More Trouble for GM!

[Mega]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...Gb0&refer=home

I think GM are BUST,Bankupt,Pennyless............
Mike

[nitroglycol]

Re: More Trouble for GM!

Man, that really is a mess. Not only is this really bad for GM, it's also really bad for Cerberus. Would Cerberus be forced to sell Chrysler again? Who would buy it?

Meanwhile, Ford are having troubles of their own. On the other hand, they seem to be the first of the Big Three to actually recognize that they have to do something about it:

To recover, Ford announced Thursday a radical shift in tactics along with the quarterly loss. It will convert two of its SUV assembly plants in the United States to factories that make cars or crossover-utility vehicles.

To my knowledge, neither GM nor Chrysler has talked about retooling plants yet. If Ford is the first off the mark with this, they might end up being the last man standing in the American auto industry...

[Jim Nickerson]

Re: More Trouble for GM!

Man, that really is a mess. Not only is this really bad for GM, it's also really bad for Cerberus. Would Cerberus be forced to sell Chrysler again? Who would buy it?

Meanwhile, Ford are having troubles of their own. On the other hand, they seem to be the first of the Big Three to actually recognize that they have to do something about it:


To my knowledge, neither GM nor Chrysler has talked about retooling plants yet. If Ford is the first off the mark with this, they might end up being the last man standing in the American auto industry...

What you are seeing here is realization of the old saw, "A day late and a dollar short."

[Starving Steve]

Re: More Trouble for GM!

Just staring at that loss from Ford: $8.7 Billion in 90 days. How is that possible? That is a $97million per day, loss.

The C.E.O. of Ford Motors is Alan Mulally. What business school turned out this genius?

Just looking at the idiots running this world, what are the lessons to garner here about leadership and about capitalism?

This is a strange era that we live in now, an era where thinkers are shunned, and idiots rise to the top. Everyone just follows orders, and so here are the results at Ford, GM, Bear Stearns, Northern Rock, WAMU, Royal Bank of Scotland, GE, BofA, and at any of a hundred or so companies like them.

Yes, we are in a recession and losses are to be expected. Fair enough, but a loss of $8.7 B. in 90 days? The number is off-the-scale. The number suggests that something is seriously wrong with world capitalism and its leaders.

[flintlock]

Re: More Trouble for GM!

We have a corporate system that rewards BSers and politician type CEOs, rather than innovation and efficiency. These executives work their way into upper managment, sit on each other's boards, then just turn off their brains and continue to fiddle while Rome burns. Who can blame them? They get paid huge amounts of money regardless of how they do. And anything rocking the status quo is considered bad form. What amazes me is that people are still willing to invest their hard won pay into these scams.

[pescamaaan]

Re: More Trouble for GM!

Just staring at that loss from Ford: $8.7 Billion in 90 days. How is that possible? That is a $97million per day, loss.

The C.E.O. of Ford Motors is Alan Mulally. What business school turned out this genius?

Just looking at the idiots running this world, what are the lessons to garner here about leadership and about capitalism?

This is a strange era that we live in now, an era where thinkers are shunned, and idiots rise to the top. Everyone just follows orders, and so here are the results at Ford, GM, Bear Stearns, Northern Rock, WAMU, Royal Bank of Scotland, GE, BofA, and at any of a hundred or so companies like them.

Yes, we are in a recession and losses are to be expected. Fair enough, but a loss of $8.7 B. in 90 days? The number is off-the-scale. The number suggests that something is seriously wrong with world capitalism and its leaders.

the $8.7billion loss is an accounting loss - they effectively wrote down the value of their assets (5.3 billion charge on the NA operations and 2.1 billion on the value of its leases).

certainly not good news, but understand that they took this charge in one quarter vs spreading it out over multiple quarters. with accounting timing is everything...management could be doing this to take "a big bath" so that future results look better.

certainly writing off almost $9 billion in assets is not a good thing, but their cash decreased $2.1 billion from the previous quarter - Ford's revenue fell $3billion from 44.2 billion to 41.5 billion - a better analysis of ford would be to look at their cash flows rather than simple profit and loss numbers.

i

[Starving Steve]

Re: More Trouble for GM!

the $8.7billion loss is an accounting loss - they effectively wrote down the value of their assets (5.3 billion charge on the NA operations and 2.1 billion on the value of its leases).

certainly not good news, but understand that they took this charge in one quarter vs spreading it out over multiple quarters. with accounting timing is everything...management could be doing this to take "a big bath" so that future results look better.

certainly writing off almost $9 billion in assets is not a good thing, but their cash decreased $2.1 billion from the previous quarter - Ford's revenue fell $3billion from 44.2 billion to 41.5 billion - a better analysis of ford would be to look at their cash flows rather than simple profit and loss numbers.

i

OK, anyone have a cash-flow analysis of Ford Motor Co? What does that analysis show? And same thing for GM and Chrysler; anyone have a cash-flow analysis so that we can see the picture in the US auto industry from that angle?

What keeps ringing in my head is a US auto industry that has smothered ideas coming from their engineers, and instead has let auto dealers dictate corporate strategy.

I recall Lee Iacola (sp?) who ran Chrysler around 1980. He was an auto dealer. He became the hero of Wall Street as the man who saved Chrysler from bankruptcy. He kept saying that auto dealers have to shape corporate policy in the auto industry.

Sad to say, it was really the federal govn't that saved Chrysler by lending Chrysler money during its downturn back in the 1970s. To Iocala's credit, that loan did get re-paid.