Liberal filmmaker Michael Moore believes that whoever was responsible at General Motors for failing to recall a faulty ignition switch deserves death.
“I am opposed to the death penalty, but to every rule there is usually an exception, and in this case I hope the criminals at General Motors will be arrested and made to pay for their pre-meditated decision to take human lives for a lousy ten bucks,” he wrote. Moore called for the Obama administration to deliver justice.
Nearly two years after the introduction of the path-breaking plug-in hybrid, GM is still losing as much as $49,000 on each Volt it builds, according to estimates provided to Reuters by industry analysts and manufacturing experts.
Cheap Volt lease offers meant to drive more customers to Chevy showrooms this summer may have pushed that loss even higher. There are some Americans paying just $5,050 to drive around for two years in a vehicle that cost as much as $89,000 to produce.
And while the loss per vehicle will shrink as more are built and sold, GM is still years away from making money on the Volt, which will soon face new competitors from Ford, Honda and others.
GM’s basic problem is that “the Volt is over-engineered and over-priced,” said Dennis Virag, president of the Michigan-based Automotive Consulting Group.
Governement Motors loses $49,000 on every Volt sold. Chevy Volt losing lots of green.
President Obama has touted General Motors GM as a successful example of his administration’s policies. Yet GM’s recovery is built, at least in part, on the increasing use of subprime loans.
The Obama administration in 2009 bailed out GM to the tune of $50 billion as it went into a managed bankruptcy. Near the end of 2010, GM acquired a new captive lending arm, subprime specialist AmeriCredit. Renamed GM Financial, it has played a significant role in GM’s growth .
The automaker is relying increasingly on subprime loans, 10-Q financial reports shows .Potential borrowers of car loans are rated on FICO scores that range from 300 to 850. Anything under 660 is generally deemed subprime.
By spring 2010 GM’s new management, led by North American executive Mark Reuss, wanted to move back into subprime, fearing that GM couldn’t compete. Jim Cain GM spokesperson states “subprime lending in cars is not as risky as in housing. Car loans are cheaper, so customers have an easier time making payments. When they do go into default, the cars can be repossessed and sold to recover some of the loss.”
Government continues to push subprime loans. Car ownership like housing is a right..
DETROIT (AP) — General Motors earned its largest profit ever in 2011, two years after it nearly collapsed.
Strong sales in the U.S. and China helped the carmaker turn a profit of $7.6 billion, beating its old record of $6.7 billion in 1997 during the pickup and SUV boom.
GM is a vastly different company than it was back then. It’s smaller, has less debt and its contract with the United Auto Workers is less costly. But it took a $49.5 billion government bailout and bankruptcy protection in 2009 to cut its bloated costs. The company earned huge a profit even though U.S. sales of cars and trucks were near an historic low of 12.8 million.
In 2012, GM expects to increase its revenue as global sales grow and it charges more for models.
GM said 47,500 blue-collar workers in the U.S. will get $7,000 profit-sharing checks in March. The checks are based on the company’s North American performance and are a record for the company.
GM pays back $6.7B loan of $52B bail out and claims all debts paid in full, GM pays no federal income taxes based on special loss carryover rule, GM pays out $7,000 bonuses to union workers where unions get a bigger chunk of taxpayers dollars. GM the gift that keeps on giving.. Better than Warren Buffets secretary.
General Motors will buy Chevrolet Volts back from any owner who is afraid the electric cars will catch fire, the company’s CEO said Thursday.
In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, CEO Dan Akerson insisted that the cars are safe, but said the company will purchase the Volts because it wants to keep customers happy. Three fires have broken out in Volts after side-impact crash tests done by the federal government.
Akerson said that if necessary, GM will recall the more than 6,000 Volts now on the road in the U.S. and repair them once the company and federal safety regulators figure out what caused the fires.
Taxpayers continue to pay for GM concept cars..
General Motors Co. has begun to once again contribute to political campaigns, lifting a self-imposed ban on political spending put in place during the auto maker’s U.S.-financed bankruptcy restructuring last year.
The Detroit company gave $90,500 to candidates running in the current election cycle, Federal Election Commission records show.
The beneficiaries include Midwestern lawmakers, mostly Democrats, who have traditionally supported the industry’s legislative agenda on Capitol Hill, including Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D., Mich.), Sen. Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio) and Rep. John Dingell (D., Mich.).
