Does GM deserve a taxpayer bailout?

what's good for general motors is good for the country.

Dear Mr. Cohan,
The profits made by GM on SUV's should be compared to the profits made by banks on sub-prime mortgages. The government has aready decided to bail these companies out. And the bank CEO's have made no offer to return the huge bonus's they received --in exchange for taxpayer assistance. The government should have increased fuel efficiency standards to help keep the domestic auto industry globally competitive. The government failed similarly to manage the home mortgage market.

It is in our country's best interest to have domestic manufacturer's that can also export product. GM helps our trade deficit much more than Toyota and outside USA, GM is a profitable, competitive company.

How is it that the UAW can suffocate one of its own and leave the transplants alone? How is it that a company like GM is straddled with legacy healthcare and pension costs, while transplants do not incur such costs and have no intention to offer benefits that would lead to these liabilities in the future? Every other country in the industrialized world helps their domestic industry to succeed, domestically and internationally, overtly and covertly. America will one day be shaken from her naivete and ask herself how she lost her position as the economic and political superpower of the world. It is the goal of the Europeans and Chinese to get more power.

-Dennis

Absolutely ridiculous. They GM Americna car makers can't do anything right. Just ask Ross Perrot. If the government wants to have cars built with hybrid technology and green fuels then let them invest in new companies. Start fresh and green not with a rotted out battleship that should be at the bottom of the ocean. They have no vision no character and no business being in business if they can't make it without the taxpayer support. What have they done for the taxpayer? Nothing except feed us fuel hogs, gas suckers! Farewell GM if you can't get your act together on your own.

if we can spend, spend in Iraq

surely we can help out a littele here at home.

"The government should have increased fuel efficiency standards to help keep the domestic auto industry globally competitive."

Dennis,
The reason that the US government didn't raise fuel efficiency standards was because Detroit was dead-set against it. Who do you think paid millions and millions of dollars lobbying the government not to raise mileage standards? It was GM and the rest of them. This article is dead on, and GM is now reaping what it has sowed.

NO TO THE BAILOUTS !!! WE THE PUBLIC ARE TIRED OF BEING USED BY THE GOVERNMENT AND THEIR PARTNERS IN CRIME TO STEAL MONEY FROM THE PUBLIC AND THE SOCIAL SECURITY SYSTEM,THESE BUSINESS HAVE TE BEST MINDS AVAILABLE AT THEIR DISPOSAL WE ARE TIRED BEING USED!!!NO BAIL TO THESE COMPANY"S NONETO THE REAL ESTATE INDURTRY TOOOOOOO!!!!!!

What GM is proposing is authorization of a low-interest loan program that was included in the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act. These loans are specifically to accelerate the development of advanced technology vehicles. GM, like all global carmakers, is moving very fast to, in effect, reinvent the automobile, at a time when sales for all carmakers are poor and private credit markets are struggling.

This is not a bailout -- rather it supports investment by GM and others in technologies that will be critical to the future of the U.S. and U.S. based carmakers and suppliers. The U.S. government has supported similar investments in the past, and such investments are routine in other countries that intend to dominate the future market for energy efficient vehicles.

destructive capitalism says no

When Honda and Toyota came to this country, they did not have any legacy cost like the domestics. Ford, Chysler, and GM have been providing us cars for almost a century and had hundreds of thousand retirees.while Toyota and Honda came here with no pensioners to pay health care and pensions.
How could American companies compete with such a handicap?
Yes, the US government should loan the money to them. If they don't it will be a lot more costly to our government.

It's not a bailout, this is a government cosign on loans at a lower rate.

Do any of you understand what tricks the Japanese have pulled on us? Since 1995 their financial system has operated with a prime rate at or below a half percent. Ours has been at or above 4.75% until earlier this year. They effectively devalued their currency to enhance the trade surplus we owe them. But since we owe them money at a higher rate, it's pure profit for them.

It has taken this long but that debt has eroded the value of the dollar. But in all that time, we are paying the swing. They get low cost investment capital. We get cheap stuff from them. We lose jobs, they sell more crap.

You want a solution for the fix GM and rest are in? There's two ways, they increase rates or we lower ours and if we do, we cause a worldwide depression.

well here is they way i see it. if they want the money. thats ok at least it is in the usa. BUT they have to get 75 miles to the gallon of gas and they have to do it in one year. period. my dad is 80 years old he has seen the special carbs come out on cars and get over a 100 miles to the gallon. then gm comes back and says opps i need that back it got out by mistake. so the technology is there congress make them do it they have ruined the world withj there gas suckers for 70 yrs. now it is time to give back to the americans. we the people. wake up congress we the people are your meal ticket, we can stop that. give us a break once in our lives.

Question: What is the downside to let GM fail? Answer: A bunch of overpaid union workers lining up at the unemployment office!

http://financial-cents.blogspot.com/2008/09/another-bailout-gm-wants-your-tax-money.html

Come on America. The US automaker is the last few products we produce in this country. Yes we should give GM a loan. We give all the other foreign countries money, why shouldn't we help our own?

GM pays more into this country and its causes than any other foreign ever will. When GM and Ford are gone, watch what happens to the foreign cars and what you will pay for one. They will have a monopoly over us, since we will no longer produce cars. WAKE UP AMERICA!

First, remember that this is a loan rather than a free-money bailout.

Second, GM's biggest legacy cost is the decades they spent churning out sub-standard junk that drove people into the arms of the imports while awarding the execs obscene bonuses for poor performance.

Third, come do my job on the assembly line and then tell me I am overpaid. The people who gripe about what I make have not experienced the assembly line and the rigors thereof.

If GM and FORD are losing money and sales, what makes us believe that the loans will bail them out! if they don't know what consumers wants and make junk cars, they will continue to make cars that no one will trust or buy, and all the money will be spend on those CEO's and investers.
Must be nice to owen a resturant and serve your customers food they did not order, blame it on the american customers and ask for the tax payer for a bail out.

Seriously, f**k GM. They had the EV and they killed it out of greed. They don't deserve a bail out. I will not stand for the corporate greed that has taken over our wonderful country, and is ruining it, for one second longer! It is time we stand up against this blatant disregard for the good of the whole. I am so outraged, and shocked that more citizens are not equally outraged!