Sets a bad, bad, bad precedence for further government assistance to all corporations. I can see the lawyers now, all bringing suit against the government for not bailing out XYZ Basket Weaving Corporation, and using GM as a case reference.

and know what? all those lawyers are right for doing so. why save GM and not poppas hardware store? ok, maybe GM has some thousands of jobs more, but poppa wont need a gazillion of dollars, and HE will use the money for a change, not for a golden parachute…

When will it stop?

15.4 billion dollars down the toilet! No wonder I feel like a slumdog billionaire! As I mentioned before, we would be better off paying off UAW for rest of their natural lives for not coming to factory and not screwing another dead bolt into worthless cars nobody buys. Disgrace! Furthermore, in February, GM DID NOT need a red cent (they haven’t done homework of filling application), but today 2 billions not questions/application asked. Perhaps treasury should rescue a guy who was making awful pizza in my town and went under.

Borat:
This is not just for you but all people that say a dumb sentence like “worthless cars nobody buys”
That’s why GM sold more cars than anyonther car company in the WORLD for 77 years in a row.
you can’t say that about anyother car company, so what people might want to say is in my opinion there cars are worthless.

Let it happen!!! GM needs to file bankruptcy and shed some of the legacy, corporate, and union BS in order to be a viable business.

Let’s pretend GM sold a decent product… like Toyota or Honda do. Their business is so jacked up and antiquated that they would still be bleeding cash from every pore. This needs to happen, and the sooner it does the sooner we put a stop to the monumental waste of YOUR tax dollars!!

(Insert retarded comment from NMOFGM: Here)

The Big 3 may do more to save taxpayers dollars than they are asking for.
To see how big the Detroit Three are, we have to grasp the magnitude of the role the domestic auto industry plays in our lives.

The massive role the D3 plays in business and communities will collapse under a bankruptcy restructuring. And that will have a devastating impact on our society.

The D3 are the largest employer in the U.S. outside of the feds. Yes, D3 operated with too much bureaucracy and needed to tighten their belts, but are we making too much out of it.
Parents should be concerned about a failing auto industry, since the number one cause of death for teenagers are vehicle crashes. The D3 took on educating drivers about such topics as seatbelt safety, as well as the use of child and booster seats. They spent billions promoting awareness, conducting teen driver programs, and giving away childseats, more than the Feds.

While banks will not provide loans to small and minority businesses, the D3 were the leaders in this area. The D3 started the first corporate programs for doing business with minority suppliers and they were the biggest advertiser in most media, spending far more on it, community and arts programs than the Feds.

Detroit spends billions to support our society, communities and businesses than the amount they are asking for to get through this brief period. And our reaction is to destroy the most important industry we have left?

Caddy, you can’t take 77 years to the bank. For bank you need cash not nostalgic memorabilia. Actually, I do own GM memorabilia. But reality is that company was mismanaged for a long time and was making cars that pollute dealers lots more then congest roads. The share of domestic market went from 51% to 22-25%(?). This company needs to be shut down, owners already lost everything, and whatever left will be bought by another entity/car company who can better execute business associated with automobile production. I would rather bailout guy who sells ****ty pizza, he isn’t greedy and does not know what golden parachute is (but he will give you imodium pill for free to save environment after his slice hits you).

“Let’s pretend GM sold a decent product”????? Again, that is your opinion, not a fact. GM just lost its crown as the top selling manufacturer last year, and the main reason is because GM has dwindled its rental car fleet sales and Toyota has increased rental fleet sales. Those are the facts.

Borat – remember, GM had that kind of share of the market when there was only Ford, GM, Chrysler, maybe AMC, and the foreign brands were nothing. The market hasn’t gotten any bigger, there are just more brands for customers to choose. Of course their share is going to go down. Millions of Americans are dependent on the domestic automobile industry, not just one idiot who keeps going to a place that sells crappy pizza.

I don’t know how any of you make a living, but a lot of you really portray Americans as stupid idiots that were forced to buy American cars. These are the same people that use your companies to buy products and services from. 2009 year to date GM is outselling everyone because Americans are CHOOSING to buy them – no one is putting a gun to their head. I don’t care what you do for a living, but every one of you will suffer in some way if the domestic car companies were to go away. Just think about how many industries are related to the auto industry, how those people make money, and how they buy products and services from your jobs. You think your tax money is being blown now, wait until all of those unemployed people file unemployment claims and the government is paying their pensions. And that money would not be paid back. This is a drop in the bucket or what the alternative would cost, and that is why the government is LOANING this money out.

