General Motors has emerged from bankruptcy - just 40 days after the US vehicle manufacturer signed a government-backed rescue deal, the company has announced.The main assets of the troubled auto giant, which was once the world's largest coroporation, have been transferred to a new company which will be 61 per cent owned by the government. "Today marks a new beginning for General Motors," Fritz Henderson, the chief executive of GM, said on Friday."One that will allow every employee, including me, to get back to the business of designing, building and selling great cars and trucks and serving the needs of our customers. "We recognise that we've been given a rare second chance at GM, and we are very grateful for that. And we appreciate the fact that we now have the tools to get the job done."
General Motors has emerged from bankruptcy - just 40 days after the US vehicle manufacturer signed a government-backed rescue deal, the company has announced.The main assets of the troubled auto giant, which was once the world's largest coroporation, have been transferred to a new company which will be 61 per cent owned by the government.
"Today marks a new beginning for General Motors," Fritz Henderson, the chief executive of GM, said on Friday."One that will allow every employee, including me, to get back to the business of designing, building and selling great cars and trucks and serving the needs of our customers.
"We recognise that we've been given a rare second chance at GM, and we are very grateful for that. And we appreciate the fact that we now have the tools to get the job done."
The SUVs aren't where the money's going to be, at least not as they're currently constituted, and GM knows it. (They may have a place as battery technology continues to improve. Chrysler, for example, is working on an electric Jeep Wrangler 4-door that can do 40-50 miles on a charge, which would make it gas-free to most people. If it can be made affordable, the technology could be a game-changer.) In fact, if I'm not mistaken, one of their best-selling things right now is the new Camaro, which isn't God's gift to fuel-efficiency, but I'm guessing it's profitable, and it, along with others things, should keep their cash flow going long enough for the Cruze, Spark, Volt, and other things to come online.
At the very least, GM now has a fighting chance to stay afloat, retool to deal with new realities, and eventually get back to expanding as these new technologies are made cheaper by economies of scale and new innovations.
I also, having thought about it a bit more politically, think I and others (including Michael Moore) were wrong about what to do with GM -- about the idea of turning it into a national manufacturer of whatever we want. We're not always going to be in power, and I think there's a real risk that it would eventually result in GM being destroyed, just as administrations have done, for ideological reasons, to every other government enterprise in this country. Which means we'd lose all those jobs in a steady drip rather than in a big bang (the way we would've if McCain had won last November).
The whole situation sucks for everybody, but I think this is about as well as we could hope to do, and if it works, it will go down as one of the great untold stories of the period. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
Fact is, new car sales have fallen through the floor globally. Everybody is suffering, practically every manufacturer is swallowing losses and, while I totally buy the political argument, I just don't see what GM can offer to stay in business. keep to the Fen Causeway
What I also know is that the Rust Belt has been shit on for a long time. Their economy has been savaged by 30 years of GOP and Clintonista dominance. Here, for the first time in God-knows-how-long, the President -- even if he is likely to be a failure on other counts -- is at least making some effort to right the ship for them (and is willing to pay a price on his popularity elsewhere to do it). We're out $50bn. We may never make it back, but, really, isn't $50bn a small price to pay for at least getting them a shot to bring this stuff online and do something?
This is to say nothing of possible political dividends down the road. If the automakers are saved -- let alone if they eventually start leading again -- and the Rust Belt doesn't completely collapse, our side of the aisle could wind up pretty much owning the White House for decades, which opens up the prospect of making gains in many other areas of policy over those decades.
For a very tiny fraction of GDP, that's a lot of upside. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
The trick at GM is to find a profitable niche, and it might be SUVs and pickup trucks. Or it might be small cars, but that would require lots and lots of engineering work which will be difficult with GM having made much of their engineering staff redundant...
And without funding the thugs in Saudi Arabia. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
And as it was a diesel I guess it didn't require more fuel than your average Volvo. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
I'm more just guessing, though. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
Which, due to expectations on an SUV, meant it felt really, really cramped with four people. My knees were jammed up against the front passenger seat, and I'm not exactly big.
I'm not big on the crossovers. I like cars and trucks. Blending the two feels weird icky. My father drives a Toyota Tundra, and he drove a Chevy Suburban for years (which I learned to drive in). Those were both much, much too big for me. Anything with a V8 is like driving a shopping mall.
But I don't like having the car-like near-horizontal windshield that crossovers tend to have. I like it nearly vertical, because I feel like I can see a lot better.
We traded in our Honda for an FJ Cruiser a few months ago. (Before y'all start throwing things at me, I want you to know it was not my choice, since I take the train and drive maybe 20 times per year.) The mileage blows, although I can usually push it up quite a bit vs the EPA estimates due to the fact that I drive in a way that would make an old lady look like a Nascar driver.
I'm trying to convince her to let my friend and I convert it sometime in the next year or two to either biomass, electricity or hydrogen (all of which you can get in DC). She's convinced we'll destroy it.
Still, it drives really nicely. I like it. If they'd make an electric one, I'd trade this one in and buy it in a heartbeat. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
And as I said previously, this cars is fun, it's not a tool for commuting. Commuting is supposed to be done by rail, and if people did it that way there'd certainly be enough fuel around for the Sunday trip in a little bigger car. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
