Closing Arguments: $4 Billion More for GM

More money down the drain. Bankruptcy is their only hope

i cant believe this GM 4 billion more dollars? why are we lending them more money? i think people that arent worth millions of dollars need a bailout, people that are struggling right now with their house being forclosed jobs being lost everyday and they are getting 4 billion more dollars … i think its time that they take care of their own problems

maybe I COULD comment with some degree of understanding and insight if you had bothered to actually give me some info on this story?
Instead of covering BARBIE’S BIRTHDAY?
honestly – your show is pop pablum – no?
seems like when I switched it on tonight I saw cartoony drawings of gas pumps with funny faces to illustrate a sort of random survey of gas prices across the country
CARTOON GAS PUMPS?
yikes! I’ll listen to NPR instead …

Good money after bad, they should be let go. They knew before all the talk of bail out that they were in trouble yet where was their restructure plan then. Over the years they did not care about the consumers while they built junk and sold it to us, just let them figure it out themselves. Their competition has spoiled their plan.

it’s CRAP! Congressional Relief Action Program. CRAP

Again, this is $4 billion that was already approved but not yet dispensed to GM. Bankruptcy is not “their only hope”. It may be necessary, if structured by the government to help offload debt, but it won’t be a typical bankruptcy.
It is beyond comprehension how one could seriously advocate letting the entire industry fail. Think the economy is bad now? Add a few more million jobless and see what happens.

4 billion or 40 billion to keep a few million people working is money well spent at this point.

This is crazy, we are throwing gasoline onto a continuous fire. Has GM given us specific reasons for the ask of an additional $4 billon? If I were to go into a bank to ask for a loan, I will be asked to provide reasons for the money. Why are the “big” guys always exempt from the normal requirements. We only have ourselves to blame for their wasteful spending. I would hate for anyone to lose their jobs but bankruptcy may offer a better reality check because these guys have no clue.

lg, I think you are saying a more productive way would be to use taxpayer’s money as unemployment compensation for 2.5 million unemployed people. And what do you have when the taxpayers run out of money? People still unempoyed and no manufacturing base.

Over 50% of Americans buy cars from US-owned manufacturers. Ford makes the best trucks and now the best hybrid car. The best hybrid SUV comes from either Ford or GM (not including the ultra-expensive Lexus). Sure the BMW 3-series is great, but don’t presume that American manufacturers can’t make great products.

why do we keep throwing money towards company’s that can’t manage their own money very well these days. They’ll get the EXTRA cash anyway but what happens if the economy doesn’t bounce back anytime soon? Are we going to throw even more money to them again in the future. I say enough is enough. It’s like the government has a credit card with an unlimited balance with no cancellation date. But as government politics go…we’ll send the money, someone else will foot the bill. Unfortunately the American people foot the bill when they don’t have the extra money to spend as it is.

My comment on this Gm stories is sound like a ferry tale and nothing but propaganda of the continuation of the past eight years. I’m also amazed by the fact that those Companies still find a way to get away with the same past; nothing but propaganda for their own well-being.

gm is getting 4 billion dollars now and more after the end of march? and i’m getting 400 dollars? that’s a disgrace! i voted for obabma because he promised help to the working class home owner. that’s me. 40 percent of my income this year came from working overtime. my children forgot what i look like, i’m worn down like never before, and i’m sure that i can’t do it again. all to try to keep my home, and i’m still sinking. and when i lose my house, i’ll be just another statistic. 400 dollars is not going to help me. am i supposed to say thank you? meanwhile gm, one of the most irresponsible companies in the country, is getting everything they need to survive, on my dime! come on now. that’s not what i voted for. why don’t we leave the oil companies to bail out the car companies. they are the one’s who profit from the gas guzzerlers that gm is known for making. i can’t believe that left on thier own, the oil companies will let the car companies fail. the car companies have been looking out for the oil companies for ever. time for the oil companies to pay them back. and who cares anyway if gm goes bankrupt. they deserve to. they make an over priced, inferior product. that is why they are in trouble. why do tax payers need to bail them out? they really don’t do anything for us. if i lose my house, which, at this point is almost certain, somehow that’s going to be my fault. if gm goes under, somehow that’s going to be my fault too. i’m sick of it. communism, these days, doesn’t sound like such a bad idea. good job barack!

