Contributors

Showing posts with label General Motors. Show all posts
Showing posts with label General Motors. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Well, There Goes Two Talking Points

Unexpected Health Insurance Rate Shock-California Obamacare Insurance Exchange Announces Premium

“One reason for the misplaced expectations may be that actuaries have been making worst-case assumptions, even as insurers—eyeing the prospects of so many new customers—have been calculating that it’s worth bidding low in order to gobble up market share. This would help explain why premium bids in several other states have proven similarly reasonable. “The premiums and participation in California, Oregon, Washington and other states show that insurers want to compete for the new enrollees in this market,” Gary Claxton, a vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, said via e-mail. “The premiums have not skyrocketed and the insurers that serve this market now are continuing. The rates look like what we would expect for decent coverage offered to a standard population.”

RatesBig Three automakers, reinvented, eye consumers worldwide

Their evolution has been "transformative, like nothing that ever occurred in the past for the American auto industry," says Mike Smith, a labor historian at Wayne State University in Detroit. "American automobile workers and companies are more efficient than they have ever been during any time in history."


Thursday, February 16, 2012

Still A Massive Success

General Motors reported its highest profit in the history of the company. 2011 saw earnings of 7.6 billion dollars.Strong sales in the U.S. and China helped the carmaker turn a profit of $7.6 billion, beating its old record of $6.7 billion in 1997 during the pickup and SUV boom.

I wonder how this will be spun in the land where Barack X is president. Ah, I'll just wait for the comments below and I'll get my answer.

Friday, May 27, 2011

Still More Epic Success

Further proof that our government bailing out GM worked beyond expectations was seen in April's sales figures. In fact, all three automakers in Detroit showed faster growth than Toyota and other Japanese brands. High gas prices helped GM which sold more of its hybrid vehicles.

In April, GM sold 18 percent more vehicles than Ford. GM's market share through four months this year is 19.6 percent, up from 18.7 percent last year while Ford's market share has fallen to 16.2 percent from 16.7 percent. Toyota's share is 14.1 percent, from 15.4 percent a year ago.

In addition to all of this good news for GM, the company has begun to hire back thousands of employees that it laid off with plans for expansion on the horizon. Check out this video.



Listen to the stories of the people in this piece. Not only does this demonstrate the remarkable comeback of GM but it shows why we did it in the first place. People's lives would've been ruined in an industry with so many interlocking mechanisms, not to mention that GM (from a PR standpoint) is the United States, that ordinary bankruptcy would've been colossally devastating. Considering that GM's GNI/Revenues rank higher than several countries in the world, bailing them out was a very smart thing to do.

And we see every day that it was an epic success.

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Even More "Failure" at GM

General Motors has just posted its first full year profit since 2004.

They posted a 4.7 billion dollar profit for 2010.

"I'm not sure anyone would have predicted a year ago that GM will deliver net income of $4.7 billion," Chairman and CEO Dan Akerson said Thursday. The annual profit, fueled by strong sales in China and the U.S. as the global auto market began to recover, gave GM its best year since 1999, when it made $6 billion at the height of the pickup truck and sport utility vehicle boom.

Pretty great considering where they were. So...are we still sticking to the story that "Government Motors" is a failure?

Monday, November 29, 2010

Epic. Success.

I'm quite sad to report to all my libertarian and conservative friends that the government takeover and restructuring of General Motors has been a whopping success. Shares surged in their debut on November 18, 2010. As of today, they are trading at 33.80. This is a much bolder offering than was originally thought possible. In addition, it has allowed GM to trim the government's stake from 61 percent to 26 percent-much faster than expected.

There were many predictions of doom/gloom coupled with the usual boiling pit of sewage rhetoric but none of that has happened. Rest assured, though, I won't be holding my breath that any of my right leaning commenters are going to admit that they were wrong. In the final analysis, it doesn't really matter. What had to be done was done and, like many actions that the Obama administration has taken, success was the result.

See what can be accomplished when one doesn't have anaphylactic reactions to government?

Monday, November 08, 2010

Saving Capitalism

Beginning when in the middle of FDR's first term, strict regulation and oversight of the financial sector of this country began. For nearly five decades, as a result of these policies, our nation's economy suffered no serious financial crises.

But then an era of deregulation began and financial crises have now become a cyclical thing. We have seen several over the last three decades and will continue to see them even with the new financial reform bill passed by the Democrats in Congress and President Obama. Certainly the bill is a start but it's nowhere close to the barriers we need to break the deadly interconnectivity between the various financial institutions in this country. The massive tide of greed and OCD we have in our culture towards money will be an Everest like mountain to conquer.

