On the private message boards of DennisMillerRadio.com SDA regular Gord Tulk added a post that Miller was so impressed with, he read it on-air. Here's the post, republished with permission:
Posted by: Chris from GA at Oct 13, 12:17 PMI was listening to some radio today (Saturday) and in a top-of-hour news brief it was reported that in his weekly radio address, Obama crowed about the success of the US auto industry thanks to his "rescue" of GM, and how GM is going to open a new research center employing 1500 people.
1500 people? Really? That's the number of jobs that need to be created EVERY 8 HOURS, 7 DAYS A WEEK, just to keep up with population growth.
The "saved GM" meme is such BS (pardon the acronym). GM hasn't been saved. Rather, it has been bodysnatched by the radical left and union lobby in the Democratic Party and turned into an anti-Corporate zombie company.First they ripped off the bondholders to pay off the pension liability - breaking fundamental corporate rules to do so.
Then they make it build a worthless corporate halo electric car (the Volt) that actually isn't a true electric car as it doesn't even need the electric motor to run (look for these cars to have the electric motors removed or disabled when they reach the point where major repairs are needed at which point they become $85,000 Chevy Cruzes (the Korean-engineered car they are based on)) and, unlike a true halo car, provides no attraction on the showroom floor to support more mundane vehicle sales (think of how the Pontiac GTO helped to sell Bonnevilles).
And now having squandered the cash they got in the bailout on the Volt and other green nonsense, GM has the weakest product line in the industry and still has massive overcapacity issues. The result: it has fallen back on its bad habits - its customers have the worst average credit scores in the industry and they are offering huge rebates and - get this - are using sub-prime loans to move the metal.
Failure redux awaits.
Nothing is too big to fail. GM should have been allowed to fail, and so too, the pension plans. The broken shards would have been redeployed and by now would be operating on a sustainable financial footing, building vehicles that people want to buy.
Creative destruction will happen sooner or later no matter how many bailouts are attempted. In time this will be the lesson of the Obama bailout of GM.
Hopefully it will be learned.
Wasn't GM bailed out under the Bush administration?
http://useconomy.about.com/od/criticalssues/a/auto_bailout.htm
Warren, do you actually believe that B.O. would be taking as much credit as he is if George Bush could actually be credited with 'saving' GM?
When I was buying my truck in 2010 I looked at the GM 2500 diesel pickup. For about a minute. Compared to the Ford F-250 it was distinctly second rate. Down on power too.
CRB - I would thank you not to imply thoughts I never thought. I was asking a question, that's all. The bailout occurred in Janurary 2009 but was it under Bush or Obama when it finally went down? I know the request started under Bush and I think it was finalized under the Bush administration, but I may be wrong. I would like to know.
Phantom,
Their trucks are actually good products. In my life I've own 3 GMC pickups (81, 98 and 2010) and a 1989 Ford F150. I put 800,000kms on the first and 500,000 on the second, which I still own, without any serious trouble with either. The F-150 transmission had to be rebuilt after 150,000Ks.
With that said I paid less for the 2010, with all the rebates and promotions, than I did the '98, despite the fact the newer truck is a 4x4 crewcab and the other isn't. I don't know how they can make money on them.
I've been a GM fan as long as I can remember. At one point I owned simultaneously a Corvette, a Cadillac and a Sierra Denali Quadrasteer. They're all gone now.
Re gm trucks:
Currently. GM has record inventories of trucks - 3-6 months worth last I heard. And Opel is a hiuse on fire burning cash that GM doesn't have to spare (it's trying to mash it up with the Peugeot group, but if is essentially worthless.
It's Just a matter of Time before it all caves in. Not before November naturally.
To be clear -- GM just notified its outsourced IT company (remember Ross Perot and EDS) that it intends on hiring IT workers directly.
Soooo....
1500 fired, 1500 hired. Net is zero. But the latter looked good to Obama, as well as the GOP Gov of Michigan.
Gord Tulk, excellent commentary.
Gord Tulk
Well said. All to true!
From my perspective, being Canadian, the auto bailout cost us billions of dollars. This money handed over to foreign business, GM, in this case a US one.Mean wile there are auto plants honda and toyata, not far from me that employ thousands of workers.Had GM gone bankrupt they would of opened up another shift, and hire more workers. We should of never given them a dime, when we have so many of our own industries struggling to stay a float.
GreenNeck, I will grant that Ford trucks were second rate for many years. My 2001 Dodge 1500 is still driving perfectly well at 100,000 miles. The 2001 Ford F-150 wasn't as nice when new, you don't see as many of then out there as the old Dodge.
However it wasn't always so. I keep a 1986 F-350 in Arizona as a runabout, with the 6.9l diesel. Huge, solid, tough truck. Has 150,000 miles on it, rebuilt the injector section and it runs like a top. Ford was really good in the 1970's and 1980's, kind of spent many years in the wilderness after that.
Ford learned their lesson in about 2003/4 with the F-150, which is now top drawer. After the -disaster- with the F-250 6.0l and 6.4l International diesels (2003-2010) the new 6.7l for 2011/12 is marvelous. I laugh ever time I drive it.
Someday I will do a Victor Frankenstein on my 1947 COE and jazz it back to roaring, smoking life. I'm thinking V-10 Triton with zoomie pipes. Or possibly 7.3 Ford diesel. With zoomie pipes. It will be a terrifying thing. ~:D
Thanks for posting this Robert.
Second that Gord and thanks for yelling back at the radio.
peter@9:59 p.m. - GM actually did go bankrupt in the U.S. (filed in June 2009). Thanks to a 30+ billion dollar bailout, the assets were rolled into a 'new' GM - NGMCO or something. I'm sure it was made known via diplomatic channels that if Canada hadn't thrown a wad of cash at the Canadian operations, the plants in Oshawa and St. Therese would have been moth-balled. Canada may be a bit healthier than the U.S. economically but even with their problems they can still impart great influence on us - which, again, leaves us very vulnerable.
Sorry, not St. Therese - St. Eustache? never been Catholic - the Saints never marched in for me. Other plants in London and St. Catherines (still?). Whatever. St. Obama saved them all, right?
It's easier to remember all the varied companies seated on the out of control merry go round work the same way.
They were stuffed full of green grants, loans etc. under Bush during the crash and spent the money on production
machinery contracts and such. Then they went bust. Then they were refinanced by Obama created taxpayer debt.
Now they are getting ready to go bust for the second time and will have clean debt free balance sheets which would
be a crony capitalist dream except for the fact they are set up to produce crap nobody wants. Shoveling everything
out the door to iffy buyers signing subprime leases might indicate there are a lot of unneeded UAW tin bending shops
going south after the election dust settles.
.
People are on here complaining about Obama bailing out the US auto industry? Isn't that calling the kettle black?
The Canadian taxpayer has been subsidizing the Canadian (thusly the USA car makers) auto industry for decades. Let's get real here. This was the great industrial plan for Ontario ( I mean Canada) cooked up by the eastern elite back in the '50s. Americans should study this great experiment and realize what the failure it is.
Cooked up by the Libels but endorsed by the Conservatives as federal governments to this day continue to send good money after bad.
When Government Motors' halo car - the Volt - batteries die it will end up being a modern day version of the so-called "Bennett Buggy."
the radical left and union lobby? Isn't that statement kind of redundant?