No the answer is throw the management out, make the unions concede and overhaul the brands.

In the mean time, give them the money.

Anybody care to analyze the bank deals to this level of scrutiny? It just seems to hit a nerve here because we are car guys. Citigroup anybody? AIG? Come on, lets discuss this to this detail. The 25 B for the car makers is a squirt of piss in the financial pool at this point.

Darren

That's what I've been saying all along. The banker bailout is up to 7 trillion dollars. Thats right, 7 trillion, with a T. 7,000,000,000,000 of our tax dollars going to reward bad decisions and corruption on Wall St, not to mention foreign entities.

But no one give's a rats ass about that, they just want to throw GM off a cliff and pitch a bitch about the unions, management and 16mpg SUV's.

Do you guys understand the ramifications of too many large banks/insurance/financials being allowed to fail? I don't think you do. It is paramount to keep the financial system intact. Things are very bad, but we are lucky they are not worse than they are!

You can't just equate the $ amount of a bank bailout to what the Big 3 are asking for. The automakers do not keep the financial system flowing and operating like AIG, Citi, etc do. If you guys do not understand finance, banking, flow of money, and how the Fed, FDIC, major banks,etc are all interrelated, then you will just not understand. It is quite complicated no doubt.

The amount is small in comparison, sure, but the Big 3 did a pathetic job in front of Congress last week in their attempt to get the money. Unprepared, no plan, and pompous I would say. They didn't deserve the money with that poor showing!

It sucks that the people behind the banks/financials are not being penalized, but unfortunately the bailouts are for the greater good, believe it or not.

It all sucks, and it looks wrong, but again, we could be in a lot worse shape than we are. And that is what is pretty scary right now.

6. It never looks good when you step off your Lear Jet with a Tin Cup in your hand.

GM and the other two still cannot fail. Period.

Flash and Tony I agree with you 100%. I think the issue with the banks is transparency and liability. Hold the guys responsible for the problem. The subprime mess is very small to the grand scheme of fraud those guys were cooking. If you want to solve the problem on wall street, start taking guys mansions in the hamptons and jewelery off of their wives and girlfriends necks. The mess the bankers have caused is akin to robbery...

I guess the point I am trying to make is that nobody asked what the banks 'plans' were, AIG has taken 2 corporate retreat trips since the bailout money, they all showed up in DC on corporate jets and no one said a word. I do understand how the ebb and flow of money and how important banking is, in fact, that is part of the problem. The day banking and paper pushing out stripped manufacturing as a nations main source of productivity, there is serious issues, as we are currently seeing.

It just sucks that the big 3 roll in and everyone says you guys made crappy decisions and didn't provide a product people would buy. Like Tony said, union deals, bad management, 16 MPG SUV etc. While flying in on private jets is mind boggling, it happened. (It is the same reason I make visit customers in my 2000 Chevy Silverado, with 175K on the clock. I do not need the perception that I am over charging for my services)

My opinion is this, level the playing field by wiping out the unions, work on better trade deals with the foreign companies that build cars here, and bring in better management. The issue at hand is the legacy costs are what is sucking the money at GM. That is why they cannot weather the storm. The money flows no matter what is going on. Unlike other manufacturing plants, that idle workers, shift work weeks, cut shifts, etc, their monthly nut to the retirees never changes.

Like I said before, manufacturing supports 4 jobs for every 1. Loose a factory in your town, several machine shops, and engineering firms go with it.

There should be a bail out but the money should be given to the buyers of the big three products.

Think about the discount you could be given?? If you were given $5000(or??) cash to buy a US built product that already has dealer incentives???? .What would say 15 billion in cash incentives equal for say 2 years of sales? Talk about leveling the playing field. It would be a hard deal to beat. Problem is it will never happen as they want the money for operating expenses and salaries. Just like with the banks, at this point sending out $10k checks would boost spending and kill debt but instead it will get burried into a tangled untraceable where did it go mess.

Not even worth the typing as most can see nobody can give a rats ass as they will just roll over and buy an Import. WHO CARES??? Just like who cares that we are at war???

It isn't the failing money wise it is a death blow to America as we know it. ZERO loyalty. The Co's have already sold out so why not!!

I Gotta get that English or should I say Spanish to Japanese dictionary!!

Fail? No. Undergo a govt managed bankruptcy? Yes. We cannot allow a huge part of our domestic manufacturing base to collapse, nor can the population and pols tolerate it being sucked up by a foreign firm.

Many members of this forum seem to think Chapter 11 means they disappear and that is simply not true. The core suppliers and dealer network will remain if it is a managed bankruptcy.

The benefits of undergoing a managed chapter 11 have already been listed in previous posts. Managed means the govt gives the companies and their associated suppliers/ dealers federal guarantees of credit (just like fannie and freddie mae/mac) while allowing federal bankruptcy judges to oversee their restructuring.
The down side and upside of restructuring has also been stated in previous posts. People face it: this problem has 2 possible outcomes.

1. The govt loans them money WITH a wall street type set of stipulations. Those stipulations will be heavily laced with POLITICAL manipulation and agendas. The one most Americans (especially gearheads) will take issue is the sub cabinet level auto czar that will oversee the federal/legislative mandated restructuring. There are many powerful interest groups who hate the internal combustion engine and will seek to influence our govt as they (politicians) go about mandating to the domestic manufacturers the type of cars they will produce. Can you say small, green and cute? Geo metro anyone?
The problem with this option is that they will have spent billions of taxpayer dollars getting lean, mean and cute n green, but Americans still won't want to buy the line up that the federal govt said they must build. Think I'm wrong? Think the pols will give a big loan to an industry that 30% of their political constituents loathe without telling them exactly what they will do with it? The extreme wing of the green movt has a lot of lawyers and lobbyists.

2. The companies go into managed chapter 11 under the purview of federal bankruptcy judges. The govt provides loans/ guarantees to the companies along with suppliers and dealers.

The companies emerge lean n mean (white and blue collar) without federal mandates on the exact type of car they have to build and the companies took a near fatal measure of pain for their hubris and poor decisions.
I would rather trust my tax dollars and the future of domestic manufacturing to a group of bi-partisan bankruptcy courts than an executive/legislative cabinet appointee any day.

The bottom line is that the govt has to round off the sharp edges of a private sector failure, not catch the whole thing less it end up taking one of those edges through the chest. There is famous quote from the savings and loan meltdown of the 1980s: “Capitalism without bankruptcy is like religion without hell”.

Well said. Look at the airlines. Many of them have done fine in a similar scenario.

Please, enlighten us then, because I'd love to know just how creating 7 trillion out of thin air is good for our financial system and the value of our currency. Take a look at how the little beta test turned out in Iceland and then tell me how a private financial system, like the Federal Reserve, isn't in control of/or in cahoots with our government to loot out this entire country.

But sure, go ahead and kick GM to the curb and let them dwindle to nothing until they are forced to go under, while one of the international banks that was injected with bailout money, like Citigroup Inc, invests in China so they can buy GM up for pennies on the dollar.

This is what really burns me... How many billions have we given to Citi now? How many are they going to lay off? And they're STILL going to spend nearly a half billion on naming rights to a stupid baseball field? It's incredibly sickening.