Oilerman,
I am sorry but you fell for the propaganda and really don't know what happened.
1- GM would have gone into a legal bankruptcy which would have protected them while they reorganized the company, shed some of their debt but unless there was a compelling reason for it would not have effectively slammed the stockholders of the company by making their stock worthless.
a) the reality of this bankruptcy is the Obama administration pushed the judge to make concessions by approving an accelerated plan to split the company, make the government(s), the UAW and other "investors" owners while selling off assets that were viable (Opel, etc..)
b) this other half of the coin is the adminstration had no business being involved irreagrdless what loans that were made to the company, most of this circumvented a lot of the laws to allow it to happen before anyone knew what happened. Illegal? sort of but defintely unethical.
2 - wagner was retired, and it was done by the white house. The problem is that the second that was done, the government step over the consitutuional line. They are not allowed to mess with contractual obligations like this and it may be a good thing but it really doesn't matter because due to the bankruptcy judge, they should have fired hendersen and the upper managment as part of a reorg but they didn't and still haven't reorg'ed the company at all - in other words it is the same GM as it was before.
3 - there is an appointed government offical that oversees the day by day operaitons of the company and apporves upper managment's decisions. This is a hidden fact and the person has zero automotive knowledge.
5 - Yesterday's Detroit News states that our $50 billion dollar investment into GM is now worth $25 billion.
5 - Chrysler was put into the situation by cerberus so they can rid themselves of the company. They are or have sued Mercedes over some idea that Mercedes told them they will make billions on the investment. Chrysler could have simply gone away and the assets sold off to us investors for pennies on the dollar.
6 - the losers out of all of this are the american tax payer and the country. They will have to foot the bill for the "loans" that we will end up not only paying for directly but also by paying the perpetual interest on the loans that we had to secure to get the money in the first place. All said and done, the $50 billion debt that we have with GM will be a debt of $126 billion in 2050 - an impossible number for them to pay back if they were to. By the way, the 'experts who wanted to see GM go into bankruptcy the right way have said that they will not produce the vehicles at the numbers they think simply because of the exposure to the market, they have lost market share during theprocess that they will never regain and that will lessen their overall revenue.
7 - the cash for clunkers goes way beyond the $4000, it is right we the tax payers are on the hook for more than $20k for each and every car sold under this program.
8 - the banks are failing, the work being done by the administration is not the right stuff that is needed to save the banks or the economy, we need to enforce the laws and hold people accoutable to bring back trust.
9 - a lot of the problems we now have are directly related to the UAW, their ownership in any company is not warrented and the stock holders of these companies should have had a choice to receive compensation for their secured investments. I am hard pressed to buy another UAW made vehicle, and it will only be a Ford product if that.
