Word: gm
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...Obama Administration is unswayed, pointing out that the Bush Administration had intervened with government loans by the time the new team arrived. Chrysler was a dead man walking, and GM was a problem that no bank or investor group would touch. Task-force officials believe that the only alternative to a government cleanup, financed with public money and rammed through by government muscle, was the chaos of liquidation, which would have triggered a cascade of business failures and rocketed the unemployment rate above 10%. (Watch an interview with Ford CEO Alan Mulally...
...Which brings up another sore point among skeptics of the Administration's actions. Is it feasible now for GM and Chrysler, which made money on pickups, SUVs and minivans, to small-car their way to prosperity? U.S. carmakers have not earned a dime selling automobiles in a decade. "There's no question it's a challenge," a task-force official allowed. "It's something the domestic car companies haven't done successfully in the past." Whether it will work in the future is "a fundamentally significant question...
...these bankruptcies, at heart they are animated by the audacity of hope. The hope that Fiat's Sergio Marchionne can translate his turnaround mojo into a language Chrysler can understand. The hope that, having poured at least $1 billion into the innovative but commercially suspect Chevy Volt plug-in, GM can pivot into less costly hybrid and high-efficiency diesel technologies. (Perversely, the Administration might hope for $4-a-gallon gasoline to aid that quest...
...cash to keep them going - along with their finance arm, GMAC, and their key suppliers - the public price tag will exceed $100 billion. Add billions more in subsidies for researching and developing green technology and still more billions in tax credits to motivate buyers to go green. If someday GM and Chrysler become consistently profitable, the government loans will be repaid and both companies restored to total private control. The operative word being...
...commercial manner." That is to say, restructure the companies in a way that makes good business sense. The "commercial" mantra proved fleeting. The first imperative of commerce - to add value and thus earn profits - is too narrow to host all the civic expectations attached to the auto industry. If GM's only task were to make money, the company would shutter its car factories (or move them to low-cost countries) and churn out light trucks...