda, BMW, Porsche and Mercedes with trucks and SUVs). This country needs to maintain a manufacturing base. Otherwise we will all be stocking shelves at Walmart with products made in China.
Have you by chance read J.D. Power or Consumer Reports lately? You will find the domestics are just as good and some cases better then the foreign models. C.R. will not automatically ‘recommend’ Toyota anymore because of their major slippage in quality the past few years. It’s sad that the perception of quality has not caught up with reality for so many people yet.
Did you know that GM has licensed their intellectual property to many other well known auto companies, like BMW and Ferrari? BMW has been buying GM transmissions for years and Ferrari uses their Magnetic Ride Control in their quarter million dollar 599. Yeah, we all know they built some sub-par models the past 20 years, but not everything they built was sub-par. Their trucks and SUVs are top rated. They are coming out with a really nice hybrid, the Volt.
And no, I don’t work for GM or any of their subsidiaries.