It’s absolutely ludicrous for Nightline to even pose the question here when the Gov’t will unquestioningly turn over trillions to the bankers and Wall Street without any real assurance or certainty there, nor the full approval of the public.
Comparing questioning a mere $4 billion to aid the auto industry to that might be funny if it weren’t such a serious matter at hand, as American jobs and the health of our nation are what are really at stake here.

BO pissing more money away but not helping the average person at all…just paying off his political debts!

I wish BO would have spent a little more time studying the huge problem at hand…took him only a few weeks to figure out that $900,000,000,000 might not solve the problem…way to go BO!

The government has allowed itself to become a cash cow… and its letting wall street, banks and the auto industries to milk it…
Its a waste to keep pumping money into businesses that should have known they were going into the tank… let me fend for themselves and stop sucking our tax dollars down the drain.
Why doesn’t the government bail out all the people that lost money due to wall street throwing money out the window on frivolous crap and losing everyones IRA and 401K’s… sure don’t see the government helping out the little people..
This will be a never ending cash flow to big corps… who cannot use common sense and conduct their businesses in a rational manner…
Yea, go ahead and give them more money, so they can get the huge bonuses, fancy vacations, buy more luxury jets, take junkets to vegas, and fly first class anywhere in the world they want to go.
Just don’t be surprised when all of a sudden Obama says he needs to raise all of us middle and lower classes taxes..
We won’t see it coming, but when it hits us.. its gonna hurt big time.

That much money to the company that killed the electric car after building it. They repo’ed all the ones “leased only” and destroyed them, crushed for recycling! If you don’t know about the V1 car. Rent “Who killed the electric car” on DVD!

This $4 billion is part of the money originally approved under the Bush administration. You guys don’t seem to get it or care.
America is not ending. Get over yourselves…

Let them go under. It’s the only way to bust the UAW. Then, the more efficient manufacturers will buy up the Detroit factories and cars will still be manufactured in the U.S. but by companies that won’t be pushed around by the UAW.

1percenter…time to wake up…glory days are over, BO worse than Bush…just taking care of his political debts, doesn’t care about the average american at all

Floyd…they are incapable of making a profit, why invest in a failed company that will never be able to repay the so called loans?????

There are much more important things for this country to be worried about than “busting the union”.
yeah, lets bust the union at any cost and when we see a 12 or 15 percent unemployment rate and wonder why we have to stand in the unemployment line right along with them, that’ll teach em!!… what a doofus…

gary;
the loans will be paid back. the companies will be profitable. their products are ALREADY better than most. have some faith in America will ya?

Floyd: I’m not bashing the workers, just greed tactics of the UAW when times were better. Now it’s time for them to pony up and help them save thier own jobs. I worked for 42 (not 30) years in the transportation industry amd none of my retirements benefits are paid. I took a part-time job at age 63 to help pay for health insurance to cover my wife and grand-daughter that I adopted. Now the IRS has decided to tax my retirement benefits to take everything I earn after $13’000.00 plus the retirement board reduces my pension for working. Would it hurt the UAW folks to absorb at least a small portion of thier generous benefits package to help save thier jobs. Do you know any struggling UAW retires? I don’t.

This is a waste of our limited resources. GM has recently opened new plants to serve their international markets, it is US operations that are the source of loss for the corporation.
Lending GM additional funds will not address the key issue which is declining demand for their product. Our ability to compete nor is our prosperity served as a Nation by subsidizing and perpetuating failure while decreasing the availability of resources for those that are successful.
Since we our borrowing $ from China and others we should at least use these funds to develop, support and implement a manufacturing strategy that will provide a means to compete against our creditor that has better technology as it has the latest manufacturing plants, has an education system that yields far superior results in terms of $ spent per knowledge achieved (we are number 1 at spending on education and achieve in the mid to hign 20′s in terms of achievement), has lower wages, has a zero capital gains tax and a surplus budget. We will have to pay these debts and this can be achieved by creating wealth through manufacturing and innovation, excessive taxes or currency devaluation. Our politicians with their actions have left us with the last two options which will dramatically decrease our standard of living. Manufacturing creates wealth and services re-distribute the wealth created by others.
Instead our politicians waste our borrowed $ by serving their own personal/political interests and creating conditions for continued economic decline of our country towards a state in which their will be strictly two economic classes (rich and poor). Through their continued failure to develop a sound well thought out strategy to create an environment that creates wealth through manufacturing and innovation they act to destroy our country for their own short term personal goal to remain in office. It is evident that the only change we can count on is the magnitude of waste and the scale of lost opportunities.