The list also includes Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor, the House Republican Whip, who would likely assume a top leadership post if Republicans win control of the House in November.
It isn’t unusual for big companies like GM to spend on political campaigns, but complicating GM’s situation is that the company is majority-owned by the U.S. government. Taxpayer dollars used to support more hand picked politicians.
DETROIT – General Motors Co. said Thursday it made $1.33 billion in the second quarter, a sign it’s getting healthier as it prepares to sell stock to the public.
It was the second straight quarterly profit for the Detroit automaker, which made $865 million in the first quarter, and sets the stage for GM to file paperwork soon to start the public stock sale process.
CEO Ed Whitacre said last week that the company is eager to sell shares in an initial public offering so it can end its dependence on the government and pay off $43.3 billion in bailout funds that were converted into a majority stake in the company. Whitacre wants the company to shed its “Government Motors” moniker because it’s hurting sales and the company’s image.
But it’s unclear if the recent record of profits — $2.2 billion for the first half of 2010 — is enough to convince investors. GM lost $88 billion in the five years before it filed for bankruptcy protection last June.
Although GM is performing well, the timing still isn’t right for it to sell shares in the next few months because of the sputtering economy, said Scott Sweet, senior managing partner of IPO Boutique in Tampa, Florida, which advises investors on IPOs.
Several recent IPOs have been postponed because of concerns that they won’t get a high enough share price, he said. He also said the Obama administration is pressuring GM to sell prematurely to influence the November congressional elections. Last week, Whitacre said the elections are not being considered, and the government has repeatedly said GM is in charge of the sale timing.
GM wants to sell IPO stock to taxpayers that own GM and school teacher and retiree bondholders that were screwed during takeover????? GM Okie Doke
The long-anticipated Chevrolet Volt, General Motors’ electric car, will cost $41,000, the company announced Tuesday, leaving consumers to decide whether its environmental appeal is worth a price far above that of similarly sized conventional autos.
Nissan, the only other major manufacturer expected to bring such a vehicle to market this year, said the Leaf will cost $32,780.
GM and Nissan are relying on a $7,500 federal tax credit for buyers of electric vehicles to offset some of the added cost, and they’re hoping that the allure of their novel power source will make up the rest.
Although the prices are high, enthusiasts say that electric cars can reach a large, untapped market for vehicles with little or no tailpipe emissions.
The Volt can travel 40 miles on its battery charge and an additional 340 miles on a gasoline-powered generator. The all-electric Leaf has a range of 100 miles.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, then-Sen. Barack Obama pledged to put 1 million plug-in vehicles on the road by 2015.
“I’m not sure the Volt is going to be a volume vehicle,” said George Magliano, director of automotive industry forecasting for North America at IHS Global Insight. “The technology still isn’t there to make them cheap.
At the end of the day, the consumer pays a hefty premium to make a statement.” Another pledge that is all show, with no coal, and no go…. Shocking
The Treasury Department failed to consider the economic fallout when it told General Motors and Chrysler to quickly shutter many dealerships as part of government-led bankruptcies, a federal watchdog found.
A report released Sunday by the special inspector general for the government’s bailout program raised questions about whether the Obama administration’s auto task force considered the job losses from the closings while pressuring the companies to reduce costs.
Treasury didn’t show why the cuts were “either necessary for the sake of the companies’ economic survival or prudent for the sake of the nation’s economic recovery,” said the audit by Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the $787 billion stimulus program known as TARP.
“Treasury made a series of decisions that may have substantially contributed to the accelerated shuttering of thousands of small businesses,” investigators said.
Those decisions resulted in “potentially adding tens of thousands of workers to the already lengthy unemployment rolls — all based on a theory and without sufficient consideration of the decisions’ broader economic impact,” the report said.
Political decision instead of business decision and the loss of 100,000 jobs… Business as usual….
“I wrote in a previous post that a major global oil company would have to go out of business as a sign that we were on the right track regarding effective energy policy reform. Let that company be BP. In the process of being litigated by the government of this country in pursuit of remediating this problem, let BP die. The oil business can only sustain itself through the corruption we now know was (is?) rampant at the Minerals Management Service. Some of those in charge at that agency should be put on trial for treason. Some of the neocons that visits this site will nonetheless defend BP. They’ll say they broke no law. That the government approved everything that went on down there”.
Thanks Alec, but maybe companies should go out of business not for your “policy” reasons but business reasons…
Moody Eye View 