26.8 billion to Chrysler and GM. That is 3 months of spending in Iraq. That, my friends, is how our tax money is being wasted, not supporting millions of Americans who have paid trillions in taxes over 100 years. Who the hell from Iraq has paid taxes to America??

Chrysler will be sacrificed and put into BK and liquidated, but GM is going to continue to get the bridge loans it needs to stay out of BK. It doesn’t matter what any of the union haters or GM bashers have to say about it. A GM bankcruptcy is not going to happen. So it’s time to get real and face the facts. There is NO WAY this economy will survive a BK by TWO of the largest companies in the US at the same time. No matter what would happen the supplier base would tank. In fact, it may tank by the end of GM announced 9 week shutdown.

Add to that, again no matter what anyone thinks or says, the government will not force a BK on a company this size and throw between 800,000 to 1,000,000 retirees under the bus. It won’t happen, it’s as simple as that. Ever hear the term ‘to big to fail”? Well there you go. The PBGC is currently providing pensions to 1.3 million people and is in taking care of 29,000 pension benefit plans that cover over 40 million people!! To put GM and Chrysler into BK that 1.3mil would almost double. The PBGC would become insolvent and jeopardize the pensions of almost 42 million people. Take a guess how much THAT would cost!!

now it’s unfortunate that it has come to this, but it’s not like no one was warned. for 20 years at least we’ve been told to buy American products and support American businesses. All the “me first” people who gave it a middle finger and had some smartass reply like “i’d rather bailout a pizza guy” are now finding out that little foriegn car wasn’t really such a sweet deal after all. Now you can add the billions of dollars being used keep us out of a depression to the price of all those little imports.
Funny how these things work out isn’t it? we’ll just watch and see how this plays out over the next few weeks.

Say what you want
The Gubmint is giving GM every opportunity to survive
They have the world’s biggest jock strap
If GM fails, they can’t blame anyone else.
DrFill

Mike, I don’t know how and where you are getting your facts or statistics. When GM had 51% share of US market , the market was much smaller. The country was poorer and population was 1/3 of 300 millions Amricans living in the country. In 1975-76 there were about 225 millions people living in US. The average size of single new house was 1400 s.f. (over 3000 today). There were less the 100 millions cars on the road and cars median age was 8 years. There were 1.5 cars per family. Today family of 4 has (with teenagers) at least 3 cars, cars are lasting longer because they are better built, but cars are changed every 39 months (average lease cycle). Vehicles also cost significantly more and there is less time needed to work to buy one. The market is bigger and richer and GM is barely part of this market (less then a quarter). It is a sad chapter, but country can’t fix it and shouldn’t. Where in the constitution did anyone find provision for failing private institutions that bankrupt their true owners?

Borat – With everyone bragging about how long Toyotas last, why are they, according to you, getting rid of them, on average, every 39 months? There was no where near the competition there is now in the 70’s. By your statistics here, you are stating that GM products lasted on average 8 years in the 70’s, but you constantly blast them on their bad quality for decades. Sounds like you are contradicting yourself.

Borat – Here are some stats for you: New Light Vehicle Sales for 1970-2006. Your stats are wrong, the market was not “much smaller”. Check your facts before you start telling people about the market in the 70’s.
http://www.aiam.org/public/aiam/energy/NewLDVDealershipsSales.aspx

1970 – 9.8 Mil
1971 – 12 Mil
1972 – 13.2 Mil
1973 – 14.1 Mil
1974 – 11.2 Mil
1975 – 11 Mil
1976 – 13 Mil
1977 – 14.6 Mil
1978 – 15.1 Mil
1979 – 14 Mil

Forcast for 2009 – 9.6 Mil. How were the 70’s “much smaller”? Where do you get your facts? Like I said before, the market is not that much bigger, there are just more brands which is why GM’s market share is lower. FACT.

Direct quote from Tim Geitner:
“Well, we had two options. We could lend the $2 billion to GM, or we could have taken it out back and set it on fire. Unfortunately the EPA said that was air pollution, so we just gave it to GM. The result is the same”

“I don’t know how any of you make a living, but a lot of you really portray Americans as stupid idiots that were forced to buy American cars.”

If they bought American cars without being forced into, then they are really idiots.

