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A shocking number to chew on re. GM
Submitted by R. Neal on Wed, 2008/11/19 - 9:02pm.
I just checked, and GM's market cap at the close of business today is $1.7 billion. That's about 1/3 the value of Starbucks!
That means Bill Gates could buy GM on the open market for petty cash. The State of Tennessee could almost buy them out of the state's cash reserves. Forget incentives for foreign auto manufacturers. We could own our own car company!
Better yet, since the federal government is in a nationalizing kind of mood, maybe we should just buy them for a tiny fraction of the $700 billion taxpayers just wrote a check to the Treasury for, probably a few days worth of interest. Then sell half or so to GM employees, who can raise the cash from lunch money and bake sales.
Then fire the GM Board of Directors and appoint GM employees and government representatives and Al Gore to the board, and have a big rally with the new board and shareholders at Ford Field to let GM senior management explain why they should keep their jobs and take an up or down vote. Then tell the new board and new management and new shareholder/employees to get busy turning the company around because their jobs depend on it.
That's my plan. Seems like it would cost a lot less than $25 billion.
But seriously, their calculated "enterprise value" is only $31.14 billion. This is a sad commentary on just how far GM has been run into the ground.
Partly GM's managment. But you can't blame them for not being able to retool the company in a New York minute when the ever fickle public got the news the gas was going up, up, up, and all of the sudden that same public thought getting a fuel efficient vehicle should be as easy as getting a new movie title at Blockbuster.
And partly the union's. But do you want to compare the union salaries with the hedge fund managers' salaries? At least the GM workers MADE something.
Don't forget the banks and lenders who got theirs and then decided that it would be best if they held on to it instead of loaning it out so people could buy things like, I don't know, cars, houses, appliances, cars, college tuition, cars. What percentage of cars, both foreign and domestic are paid for with cash? Maybe like, next to none?
Submitted by reform4 on Thu, 2008/11/20 - 11:04am.
If GM management was incapable of looking at the demand curves for China and India (and declining production in Saudi) and couldn't forecast gas was going up, the management all deserves to lose their jobs.
They were afraid to compete in a market they ceded 30 years ago so they doubled their marketing for unsustainable products, perhaps hoping Iraqi oil would save them.
And I'd be shocked if you could find ONE hedge fund manage that made less than the average GM line worker!!
Submitted by Nobody (not verified) on Wed, 2008/11/19 - 11:32pm.
I can't believe the g** d*** democrats will not bail them out. The will help their wall street fat cat friends but not the blue collar worker. They are not considering the number of jobs at the automakers suppliers....
That kind of reminds of the final days of the Soviet Union, when the one ruple (sp?) note was literally not worth the paper it was printed on -- the paper itself was worth more than the face value of note.
I don't know... maybe, instead of a Federal bailout, what we need is a private bailout. I seem to remember that, as things were getting really bad in 1929, a coalition of the wealthiest Americans got together and bought US steel stock at a vastly inflated price, just to show confidence and to shore up the market. Now, it didn't work, but...
Perhaps what we need is for people like Warren Buffett, the fabulously wealthy and publicly minded types, to purchase GM in chunks, keeping its existence as an automaker, but not as a unified whole. Someone takes Buick, someone else takes Cadillac, another investor takes the light trucks division, etc etc etc. Perhaps the whole is worth less than the sum of its parts.
And without a doubt... fire the current management. They may not be entirely responsible, but they certainly bear a good share of the blame.
"I'm not a member of any organized political party. I'm a Democrat." -- Will Rogers
Perhaps what we need is for people like Warren Buffett, the fabulously wealthy and publicly minded types, to purchase GM in chunks, keeping its existence as an automaker, but not as a unified whole. Someone takes Buick, someone else takes Cadillac, another investor takes the light trucks division, etc etc etc. Perhaps the whole is worth less than the sum of its parts.
And, in the end, that's what will probably happen, except it will be the Chinese who are buying the companies with all their cash reserves that we've built up for them. And we will rue that day when it happens.
The South's elected officials are allowing the country to be re-colonized, not by the British this time, but by the Japanese, Germans, Koreans, and probably the Chinese.
The "Charter" companies are back in business in the Americas with their own Loyalist public officials representing their interests.
Their assets are still worth hella coin. Hell, in real estate alone...
____________________________
Dirty deeds done dirt cheap! Special holidays, Sundays and rates!
Their assets are still worth hella coin. Hell, in real estate alone...
Yes, but they have hella debt.
From their June quarterly report:
Total assets: 136,046,000,000
Total liabilities: 193,016,000,000
Yikes!
Bubba's into the cooking wine again.
Actually you are absolutely correct. GM has tanked. They can't even afford the Executive bonuses and that's the real problem...I think.
Run into the ground by whom?
Partly GM's managment. But you can't blame them for not being able to retool the company in a New York minute when the ever fickle public got the news the gas was going up, up, up, and all of the sudden that same public thought getting a fuel efficient vehicle should be as easy as getting a new movie title at Blockbuster.
And partly the union's. But do you want to compare the union salaries with the hedge fund managers' salaries? At least the GM workers MADE something.
Don't forget the banks and lenders who got theirs and then decided that it would be best if they held on to it instead of loaning it out so people could buy things like, I don't know, cars, houses, appliances, cars, college tuition, cars. What percentage of cars, both foreign and domestic are paid for with cash? Maybe like, next to none?
Think that may have had something to do with it?
If GM management was incapable of looking at the demand curves for China and India (and declining production in Saudi) and couldn't forecast gas was going up, the management all deserves to lose their jobs.
They were afraid to compete in a market they ceded 30 years ago so they doubled their marketing for unsustainable products, perhaps hoping Iraqi oil would save them.
And I'd be shocked if you could find ONE hedge fund manage that made less than the average GM line worker!!
I can't believe the g** d*** democrats will not bail them out. The will help their wall street fat cat friends but not the blue collar worker. They are not considering the number of jobs at the automakers suppliers....
Uh, dude, it's mostly the Republicans who won't bail them out. Reid cancelled the Senate vote because he knew it wouldn't pass.
That kind of reminds of the final days of the Soviet Union, when the one ruple (sp?) note was literally not worth the paper it was printed on -- the paper itself was worth more than the face value of note.
I don't know... maybe, instead of a Federal bailout, what we need is a private bailout. I seem to remember that, as things were getting really bad in 1929, a coalition of the wealthiest Americans got together and bought US steel stock at a vastly inflated price, just to show confidence and to shore up the market. Now, it didn't work, but...
Perhaps what we need is for people like Warren Buffett, the fabulously wealthy and publicly minded types, to purchase GM in chunks, keeping its existence as an automaker, but not as a unified whole. Someone takes Buick, someone else takes Cadillac, another investor takes the light trucks division, etc etc etc. Perhaps the whole is worth less than the sum of its parts.
And without a doubt... fire the current management. They may not be entirely responsible, but they certainly bear a good share of the blame.
"I'm not a member of any organized political party. I'm a Democrat." -- Will Rogers
And, in the end, that's what will probably happen, except it will be the Chinese who are buying the companies with all their cash reserves that we've built up for them. And we will rue that day when it happens.
The South's elected officials are allowing the country to be re-colonized, not by the British this time, but by the Japanese, Germans, Koreans, and probably the Chinese.
The "Charter" companies are back in business in the Americas with their own Loyalist public officials representing their interests.
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