GM reports 62% annual profit increase

[mick e]

Slash's military background has provided him with one asset: PERSISTENCE.

[Trouble]

Grace62 wrote: Are you kidding me? GM and Chrysler went around the world with their hats in their hands. No takers.

And why do you think that? No one in their right mind was going to give GM and Chrysler any money as long as they kept the same plan that got them there. Duh. Only the government was willing to throw away other people's money to save union jobs. Why? Because the government doesn't care about getting a return on other people's money and they needed to save union jobs. Now if GM and Chrysler filed for bankruptcy, restructured, put the hard line to the UAW, and actually wanted to move to a profitable model, the money would have flowed. That's how business works.

[Grace62]

Trouble wrote:
GM and Chrysler filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, restructured with help of a government loan, the UAW made major concessions but received well-deserved ownership in the new company in exchange, management was willing to move to a profitable model, and the money flowed. That's how business works.

Corrected that for you. Now it's true. You're welcome.

[Trouble]

Grace62 wrote:
[quote=Trouble]
GM and Chrysler filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, restructured with help of a government loan, the UAW made major concessions but received well-deserved ownership in the new company in exchange, management was willing to move to a profitable model, and the money flowed. That's how business works.

Corrected that for you. Now it's true. You're welcome.
Wait a second. I didn't type that. I don't think I believe that... Oh, I see. You edited my words with your words to make it seem like I typed it. Very clever. Looks like that cite you libs hounded me for was instrumental and you spent a considerable amount of time reading it. Or not and you just went with a cheap trick because that was all you had. If it wasn't obvious why I don't like to piss away a lot of time discussing things with people like you, it should be now.

[August West]

Trouble wrote:
Wait a second. I didn't type that. I don't think I believe that... Oh, I see. You edited my words with your words to make it seem like I typed it. Very clever. Looks like that cite you libs hounded me for was instrumental and you spent a considerable amount of time reading it. Or not and you just went with a cheap trick because that was all you had. If it wasn't obvious why I don't like to piss away a lot of time discussing things with people like you, it should be now.

HAHA, as you say, thanks for the laugh!!! Your brilliance is insurmountable, slash.

[Grace62]

What's funny is that YOU didn't read it, because it doesn't make your case at all. I think most of the people who get involved in this type of conversation read and comprehend pretty quickly, so trying to use a lengthy, out of date source that's a partisan rant short on facts, hoping that nobody actually reads it, is pretty lame.

Oh, and the WaPo interview above. You can't refute with facts a single word of that.

So, 13 comments later, you haven't made your case. We get your opinion, which really only took one comment to present. So in the interest of saving you from wasting time here, if you can't back up your opinion with facts, just leave it at that.

[Trouble]

Grace62 wrote: Oh, and the WaPo interview above. You can't refute with facts a single word of that.

So, 13 comments later, you haven't made your case. We get your opinion, which really only took one comment to present. So in the interest of saving you from wasting time here, if you can't back up your opinion with facts, just leave it at that.

I love how your "proof" is an interview with an Obama stooge presenting the President's case. And to top it all of, you're completely serious in presenting that as an impartial news source. The interviewer is Ezra Klein!

Of course I haven't made my case. You and your ilk have the open mind of a welded safe. Jesus Christ himself could type a reply of mine and you wouldn't consider it. That is why I don't piss away my time looking up cites and posting lengthy replies with lots of quotes. No matter what I did, it wouldn't make a difference here because of the people who are here. Oh, I'll tell you that your wrong when I think you're wrong, but don't expect more of a reply than that.

[Grace62]

Minds are plenty open.

It's about being taken seriously because you stand by what you write.

[Ted King]

Trouble wrote:
Begging your pardon, but anyone who thinks a company that size that would be liquidated and sold at auction is an idiot.

This kind of talk really puts me off. I pointed out The Economist as a source for the opinion that it would happen. The link I provided was from an article where they apologize for having taken a position that the bailout was a mistake because they became convinced that the evidence implied otherwise.

I had expected that you would find economists that agreed with your assessment. Instead you provided a law professor's opinion. Now being a law professor doesn't mean his opinion on economics is wrong, but since it isn't his area of expertise, there isn't any reason to find his opinion credible unless he makes a convincing economic argument that liquidation would not have happened along with expressing his opinion that no such liquidation would have happened. There was no such argument (economic argument for the proposition that liquidation would not have happened) in the essay you linked to.

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.

So, if you had provided views from economists to back up your claim that there was no way GM would have been liquidated and I had provided economists to back up the claim that it was likely, what I would have thought was justifiable was to say that the issue was, at a minimum, an open question.

And then I would have suggested that if it were at least an open question amongst economists, then there was justification for going ahead to bail out GM because the consequences of not doing so would be too great if the economists that didn't think liquidation would happen were wrong and those who did think would happen were right.

[Ted King]

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