The REAL General Motors story.

[AztecWilliam]

Well, we could go back to the 1960s, an era in which almost all the small car companies were gone (Studebaker, Kaiser, Hudson, Willys-Overland, Packard, etc.) and GM had a 50% plus market share; also an era before the Japanese companies had created a beachhead in the U.S. market. It was then that the GM management culture became totally sclerotic and hidebound, believing that the General would always be king of the hill. That was the prelude to the collapse of 2008/9.

The second chapter is what is told in this piece, how the govt. bailed out a failing company without really doing anything about the corporate culture that practically speaking had killed the company already. (Nor, for that matter, was anything done by way of bringing worker wages down to where GM could compete with the foreign companies that have many American-manned plants and dealerships around the country.) And then there is the shameful screwing of the bond holders and the non-union workers. But you don't hear any of this from B.H. Obama, do you?

(I'll remind you yet again of my prediction that GM, in not too many years, is going to go to the feds and say, "Sorry, but we have no money left to develop all those super-duper fuel efficient cars that we will need if we are to meet the much higher Obama CAFE stadards." That will be chapter 3 of this sad story.)

www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2012/10/17/Obamas-Auto-Bailout-Was-Really-a-Hefty-Union-Payoff.aspx#page1

[aztecwin]

Sad to the point of being infuriating. Of course they will try to be back in the taxpayers hip pocket.

[AztecWilliam]

Oct 17, 2012 15:36:50 GMT -8 aztecwin said:

Sad to the point of being infuriating. Of course they will try to be back in the taxpayers hip pocket.

More and more we are getting to look like the Soviet Union. Then, no business could fail, and for a number of reasons. For one, to allow a business to fail would have been a black eye in the face of a system that was supposed to be so much better than capitalism.

For another, even in a totalitarian state there is only so much the workers will put up with. The bosses knew that allowing a plant to close and therefore putting hundreds or thousands of workers on the streets would have been to invite violent protests.

There gets to be a point beyond which you simply can't kill everybody who wants you out of power. Assad may be reaching that point in Syria right now.

AzWm