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GM Marks $1.2B Loss
Between the time General Motors left bankruptcy protection in July and the end of September, it lost a mere $1.2 billion--an improvement over previous quarters that suggests the auto giant is turning around. Even stranger is that the auto maker made a profit during the first nine days of the third quarter, aided by the Cash for Clunkers program. Though the company admits that its third-quarter numbers mean little because it didn't comply with U.S. accounting standards—and only cover the quarter after July 10, which is when GM left bankruptcy protection—there is another upside: In December, GM also plans to start payments on its $6.7 billion loan from the federal government, beginning with a $1.2 billion payment.
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I love an American success story.
It will take a while. Solar roofing shingles will be available in a short time. It is only reasonable to believe that all GM cars will begin running on solar paint.
Losing 1.2 billion in a quarter at GM is a success story? Hahahahahah!
You must also be gullible enough to believe Obama when he boasts about the recession being over while US unemployment and poverty rates are hitting record levels.
If this is an American Success story, when we are paying for that wastfull company to exist with my tax dollars, your are way out of touch with life, or they are not using your tax dollars because you dont pay any.
the "wastfull" company is on schedule for repaying the money. GM is a hugely important part of America, but what do you care, you probably drive a Hyundai anyway. If you believe in the unfettered Free Market so much, go to Korea.
You really don't get it.
1. The news story was a huge lie. GM didn't take 6 billion from the Feds. GM took more then 30 BILLION DOLLARS....Obama has apparently let them off the hook for the other 25 billion dollars he gave them.
2. Your loyalty to your corporate masters at GM is showing in your claim that "GM is a hugely important part of America." In actuality, GM is so poorly managed that it has lost tens of billions of dollars and destroyed tens of thousands of jobs. Have you looked recently at the unemployment rate in Detroit, or are you too busy trying to figure out whats wrong with your Oldsmobile?
If you don't agree with Plant, "You don't get it."
How can a company that is talking about loosing money for the next 3 years pay back anything? i do believe we are about to see some smoke and mirror accounting.
I hope they do make it as i just purchased a new Truck from GMC. and i love it. The duramax diesel and Allison transmission are a fantastic combination.
Norton is a moron for believing that GM is "paying back its loan."
GM is using another pot of Obama BAILOUT money to repay the loan BAILOUT money.....the taxpayer is getting screwed by GM and Obama no matter how they try to spin it.
This is just an optical illusion that masks the government's unwise decision to save a private corporation that can't survive on its own. The government has given GM a total of $52 billion, including $45.3 billion in exchange for a 61 percent equity stake in the company. Since it couldn't deploy the 6.7 billion in loans in productive returns the GM management decided to return some of the money. The government's valuation for GMs capitalization of $74.3 based on what the government's debt for equity exchange will surely lead to taxpayers never recovering anything close to full value on its investment. Therefore it is just a simple political giveaway to gain votes. At best the value of GM is 25%-35% of the government's value. GM still can't make money in the US and its market share is falling rapidly and it can't reduce costs fast enough to offset falling revenues. In a few years GM will asking for more and will face another bankruptcy. GM shouldn't be singled out because Wall Street, AIG, Fannie, Freddie and banks have also tapped the largeness of Big Brother. The role of government is not to prop up the weak, but to even the playing field and promote growth not to provide handouts to the firms with poor strategies, weak management and bloated costs. I guess the Congress and the last two administration forgot this simple tenet.
Remember who embraced the bailout fully and even expanded it. Now look at the results. Bad policy supporting bad money just equals a nightmre of financial woes.
As a parent would you give your child all your retirment because he continued to spend more money than he earned as he grew older in life? Would you give all your paycheck to your 30 year old son if he had simply drank the money away? The governement did this with the companies it bailed out, and now we are seeing the results.
All the politicians who had their hand in this should be fired.
I totally agree ConstitutionalRights... imagine all the productive innovative things that we could have used all these trillions of bailout funds on. I think people are so clueless and gullible they just can't see the forest for the trees. Heck, if the government had just cut a check for $50k to every taxpayer we'd be in better shape that we are now. Every one of these corporations should have been left to sink or swim on their own... but the shareholders of those corps would have cried bloody murder.
Were the American automakers, also, too big to let fail?
yes, and they create a Hell of a lot more jobs in more industries than the banks. The fallout from the failure of GM and Chrysler would have been a national disaster.