GTA
GM’s share is smaller through poor management and the competition making better cars
GM had the market back then, but didn’t know, or care, what people wanted to buy then either
The number of brands selling cars doesn’t decide share
Who is making the cars people want decides share
GM made 6 brands itself, and couldn’t figure out how to market any of them
Fact
DrFill

looks like y’all forgot tax day was just 9 days ago…the fed knows how to get money out of people and companies…the government doesn’t give money like this away for free…also, it shouldn’t be a surprise to any of you that GM needs more money…they asked for over 20 billion several months ago…assuming they were honest about that number the government could have either given them 20B straight up, or doled out the cash as needed over time…they took the second approach…so these announcements aren’t a shock…

what would be surprising is if we were over 20-30B and still counting, but we’re not…15B is still under the estimate GM provided a while back…

why GM failed is pretty much irrelevant at this point…gotta move forward…what’s done is done…the party is over…time to restructure and think about making this behemoth profitable again, not dwell over what could have or should have happened…

Veda and Dr. Fill
Again, a couple of people rattling on about things they don’t know anything about. 100 years in the business, 77 years being #1 in sales, and you guys think they don’t know how to market anything and Americans are idiots for buying them. The education level on this site is amazing.

77 years sure didnt teach them anythng about tough times… ud think theyd have learned something in all those years. in my opinion gm had it way too easy all these years, they built ****ty cars cause people still bought them from some reason. if gm was selling their american cars in europe they would have gone broke a long time ago. figures all they could do was buy opel and let germans handle how to construct and build them… the only thing that’d get gm out of this is to stop making so many tv commercials and start building cars that are actually worth buying again.

And why is every other car manufacturer, including European and Japanese, asking and receiving money from their governments?? Is that all GM’s fault too? Again, back your statements with some facts and then you have a valid argument.

People have been buying American cars on blind devotion for the past twenty years. It’s sad, but true. But people are finally wisening up. Lexus and Toyota sales have had a huge increase in the Midwest, a place you would think would be devoted to Buick and Chrysler.

Basically, GM screwed itself years ago by making the same models with 5 different sets of sheet metal and letting their build quality and designs stagnate. No one can deny that, just like no one can deny 77 years of leading the auto industry. But at the same time, with that many years of being on top, shouldn’t they have forseen the competition’s actions and stayed competitive?

If their cars are so massively good, like half of the readers here say, how come so many reviews disagree? Build quality reviews online from actual drivers, professional magazine reviewers, these sources would not list American cars equally with their domestic counterparts.

These rants aren’t going anywhere, they never do online, and hardly ever in person, I’m just amazed that so many people latch onto the fact that GM is old, and cite that as them being great. If we all recall, Europe and Japan hosted a war that destroyed their entire economies and infrastructures 65 years ago. Most of their industries were not able to come back for quite awhile. GM can brag all it wants, but it’s just no that smart. Accept it.

“These sources would not list American cars equally with their domestic counterparts”. I’m confused – you are comparing American cars to domestic cars, aren’t they the same??

All manufacturer’s build a competitive product, it seems to me so many are fixated on the vehicles GM produced in the 70’s. It’s not the 70’s anymore, it is barely the 2000’s anymore. The domestics have come a long way since the problems of the 70’s, 80’s, and even the 90’s. It seems so many people bash the domestics with no realization that all manufacturers are going through the same problems all over the world. If you don’t care for American cars, that is one thing. But to bash them for quality and accuse Americans of “blind devotion” is just pure opinions. Go out and drive a G8 GT, a Caddy CTS, a new Mustang or Dodge Ram. These are not the vehicles from the 70’s that everyone seems to think they are.

my point exactly Ed103….

Had GM divested itself years ago it could have been a great company, but instead it is usually followed by Pork Rine eating NASCAR Red Neck Southern wet back Hick boys that have given the company a bad reputation as Ignorant and Stupid. Because they are. Which is where their at today. Granted I know of alot of good people that have own GM product. But its that atrocious Retard attitude of Buy Chevy and slander and slim everyone else. Which is not only a turn off but its totally False. This is largely to blame for their problems and the leadership at the top.
Concentrate on niche vehicles and throw whatever out there and call it the best for middle america even though its not. This is why Ford is on Track to succede and GM to failure. Chyrsler I actually feel bad for because they have good product but the management and mismanaged by damiler Chrylser is to blame as well.

But anyway with another 2 billion it makes you wonder how much the Government will let GM suck down before the restructuring is done. If it were up to me Buick , GMC (rebadged Chevies) would also be Killed off.
It would be just Cadillac and Chevy that’s it. No BS

@ Bankruptcy09: Add Corvette to the List.
Or maybe make Corvette the performance Brand, like Daimler has its AMG / Brabus, or BMW got the M-Brand Cars, but with a completely unique car of their own, a next gen corvette.

then again… this is all daydreaming… GM and whats left of it is going down the drain, no matter what will happen. Not even being bought by the chinese would save them in the long run, as they would close down shop after extracting all the (little) knowledge, GM has in advance of the average chinese automaker…