Adding insult to injury is the fact that deans and professors of our country's most respected economics schools (Harvard, Columbia, Yale) are all whores for the private financial sector--filling up the minds of students with drivel about the benefits of a truly free and unregulated market. The amount of money that these men make from the likes of AIG and Goldman Sachs in sitting on their boards is in direct conflict with their duty, as educators, to be impartial and unbiased when assessing economic trends.

These professors, along with their partners in crime (literally) on Wall Street, have set up a narrative which essentially paints the Democrats, and their leader President Obama, as being socialists who want to redistribute wealth and destroy free market capitalism. Ironic, because it was these same people who begged the United States government to be bailed out of their mess created by blind greed and compulsion. But this is a small irony compared to one very massive and titanic fact.

President Obama saved capitalism.

In a recent piece in the New York Times, Timothy Egan successfully argues that this is exactly what happened.

Suppose you had $100,000 to invest on the day Barack Obama was inaugurated....As of election day, Nov. 2, 2010, your $100,000 was worth about $177,000 if invested strictly in the NASDAQ average for the entirety of the Obama administration, and $148,000 if bet on the Standard & Poors 500 major companies. This works out to returns of 77 percent and 48 percent.

Not bad, hmmm? Imagine investing that money in January of 2007 and seeing the result on Election Day 2008. The drop would give even the strongest heart great pains.

Of course, markets aren't entirely a measure of what drives our economy, as Egan points out. So let's take a look at the banks and the auto industry--the "two motors that drive our economy."

The banking system was resuscitated by $700 billion in bailouts started by Bush (a fact unknown by a majority of Americans), and finished by Obama, with help from the Federal Reserve. It worked. The government is expected to break even on a risky bet to stabilize the global free market system. Had Obama followed the populist instincts of many in his party, the underpinnings of big capitalism could have collapsed. He did this without nationalizing banks, as other Democrats had urged.

These are indisputable facts. What is also not up for debate in how thankless the banks are. They know that they were part of the problem but don't want to admit to it. Nor do they want to admit that this small form of socialism saved their asses.

Saving the American auto industry, which has been a huge drag on Obama’s political capital, is a monumental achievement that few appreciate, unless you live in Michigan. After getting their taxpayer lifeline from Obama, both General Motors and Chrysler are now making money by making cars. New plants are even scheduled to open. More than 1 million jobs would have disappeared had the domestic auto sector been liquidated.

Also, completely indisputable facts although I'm sure many who are highly emotional and sensitive about the government will try.

“An apology is due Barack Obama,” wrote The Economist, which had opposed the $86 billion auto bailout. As for Government Motors: after emerging from bankruptcy, it will go public with a new stock offering in just a few weeks, and the United States government, with its 60 percent share of common stock, stands to make a profit. Yes, an industry was saved, and the government will probably make money on the deal — one of Obama’s signature economic successes.

Interest rates are at record lows. Corporate profits are lighting up boardrooms; it is one of the best years for earnings in a decade.

Profits indeed. Corporations are borrowing at record low rates but they aren't hiring. That's where the problem lies. Why is this? Well, greed is the overriding factor. The real reason, though, is they are seeing how long they can hold out on jobs and hopefully force the federal government to ease the new (and paltry) regulations. They want to see if they can get away with it and the latest election proves that they just might. The champions of deregulation have won again...even though that is the EXACT reason why things got so fucked up in the first place.


Really? Huh. I thought the Democrats were destroying capitalism and redistributing wealth. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth.

Profits have surged 62 percent from the start of 2009 to mid-2010, according to the Commerce Department. That is faster than any other year and a half in the Fabulous ’50s, the Go-Go ’60s or the booms under Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton

Under another president, especially a Republican president, the data on corporate profits would be envied. George W. Bush, who dedicated a good deal of his presidency to tax cuts aimed at boosting business profits, probably would have loved such results. It took Bush nearly four years to post the gains that Obama has managed in less than half the time.


To answer the first question, yes, he does deserve the credit. The more accurate question is why isn't he getting it? The answer, thankfully, is simple.

His opponents don't like him, they hate being wrong, their chief goal is to win the argument regardless of facts, and they want him to fail. In other words, their frustration, which extends to many more emotional issues than just this list (more on that later), propels them to very narrow minded thinking. This tunnel vision is the guide to their pathological ideology.