You don't get it. GM has DESTROYED tens of thousands of US jobs through mismanagement. The unemployment rate in Detroit is about the highest in the country. And....the prospect for creating additional U.S. jobs in the near term looks grim, despite the 45 billion in taxpayer money that GM has gobbled up. GM just lowered its expectations for U.S. auto sales next year, to a range of 11 million to 12 million vehicles, from the 12.5 million forecast of April.
If you don't agree with Plant, "You don't get it."
The union Through them under the bus, for the pensions they had to pay those who already retired. That business is just about dead and is now on life support. Those people will never get hired back...Obama and the Unions know that and the poor people out of work were screwed.
Hopefully GM can pull itself out of this situation. It does make beautiful cars...much sexier looking cars than Ford and I would like to see a vibrant auto industry in this country. We also need high paying manufacturing jobs since it seems a segment of the population just won't go to college to get a four year degree even though that is the minimum req'd to get a decent paying job.
"...makes beautiful cars... much SEXIER looking than Ford..."?!?! you have got to be kidding me. Listen to yourself. You are describing piles of steel and rubber in the terms you would use to describe a potential MATE. THAT IS WHAT IS WRONG WITH AMERICANS!
And the "segment of the population that just won't go to college" probably won't go because they can't afford to go. If it was free and available to all, believe me, most people would be there.
The only thing I agree with you on is the need for some kind of manufacturing industry in the USA... we currently are on track to produce NOTHING of substantive value in the global marketplace. Services (i.e. processing paperwork and digital nothings) doesn't count.
socialworklady, WHAT was wrong with Plant saying "You don't get it?" Why do you ignore the facts that he gave you, and instead, just discuss the facts in his comments?? I believe that you liberals just cannot handle truth and facts. Your reply to truth that you cannot counter, is to attack the person.--- We might eventually see "eye to eye", if we all could just stick to FACTS AND TRUTH. Is that too hard to do.???
mary, because they dont have a good response to that, so they try to minimize the messenger of the truth to take you off the topic.
What has Ford done that GM should have done? Quality control, reduced spending....
Ford did not take a handout. The polls showed people were against GM for taking a handout, and said they would not buy GM made cars.
I think Ford was quicker to make energy saving engines and smaller cars, GM kept making gas guzzling trucks, that's where the most money was.. I am sure there were more things, but I don't know all the details.
The National Car-Lotto
I admit I want the car czar job; because I like the rhyme. Here is my Czarist plan to rejuvenate our American automobile industry without throwing any more good money at entrenched bureaucracies, without any further boot clicking government intervention.
As industry (or government) appointed car czar I will organize a National Car-Lotto raffle, with tickets sold nationwide wherever lotto tickets are sold. Car-Lotto raffle tickets will go for one dollar. A winning ticket gets the GM, Ford, or Chrysler of your choice, with taxes, tag, dealer fees and extended warranty included!
Income tax liability will be forgiven until such time as you sell or trade the car. Our goal, with an advertising blizzard on radio, and TV, is 30,000 yet to be built cars raffled every week, as soon as we clear the cars currently in stock on the lots!
This National car-Lotto idea replaces Cash-For Clunkers. In fact it is a better program because the National Car Lotto will not cost the taxpayers $4500 per vehicle as the Cash-For Clunkers program did.
The lotto-raffle winner goes to their favorite dealership. The sales commission on the sticker price is divided amongst the sales force so every buddy benefits. In this manner, the future of America's car companies is in the hands of we, the people, not Washington, DC bureaucrats.
Chrysler's Sebring convertible is the sharpest convertible in USA. Were it announced that Chrysler was finished and the last ten thousand Sebring Convertibles were being sold via raffle ticket, every ticket would be gone in an hour!
Facing the demise of General Motors and Chrysler, millions of people would have purchased a car-lotto raffle ticket every week to win their favorite car. The deal: upon winning you visit the dealership with your winning ticket in hand and order exactly the car and color you want.
I hold millions of people who can't afford to purchase a new car but can afford to operate a car would purchase car-lotto raffle tickets regardless every week whether they are driving a gas guzzling clunker or not. All of the millions of people who purchase scratch offs and lotto tickets would certainly earmark a dollar or two each week for a car-lotto raffle ticket as the odds of winning a brand new state of the art car are so much better then winning a lotto!
GM would have one million Volts pre-sold before their first Volt rolled off the line. We should include the all-electric Silicon Valley Tesla, too. Instead of Obama's bureaucrats deciding which companies are to survive in the collapsing world e con oh me, we, the people would be the deciders on what cars we drive.
