Cramer on GM

[Mega]

I see GM & Cramer very much as the same thing:-
http://jalopnik.com/5087882/cnbcs-ji...?autoplay=true

Asshole motor company & a Asshole motor mouth
Mike

[kelton56]

Re: Cramer on GM

But...what no one, especially Cramer, ever asks or attempts to analyze is this: Yes we can bail out GM, Ford and Chrysler, or for that matter Macy's or JC Penney or any other company, but would the cost of those bailouts exceed the "cost" of letting one or more of them fail, and the government re-employing all the production employees, supplier employees, dealership employees in a more productive and socially useful capacity, say, rebuilding infrastructure, recreating a national passenger rail system, building new electric generating plants, etc., etc.

No one ever does such an analysis, it's always just "save this, save that." I don't recall the vacuum tube industry being saved following the commercialization of the transistor, or the phonograph industry being saved after CDs were commercialized.

Or...take your pick throughout more than two centuries of creative destruction.

After someone has done such a cost-benefit analysis, THEN we can begin discussing, rationally, whether GM and others should be saved.

Unfortunately in our real-time political environment, where now $700 billion can be spent based on a three-page memo, no analysis of this sort ever will be done.

So we will "save" GM, Ford, et al, this year, and within five years one or more of them will succumb anyway, and we still will be without a national rail system or new power plants or anything else useful.

We will only have enabled a lot of people to buy more cheap plastic crap from China...or maybe that's the plan?

[Chomsky]

Re: Cramer on GM

But...what no one, especially Cramer, ever asks or attempts to analyze is this: Yes we can bail out GM, Ford and Chrysler, or for that matter Macy's or JC Penney or any other company, but would the cost of those bailouts exceed the "cost" of letting one or more of them fail, and the government re-employing all the production employees, supplier employees, dealership employees in a more productive and socially useful capacity, say, rebuilding infrastructure, recreating a national passenger rail system, building new electric generating plants, etc., etc.

No one ever does such an analysis, it's always just "save this, save that." I don't recall the vacuum tube industry being saved following the commercialization of the transistor, or the phonograph industry being saved after CDs were commercialized.

Or...take your pick throughout more than two centuries of creative destruction.

After someone has done such a cost-benefit analysis, THEN we can begin discussing, rationally, whether GM and others should be saved.

Unfortunately in our real-time political environment, where now $700 billion can be spent based on a three-page memo, no analysis of this sort ever will be done.

So we will "save" GM, Ford, et al, this year, and within five years one or more of them will succumb anyway, and we still will be without a national rail system or new power plants or anything else useful.

We will only have enabled a lot of people to buy more cheap plastic crap from China...or maybe that's the plan?

Sure they do.

GM Collapse at $200 Billion Would Exceed Bailout Tab, Firm Says

Nov. 15 (Bloomberg) -- General Motors Corp., burning through cash as sales slump, would cost the government as much as $200 billion should the biggest U.S. automaker be forced to liquidate, a forecasting firm estimated.

A GM collapse would mean ``more aid to specific states like Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana, and more money into unemployment and extended benefits,'' Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at IHS Global Insight Inc. in Lexington, Massachusetts, said yesterday in an interview.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...7Ao&refer=home

[kelton56]

Re: Cramer on GM

Sure they do.

GM Collapse at $200 Billion Would Exceed Bailout Tab, Firm Says

Nov. 15 (Bloomberg) -- General Motors Corp., burning through cash as sales slump, would cost the government as much as $200 billion should the biggest U.S. automaker be forced to liquidate, a forecasting firm estimated.

A GM collapse would mean ``more aid to specific states like Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana, and more money into unemployment and extended benefits,'' Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at IHS Global Insight Inc. in Lexington, Massachusetts, said yesterday in an interview.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...7Ao&refer=home

Sorry...this exactly is my point.

Nariman Behravesh says a GM rescue would cost $100 billion - $200 billion, etc. etc. That may, in fact, be true, but nowhere in that story is there reporting of any analysis of what else could be done with the $200 billion, and whether anything else would be, long-term, a better use of the money.

Without knowing what else is contained in Behravesh's "estimate," then what is masquerading as "research" is merely an opinion designed to promote a certain course of action, to "scare" politicians into acting.

Gee, where have we seen that tactic recently? TARP come to mind - financial armageddon and all that?

Please...until there is credible research of alternatives to these bailouts, we constantly will be subjected to these one-sided ultimatums.

[FRED]

Re: Cramer on GM

Sorry...this exactly is my point.

Nariman Behravesh says a GM rescue would cost $100 billion - $200 billion, etc. etc. That may, in fact, be true, but nowhere in that story is there reporting of any analysis of what else could be done with the $200 billion, and whether anything else would be, long-term, a better use of the money.

Without knowing what else is contained in Behravesh's "estimate," then what is masquerading as "research" is merely an opinion designed to promote a certain course of action, to "scare" politicians into acting.

Gee, where have we seen that tactic recently? TARP come to mind - financial armageddon and all that?

Please...until there is credible research of alternatives to these bailouts, we constantly will be subjected to these one-sided ultimatums.

How about giving 10% of that $100 billion to a few dozed plug-in hybrid start-ups and another 10% to finance the charging stations to make them practical? Strikes us as a better ROI overall.

[Spartacus]

Re: Cramer on GM

At that time the US was not as "lawyered up the wazoo" as it is now.

Industries were also not as politically active at the time. The Corporate Nanny State (offering the Governent's gigantic teats to corporations) did not really exist.

How many lobbyists existed in Washington when the vacuum tube industry went under? There were a few, I"m not claiming there were none.

And how many exist today?

But...what no one, especially Cramer, ever asks or attempts to analyze is this: Yes we can bail out GM, Ford and Chrysler, or for that matter Macy's or JC Penney or any other company, but would the cost of those bailouts exceed the "cost" of letting one or more of them fail, and the government re-employing all the production employees, supplier employees, dealership employees in a more productive and socially useful capacity, say, rebuilding infrastructure, recreating a national passenger rail system, building new electric generating plants, etc., etc.

No one ever does such an analysis, it's always just "save this, save that." I don't recall the vacuum tube industry being saved following the commercialization of the transistor, or the phonograph industry being saved after CDs were commercialized.

Or...take your pick throughout more than two centuries of creative destruction.

After someone has done such a cost-benefit analysis, THEN we can begin discussing, rationally, whether GM and others should be saved.

Unfortunately in our real-time political environment, where now $700 billion can be spent based on a three-page memo, no analysis of this sort ever will be done.

So we will "save" GM, Ford, et al, this year, and within five years one or more of them will succumb anyway, and we still will be without a national rail system or new power plants or anything else useful.

We will only have enabled a lot of people to buy more cheap plastic crap from China...or maybe that's the plan?

[xtronics]

Re: Cramer on GM

I see GM & Cramer very much as the same thing:-
http://jalopnik.com/5087882/cnbcs-ji...?autoplay=true

Asshole motor company & a Asshole motor mouth
Mike

Cramer is a good inverse indicator - do the opposite of what he says.

We could give Toyota $50B and ask them to salvage anything of value - better than bailing GM out.