General Motors

Wednesday, November 13th, 2008

Right now, GM are supposed to be teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Hardly surprising in view of what I said in an earlier blog. Of course, it's not their fault - recession, falling sales, high labour and healthcare costs but not of course the management. Indeed the CEO has said that he has got the best team to lead them out of this mess. (Is that the same team that lead them into this mess?) My first question would be, 'Well didn't you stockpile some dosh when times were good?' And naturally the answer would be 'No,' for these people have the vision and the memory of a goldfish.

And for sheer waste, these people take the biscuit - not just their own resources but those of their suppliers. Halfway through a product development, some bright spark decides that the illumination of the dashboard would be nicer in blue than in green and then umpteens of money are written off - no idea of how much but it's telephone numbers. And do the public care: I doubt it. When did you last decide not to buy a certain car because of the dashboard illumination?

Barack Obama is apparently lobbying George W. to bail them out and maybe Ford and Chrysler too. No doubt, this follows on from the major support given to him in Michigan. I'd like a bail out too because I hold a lot of shares in my former employer and they have a lot of business with GM. So I want neither to go bust. There is also the fact that by some estimates, a collapse of GM would blight the lives of 3 million people if you include all the families and shopkeepers that depend on them.

But in my heart, I'd let them go to the wall. These people are never going to change. A bail out would just put off the day of reckoning.