My car-lotto national raffle program will pre-sell 30,000 new American made cars every week, the money on hold, after all the inventory on all the lots is rolled. Each and every car will be loaded with the latest state of the art features, too. The beauty in this: so many of the car-lotto winners will be people who drive but are not in the market to purchase a new car, much as they'd love to have one.
Those people who are planning on a new car, in spite of today's e con oh me, aren't going to hold off until they win one in the car-lotto. They will simply go around to the dealerships and negotiate their best deal. In a troubled world market, our auto industry will survive from the good faith of the car-lotto raffle ticket purchasing American public.
So why don't we move on this and give our car industry a chance to renegotiate fresh rolls in a permanently altered world e con oh me? I want to be industry appointed, the car czar guy on the TV ads exhorting everyone to purchase their car-lotto raffle ticket, and make the talk show rounds, pushing our new car for a dollar raffle.
The only hinderance to the above is it is my idea and I am a candidate for president, an issue evidently held against me because I am an independently minded person. Once you get past that minor detail, my candidacy / my idea, you have a winning program. One million jobs will be saved from this.
michaelslevinson.com (wanna be car czar)
That cash for clunker's really worked out great. Well anyway Japan made out good.
As did the gas guzzler models.
Yep. An illegal, working under a bogus social security card with a year of steady employment, a mastercard in pocket and cash for a down payment qualified for $4500 taxpayer dollars to unload his '86 clunker.
National Car Lotto is a better idea.
michaelslevinson.com
oliverckerr is right, and I bet that there were lots of those deals made. Each of those cash for clunkers cost us 24,000. WHAT A DEAL HUH!!!! Can you just imagine the government running our health care??? Look at the promises Obama made on us having thousands more H1N1 shots available than we have. OH!!! he's got an excuse--HE ALWAYS HAS AN EXCUSE, and of course, IT'S NEVER HIS FAULT. I'd like to find out where the buck stops in his administration.
GM will never pull itself out of the financial disaster. We, the taxpayer will keep giving them money until we wise up and realize that everyone should either make it on their own, or fail on their own.
Your faith in American industry is touching. Toyota driving traitors like you should be deported.
If Mary were deported then who would pay the taxes to support corporate welfare-sucking GMoids like you?
What is the incentive for GM to cut cost, and do whatever it takes to make their company successful? There is the government behind them, with all of our money, so why do they worry about it?
GM is a perfect fit for the US governement investment portfolio...
They are bloated. They are mismanaged. They waste money. They have extreme bureaucratic red-tape They allowed the UNIONS to skip ahead in line during bankruptcy proceedings, in order to pander to them.
GM reminds me much of our government.
aackc1's statement is an example of how Obama DOES whatever it takes to benefit himself, and his campaign contributors. Since he wanted the CEO's of AIG etc., to receive their hugh bonuses, he said that we could not break the contract, stating that they should receive them, because they were written prior to us bailing them out, BUT he sure had no problem ignoring the rules of bankruptcy, when it benefited his cronies. The UNIONS should NEVER, EVER have been allowed to go ahead in line above the people that, by law, were ahead of them, AND THEY WONDER why we are as "mad as hell and ain't going to take it anymore". There is such a thing as fairness, and we are smart enough to understand what happened in that bankruptcy deal was an outrage.
only a 1.2bn loss. lol
what a j/k.
this disgusts me.
U.S. Postal Service 2009 Loss $3.8 Bln Vs Loss $2.8 Bln Share Business ExchangeTwitterFacebook| Email | Print | A A A
By Brad Skillman
Nov. 16 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Postal Service said it posted a net loss of $3.8 billion in fiscal 2009, wider than the $2.8 billion loss the previous year. Operating revenue fell to $68.1 billion, compared to $74.9 billion in 2008, the postal service said in a statement. Total mail volume dropped 12.7 percent to 177.1 billion pieces, it said.
In 2010, the USPS forecast a revenue decline of $2.2 billion and a net loss of $7.8 billion, based on the assumption that there will be no change in the number of delivery days per week, and no change in the current retiree health benefits payment schedule.
Great!!!!!!!!!! Can I have my government run my healthcare also?
Who exactly is losing the 1.2 billion? The creditors and investors would have been wiped out by the bankruptcy. Surely, no one would step in to lose 1.2 so soon after that.
build crappy cars pay union wages & benefits = lose money
Thank you.
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