Obama is wrong. No. Matter. What.

Egan carries this idea further.

All of the above is good for capitalism, and should end any serious-minded discussion about Obama the socialist. But more than anything, the fact that the president took on the structural flaws of a broken free enterprise system instead of focusing on things that the average voter could understand explains why his party was routed on Tuesday. Obama got on the wrong side of voter anxiety in a decade of diminished fortunes.

The three signature accomplishments of his first two years — a health care law that will make life easier for millions of people, financial reform that attempts to level the playing field with Wall Street, and the $814 billion stimulus package — have all been recast as big government blunders, rejected by the emerging majority.

But each of them, in its way, should strengthen the system. The health law will hold costs down, while giving millions the chance at getting care, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Financial reform seeks to prevent the kind of meltdown that caused the global economic collapse. And the stimulus, though it drastically raised the deficit, saved about 3 million jobs, again according to the CBO. It also gave a majority of taxpayers a one-time cut — even if 90 percent of Americans don’t know that, either.

I disagree with him on the financial reform package in light of the evidence presented in Inside Job. But the fact remains that the president took all of the actions that he did to save capitalism-just as FDR did with even more stringent regulations.

And, even though no one has noticed yet, he has accomplished that goal.

They will whine a fierce storm, the manipulators of great wealth. A war on business, they will claim. Not even close. Obama saved them, and the biggest cost was to him.

Sunday, October 03, 2010

More Evidence of "Failure"

Ford and Chrysler have reported huge sales gains in September further demonstrating the "failure" of President Obama and the Democrats' economic policies.

Ford reported sales up 46 percent from one year ago and Chrysler reported a 61 percent rise in sales. In fact, from September 2009 to September 2010, sales of 10 Chrysler models rose 95 percent. GM also saw a modest rise of 10.5 percent (or 22 percent if you don't count the four brands GM sold off or discontinued). Sales also rose for Honda, Toyota, Subaru, and Volkswagen.

I was under the impression that the anti colonial Kenyan was destroying business. Guess he's doing a pretty terrible job of it!

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Take a look at this video that was sent to me a while back.



So, let's see if I have this right...Detroit sucks because it's run by leftists and entitlements. And Mr. Crowder would like to know how that is working out?

Apparently, better than he wants to say in this video.

Jobs are growing. Factory workers are anticipating their first healthy profit-sharing checks in years. Sales are rebounding, with the Commerce Department reporting Friday that automobiles were a bright spot in July’s mostly disappointing retail sales.

What? Really?

The improving mood here reflects real changes in how Detroit is doing business — and a growing sense that the changes are turning the Big Three around, according to industry executives and analysts tracking the recovery.

Certainly they have a long way to go. But here are the facts.

Ford made more money in the first six months of this year than in the previous five years combined. G.M. is profitable and preparing for one of the biggest public stock offerings in American history Even Chrysler, the automaker thought least likely to survive the recession, is hiring new workers.

GM? Don't you mean "Government Motors?" It was my understanding from my colleagues on the right that this was destined to fail. And yet we have this news.

GM said Thursday that it made $1.3 billion from April through June, its second straight quarter in the black and a complete reversal from last year, when it was forced into bankruptcy and the U.S. government took a majority stake.

The federal government got a 61 percent stake in GM in exchange for $43 billion in aid to keep it alive. It could sell some or all of that when GM makes its public stock offering perhaps as early as November.

The proof is emerging in dealer showrooms, where customers are buying more of Detroit’s cars and paying higher prices. In July, G.M., Ford and Chrysler sold their vehicles at an average price of $30,400 — $1,350 more than a year ago and higher than an overall industry gain of $1,100, according to the auto research Web site Edmunds.com.

But why is all this happening?

Many of the excesses of the past — overproduction, bloated vehicle lineups, expensive rebates — are gone. All three carmakers have shed workers, plants and brands. And a new breed of top management — the three chief executives are outsiders to Detroit, as is the newly named G.M. chief executive — says it is determined to keep the Big Three lean, agile and focused on building better cars that earn a profit.

And this was all done at the behest of the government...a supposedly socialist one who is now poised to sell back their shares and let the big three continue on their merry capitalist way.

Of course, the image isn't completely rosy and they do have a long way to go but it certainly is working out much better than Crowder's heavily biased and over generalized piece makes it out to be. Just as FDR told GM to turn out a plane an hour, President Obama told them to restructure their companies to be more profitable.

It's like I've been saying all along. He's not a socialist...he's trying to save capitalism.