What happens to pensions when a company is liquidated? They should go bye bye too. Did they roll these liabilities into the new GM sham? Seeing they only employ 65K US employees a years severance should have sufficed... I'm sure Tata or a Chinese car maker would have bought out the GM assets for 10 cents on the dollar. Instead the tax payers are subsidizing GM's foreign workers, foreign car sales while more of their operations are moving overseas. In the end our govt will sell its interest with the special tax concessions to a foreign investor.
The new GM Sham is making 2.1B in profits this year. Not so hard to do when you've screwed your previous shareholders & creditors.
For those of you who want boycott GM products , add vegatables to your list. No fruits & veggies for you . $245 billion in federal farm subsidies since 1995. Put those green beans down and go buy a Ford because your a TRUE supporter of capitalism ...lmao
my god you guys really have a vendetta against blue collar workers lets look at what other co. pay in taxes google 2.4 % http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-...illion-u-s-revenue-lost-to-tax-loopholes.html goldman sacs 1% http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a6bQVsZS2_18 At least gm actually produces real wealth, rather than transferring wealth like goldman
i wish gm wouldn't need gov help like toyota oh wait Once upon a time, the leading car maker of a developing country exported its first passenger cars to the US. Up to that day, the little company had only made shoddy products - poor copies of quality items made by richer countries. The car was nothing too sophisticated - just a cheap subcompact (one could have called it 'four wheels and an ashtray'). But it was a big moment for the country and its exporters felt proud. Unfortunately, the product failed. Most thought the little car looked lousy and savvy buyers were reluctant to spend serious money on a family car that came from a place where only second-rate products were made. The car had to be withdrawn from the US market. This disaster led to a major debate among the country's citizens. Many argued that the company should have stuck to its original business of making simple textile machinery. After all, the country's biggest export item was silk. If the company could not make good cars after 25 years of trying, there was no future for it. The government had given the car maker every opportunity to succeed. It had ensured high profits for it at home through high tariffs and draconian controls on foreign investment in the car industry. Fewer than ten years ago, it even gave public money to save the company from imminent bankruptcy. So, the critics argued, foreign cars should now be let in freely and foreign car makers, who had been kicked out 20 years before, allowed to set up shop again. Others disagreed. They argued that no country had got anywhere without developing 'serious' industries like automobile production. They just needed more time to make cars that appealed to everyone. The year was 1958 and the country was, in fact, Japan. The company was Toyota, and the car was called the Toyopet. Toyota started out as a manufacturer of textile machinery (Toyoda Automatic Loom) and moved into car production in 1933. The Japanese government kicked out General Motors and Ford in 1939 and bailed out Toyota with money from the central bank (Bank of Japan) in 1949. Today, Japanese cars are considered as 'natural' as Scottish salmon or French wine, but fewer than 50 years ago, most people, including many Japanese, thought the Japanese car industry simply should not exist.
The issue at hand is the government enacting special treatment to preserve its investment in the failed company. All of the previous creditors and shareholders have been screwed. I, you and every other tax payer are subsidizing foreign workers and foreign vehicle sales. Blue Collar workers... I would not be complaining nearly as much if all 245000 workers were US workers... They have gutted their American work force, the Government to preserve its return on investment is providing an insane tax credit and incentive for them to move everything overseas. These guys (The new GM Sham) are allegedly making $2B per quarter now and have even announced a 3/1 split before their IPO. They are for all practical purposes a majority foreign corporation with majority of sales and operations outside of the US. The US is their 50B tax shelter. What exactly did we bail out? The Old GM workers and suppliers got screwed but the New GM has some beautiful new digs in China. $400 from each US tax payer is going to this new GM Sham company subsidizing its new business operations overseas.
my point is what's the difference if the government gives a company subsidy or a company buys legislation (lobbies) for tax loopholes. both are unjust, but the masses (maybe not you ) for some reason thinks one is socialism and the other is "free market" what exactly did we get with the banker bailout which was many times more then this. the U.S as turned into a fascist state, corporations come before the good or will of the people . regardless of political party
The WSJ in their story yesterday said that a special provision was written into the TARP language which let these bankrupt companies keep their tax break when they emerge from bankruptcy. Pretty sneaky.
The big difference is the Govt is the majority shareholder. The tax loop holes were created by the govt prior to its investment in the failed GM for the benefit of preserving the Govt's interest into this new GM Sham company. They don't need to buy legislation or lobby because they are the Govt. There is such an obvious conflict of interest. There are laws enacted to protect minority shareholders... The govt owning a majority interest have a fiduciary duty to GM and all of its shareholders. Anything it can control or use to benefit GM (Old and New) they are obligated to do so under their fiduciary duties as the controlling shareholder. Each previous shareholder of Old GM can technically file a derivative lawsuit against the Govt as the majority shareholder for a plethora of claims (self dealing, conflict of interest, breach of fiduciary duty) that impacted the value of their shares. The 363 transaction approved by the govt (Prepackaged bankruptcy) as judge, jury, beneficiary, shareholder etc where the govt stood to gain a benefit... Should get all of lawyers involved disbarred for obvious conflicts of interest. These are by definition all sham transactions. A private company doing the same would be prosecuted for crimes. Seriously, how hard would it be for new GM to show Billions in profits when they simply erase all liabilities?