The federal government should sell "our shares of GM" immediately.
We should work toward an "auction date" and disinvest from these companies immediately.
We should put our controlling stake for sale and do so at whatever price the free market determines.
The federal government has no business owning GM or Chrysler.
Let the marketplace, not Obama and the unions, take care of GM.
Aren't you concerned about corruption? Aren't you worried that politicians, rather than business people, will design cars?
Real question: Can this company make cars that Americans want to buy?
Second question: Can they make a profit selling cars? They couldn't' before. Can they do it now without major, and I mean major, UAW concessions?
"GM's bankruptcy pushes bondholders aside in favor of the U.S. government and the UAW.
Though bondholders hold $27 billion in debt, they'll get just 10% of stock.
How's that compare with the other "stakeholders?"
For spending $50 billion to bail out GM, the government will get 60% of the equity in the new GM; the UAW, which along with other unions gave millions to Democrats, will be repaid for its loyalty with 17.5% of the stock for $10 billion of unsecured debts.
So the government, with roughly two times what private bondholders have on the table, gets a stake five times bigger.
And the union, with about a third as much "invested," gets a 70% bigger stake.
Even the Canadian government, with its $9.5 billion "invested," ends up with 12%.
They call it "restructuring."
We call it theft.
Never in our memory has there been a more thorough, systematic effort to disenfranchise the shareholders and bondholders of a major American firm.
It will make investors — domestic and foreign alike — think twice about investing in an American stock or bond in the coming years.
It will make investors — domestic and foreign alike — think twice about investing in an American stock or bond in the coming years.
Why invest if your money and rights as an investor can be arbitrarily stripped from you, as they were in GM's case?"
P.S. Do you want new blood in GM?
Do we want someone who has never run anything?
Even The NY Times is concerned:
"Brian Deese, a not-quite graduate of Yale Law School who had never set foot in an automotive assembly plant until he took on his nearly unseen role in remaking the American automotive industry."
Do we want someone who has never run anything?
Even The NY Times is concerned:
"Brian Deese, a not-quite graduate of Yale Law School who had never set foot in an automotive assembly plant until he took on his nearly unseen role in remaking the American automotive industry."
