GM reports 62% annual profit increase

[Grateful11]

Lazy Union Thugs. Have you ever worked in a unionized facility?

[Grateful11]

Buck wrote:
Obama Motors!
Screwed investors, and gave the company to the UAW union!
The new union owners just cancelled the pensions of the non-union workers (salaried positions).
Union thugs indeed.

Maybe you should read this.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/16/busine...rkers.html

[$tevie]

Trouble wrote: Obama did what he did to save the UAW, not GM.

Still repeating that right-wing rote?
:driving:

Thank you for proving my point.

[Ted King]

Trouble wrote:
[quote=Ted King]
http://www.economist.com/node/16846494

This is from Aug 19th 2010:

So was the auto bail-out a success? It is hard to be sure. Had the government not stepped in, GM might have restructured under normal bankruptcy procedures, without putting public money at risk. Many observers think this unlikely, however. Given the panic that gripped private purse-strings last year, it is more likely that GM would have been liquidated, sending a cascade of destruction through the supply chain on which its rivals, too, depended.

Never would have happened. GM is too big and selling more than enough around the world to carry the company. The problem is the UAW severely weakens them. Sure, GM can carry the union burden when the economy is rolling. Slow down the economy and the UAW cripples them.
Can you provide a cite from a reliable source that the assessment of the Economist economists is in error and a reliable source to support your contention that GM would not have gone into bankruptcy if it didn't have unions?

[Trouble]

Ted King wrote: Can you provide a cite from a reliable source that the assessment of the Economist economists is in error and a reliable source to support your contention that GM would not have gone into bankruptcy if it didn't have unions?

I don't have a link and I don't care enough to search for one. GM is huge, has a global market, huge defense contracts, ready made heavy machinery manufacturing facilities, and a global sales force. Begging your pardon, but anyone who thinks a company that size that would be liquidated and sold at auction is an idiot. Never would have happened. GM has way too much intrinsic value to be liquidated.

[Trouble]

Grateful11 wrote:
Lazy Union Thugs. Have you ever worked in a unionized facility?

Yes I have. I've been a teamster and I've been a manager of teamsters members. "Lazy Union Thugs" is a perfect description.

[Grateful11]

Trouble wrote:
[quote=Grateful11]
Lazy Union Thugs. Have you ever worked in a unionized facility?

Yes I have. I've been a teamster and I've been a manager of teamsters members. "Lazy Union Thugs" is a perfect description.
Let me ask you this are you speaking ofthe actual workers or the Union Leaders such as General Chairman and up?

[mick e]

Slash flailing around in his own idiocy never stops being fun to watch.

[Grace62]

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-kl...draft.html

Good interview on the topic. Economists are generally in agreement that GM would have been liquidated under normal bankruptcy. I can't find anyone saying that credit was available for them to avoid that, or that any company was willing or ABLE to step in and buy those companies, even in pieces. The credit to do that simply was not there.

The reason? A perfect storm of worst-in-70-years credit crunch, bad management, and too much debt. In normal times the companies could have bailed themselves out with borrowing. But there was nothing normal about 2008, as we know.
As for concessions, no group made more concessions than the UAW to get these companies back on their feet.
I think seeing the current success of these companies, apologies are owed both Pres. Bush and Pres. Obama. They did the right thing in the face of many voices telling them not to do this.

It's up to these companies now to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. I think a lot of lessons have been learned.

[Trouble]

Grace62 wrote:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-kl...draft.html

You do realize with whom that interview was with? "Steve Rattner, the private-equity specialist whom President Obama tapped as "auto czar."" Personally, I find it shocking that he supports Obama's decision and he presents the absolute worst case (and unbelievable) scenario to justify the administration's actions.