GM reports 62% annual profit increase

[Grace62]

Mitt Romney's car wreck

[Grateful11]

Trouble I don't think there's anything that I could say that would matter at this point. As a 23 year Union member of the
IAMAW(International Association of Machinist and Aerospace Workers) I feel every penny I've spent on dues has
been worth it. The Union was good to me and my family, I done my job to my fullest and always strived to boost
production and make something better than it was before. I've worked in far more non-union shops than Union and
I can tell you there's always employees that are going to do the least amount of work possible, just enough to keep
their job, it's always been that way everywhere. I'm sorry to say that the Teamsters unions have had a reputation for
a long time and I'm not going to into that here. The Union shop I worked at continually put out more and more product
quarter after quarter and when the place you work is the envy of the industry, worldwide, that says something. It
wasn't visited by the head of the FRA, the Russian Rail Industry and several Class 1 railroads for nothing.

[Trouble]

Ted King wrote: Here's what I thought might transpire if you had provided an informed opinion from trained economists: I would provide you with opinions from other trained economists that think that liquidation was indeed likely - e.g., Mark Zandi, the lead economist at Moody's, Brad De Long and Paul Krugman. I wouldn't expect you to accept anything from Krugman even though he is a Nobel Prize winning economist, but people like Zandi and the economists from The Economist, would, I think, deserve more of your consideration than a simple derisive brushing away as being idiots.

I don't think any of the three are idiots. I think all three are partisan hacks. Google each of them. The argument that GM could have been liquidated was nothing more than a justification for the government taking over GM and giving part of it away. There was no way, absolutely no way, that GM would have been liquidated. GM could have been saved by a simple reorganization but it would have had to broken the UAW stranglehold. Rather than to do that, the government pumped money into GM, propped up the UAW, screwed of Chrysler shareholders, and forced many dealerships out of business. Picking those dealerships was dubious at best. There are ways to deal with bankruptcies. Pumping millions of taxpayer money and taking over a car company isn't the best way.

Again, I don't think those economists think GM would have been liquidated. They are just making that argument to justify Obama's actions in saving the UAW.

[Ted King]

Trouble wrote:
[quote=Ted King]Here's what I thought might transpire if you had provided an informed opinion from trained economists: I would provide you with opinions from other trained economists that think that liquidation was indeed likely - e.g., Mark Zandi, the lead economist at Moody's, Brad De Long and Paul Krugman. I wouldn't expect you to accept anything from Krugman even though he is a Nobel Prize winning economist, but people like Zandi and the economists from The Economist, would, I think, deserve more of your consideration than a simple derisive brushing away as being idiots.

I don't think any of the three are idiots. I think all three are partisan hacks. Google each of them. The argument that GM could have been liquidated was nothing more than a justification for the government taking over GM and giving part of it away. There was no way, absolutely no way, that GM would have been liquidated. GM could have been saved by a simple reorganization but it would have had to broken the UAW stranglehold. Rather than to do that, the government pumped money into GM, propped up the UAW, screwed of Chrysler shareholders, and forced many dealerships out of business. Picking those dealerships was dubious at best. There are ways to deal with bankruptcies. Pumping millions of taxpayer money and taking over a car company isn't the best way.

Again, I don't think those economists think GM would have been liquidated. They are just making that argument to justify Obama's actions in saving the UAW.
What about the economists at The Economist - the ones who first said it was a bad idea and then apologized for that and said it was the right move because GM probably would have been liquidated otherwise - are they also partisan hacks?

[$tevie]

I fail to see how Trouble can sit on this thread making the claim that all Obama wanted was to save the UAW without one single quote to prove that is what Obama was thinking. Why, some people might say Trouble is telling lies. He needs to supply some quotes to prove that this was Obama's sole motivation.