Display:
Foreign sales to pay (Old, New) GM debt | Bloomberg | 16 Nov 2009

[Old] GM intends to make a payment of $1 billion a quarter, with the first installment Dec. 31, said the person, who requested not to be identified because the transaction hasn't been announced publicly. The Treasury Department is unlikely to recover all of the aid it provided, a congressional oversight panel said in a report Sept. 9....

"[New?] GM's sales in North America and China, especially, are doing quite well," said Masatoshi Nishimoto, a Tokyo-based analyst at auto consulting company CSM Worldwide. "The company may finally be seeing some light at the end of the tunnel."...

[New] GM Chairman Ed Whitacre said in an interview Nov. 10 that "it's conceivable" the automaker [Old GM] could repay some of the government aid this year. The Obama administration named Whitacre, the former chief executive officer and chairman of Dallas-based AT&T Inc., to lead the board after the U.S. bailout gave the government a 61 percent ownership stake.

The automaker [Old, New GM] is trying to build on its results in October, when its monthly U.S. sales rose for the first time since January 2008 and market share topped 20 percent. [New] GM sales of cars and trucks rose 6.6 percent in October. In China, the company more than doubled sales from a year earlier last month....

"GM's decision to keep Opel is also a sign that the new GM is performing better than earlier expected," CSM's Nishimoto said.  



Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
by Cat on Mon Nov 16th, 2009 at 07:34:20 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Anything but profit distribution | The Hill | 16 Nov 2009

...But a federal work-share program is winning some support from nonpartisans.

Prominent economists pushing the work-share idea include Mark Zandi, an economic advisor to Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) 2008 presidential campaign who also advises Democrats.  Dean Baker, co-director of the left-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research, and Paul Krugman, the New York Times columnist. Krugman touted the benefits in his column Friday, noting that German's work-share program has helped drive down its unemployment rate, which has gone from about 9 percent last year to less than 8 percent in October.

Zandi, the chief economist at Moody's Economy.com, said that increased small business loans and more work-share programs could be an economical way to create more jobs. Zandi told the Joint Economic Committee last month that expanding work share to all 50 states would cost less than $2 billion and would provide more "bang for the buck" than unemployment insurance extensions. Congress passed and Obama signed last week a extension of unemployment benefits that cost $2.4 billion....

Possibly related news:

Where's my ass at? 1932.
(Energy Survey of North America is no longer on the web. See references to technocracy.org, Scott, Hubbert, and North American Technate 1, 1, 1,
What we do not have? body count.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

by Cat on Mon Nov 16th, 2009 at 10:23:03 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Hoover-mania with strong flavor of Bentham

Man-Hours and Distribution

II: THE DECLINE OF MAN-HOURS

Theoretical Considerations

In any given field of production whether of goods or of services, there is a relationship
between:

  • the number of units produced in a given time,
  • the number of man-hours of human effort required to produce a single unit,
  • the number of hours worked per man in that time,
  • the number of men employed.
In any given field of production let:

q
be the number of units produced per year,

m
be the number of man-hours required to produce one unit,

I

be the number of man-hours per year per man,

n
be the number of men engaged,

e
be the total number of man-hours required for the entire production.

A man-hour is defined as one man working one hour, regardless of the occupation.

From the above definitions the following relationships are obtained: The total man-hours per year for the entire production are the product of the man-hours per unit and the total number of units produced in a year,

e=mq. (1)

Also the total number of man-hours per year is equal to the total employees multiplied by the average hours per employee per year. Thus,

e=nl. (2)

Equating (1) and (2) together,
nl = mq or n = (mq)/l (3)

Thus we see that the total number of employees at any time in a given industry is directly proportional to the man-hours per unit and to the rate of production, and is inversely proportional to the number of hours worked by each employee. If at a given time mq is some finite amount, the number of employees, n, may be made
as large as one wishes provided the working hours, I, be made short enough.

Variation of Production, Total Man-Hours and Man-Hours per Unit, with Time

In general, in any given industry, production, man-hours per unit produced, and total man-hours do not remain fixed but undergo changes with time. If the total production, q, and the man-hours per unit, m, are considered to vary independently, the total man-
hours, e, are uniquely determined by equation (1), e = mq, at any given time, the amount of work available is determined by total production and by the human time
required to produce each unit.

So goeth putz (pl. as in herd of deer, bounding).

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

by Cat on Mon Nov 16th, 2009 at 10:34:26 AM EST
[ Parent ]
How's that again? | AP | 16 Nov 2009

General Motors Co. said Monday it lost $1.2 billion from the time it left bankruptcy protection [10 July 2009] through Sept. 30 [i.e. Q3], far better than it has reported in previous quarters and a sign that the auto giant is starting to turn around its business....

GM's global presence helped the company, particularly in China, where its sales of 478,000 in the third quarter increased 6 percent over the second quarter. GM earned $429 million before taxes and interest [EBIT? or EBITDA?] at its Asia Pacific unit, which includes China, and $245 million in Latin America. It had pretax losses of $651 million in North America and $437 million in Europe....

Its third-quarter revenue totaled $26.4 billion, an improvement over the first quarter when its revenue dropped almost 50 percent to $22.4 billion from a year earlier. Revenue was aided by sales boosts in July and August [Q3] from the U.S. government's Cash for Clunkers rebates....

GM entered bankruptcy protection with roughly $94.7 billion in debt. It emerged with $17 billion, including the $6.7 billion owed to the U.S. government. The government has given GM a total of $52 billion, including $45.3 billion in exchange for a 61 percent equity stake in the company.



Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
by Cat on Mon Nov 16th, 2009 at 12:19:37 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Eh? | Bloomberg | 16 Nov 2009

General Motors Co., signaling confidence in its recovery from bankruptcy, said it generated $3.3 billion in cash in the third quarter and plans to start repaying government [$6.7 billion contingency] loans early....

GM's 8.375 percent bonds maturing in 2033, which will convert into equity in the new company, jumped 2.63 cents to 20.3 cents on the dollar at 9:14 a.m. in New York, according to Trace, the bond-price reporting system of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. A closing price at that level would be the highest since January.

Cash Drain

Headwinds this quarter will include a cash drain as the loan repayments begin and from a U.S. auto market that will be 8.5 percent smaller than in the previous three months, GM said. The U.S. government is owed $6.7 billion and also owns a 61 percent stake in the biggest domestic automaker, which said it still expects an initial public offering in 2010's second half.

Third-quarter revenue was $28 billion, including $26.4 billion for the post-bankruptcy period. [Old] GM reported unaudited data for July 1 through July 9 for General Motors Corp., and for [New GM] the period since July 10.



Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
by Cat on Mon Nov 16th, 2009 at 12:26:19 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Display:
Login
. Make a new account
. Reset password
Occasional Series