Change, we need change! I didn’t realize that the change was to bankrupt the country, tax the middle guy and reward those who drove us to the brink of disaster with big bonuses for their ineptitude in managing their failed corporations.

Floyd:
Back in the day I did apply for a job with GM, but I had a high school education and didn’t have any relatives working for GM so I didn’t get the job.

I think were throwing good money after bad. GM has had plenty of time to realize that they were out of control with inflating car prices and the UAW with the benefits they pushed on GM which the price tag got pushed on to us the conumer which did not help matters any. Also the UAW is not making any major concessions to help the struggling company. My father always bought new Chevys since he was a young man and I did the same until this last truck which I bought at 30k a year ago and the Chevy dealer told me trucks are not worth anything and offered me 15K for it in perfect condition with very low milage. Unless you and all your distributors want to file bankrupcy, you need to show you want to stay in buisness and come to your senses that you need to work together and quit thinking of getting rich off every car , truck, part, or accesory you make and make things affordable again so the country can get back on it’s feet. I’d hate to say it, but this will be the last new american made I ever buy and I regret to say I will probably never see the day my son drive home in his first brand new chevy due to they will be so unaffordable.

I recently stumbled across a web site that listed the UAW go-fers, organizers, reps, etc and they numbered about 150 or so. Their salaries ranged from about $200.000.00 to $65.000. per year plus full benefits. These folks are non-productive workers. Do they really need all these people hanging around with the management team, putting their back door agreements together. Put them back and the line and let them find out what it is like to get a days work for a days pay.

Let them all close down and the UAW can lead them all to Mcdonalds for job intervirews and let them have a taste of what work is really like at a realistic wage!

Neverending, isn’t it?

benefit reps are a necessary go between as for others, some of them are necessary, some of them aren’t. i completely agree that that is an area that can be cut, as far as i know maybe it has. Not sure about your numbers, do you mean 150 per plant? i know at my plant there were no more than 10 or 20 office reps. You have to understand that some of them were created by management to assist management.

one should always proof read before sending a blog and never blog when mad or only able to use a coupl of your fingers (the ones that will move.) Guess who – the disabled veteran. Ask about the blog of mine being held back.
And you’ll see why I say screw chrysler
and don’t use any grease.

We shouldn’t be giving GM more money. The only hope for GM (and Ford and Chrysler) is bankruptcy, which will force a restructure with objective oversight. Executives in the auto industry are so entrenched in “how we’ve always done it” that they aren’t capable of finding new and innovative solutions. In order to have any hope of competing in a global economy they need a new perspective that enables them to produce quality products in a more cost-effective manner. Bankruptcy will force that perspective, along with renegotiation of the untion contracts to preserve jobs at more competitive rates.

The UAW has the upper hand here, they know Obama will not allow the auto industry to bankrupt, the unions must be paid back for voting him into office. Watch and see. This is bad for America but then so is Obama.

I think we all need to ask the more important stimulus package question…will it create a job, and will an extra $13.00 in your paycheck help you, or create one. The answer is no on all counts.

No more bailouts – especially without strict controls about repaying the American public.
First, require all excessive executive salaries and bonuses to be repaid or forfeit their jobs.
Second, establish sppecific rules about how the money can be spent.
Third, the repayment rules mentioned above.
We are throwing good money after bad — where will it end?
I had to sell a franchise many years ago without any option of a bailout. The rules should be the same for all businesses, not based upon the size of the business.

Hi GM it will be still a failure if they keep giving you the money if you still have no strategy how to save your company.Try let everyone in company have responsibility if they still want to keep their job. Let everyone give suggestion ideas how to improve how to save in their own line their own department even the administration can have suggestion how to save their stationary paperwork and etc more ideas who how where when to do it .Have teams leader in every department every production line.rewards them $1.00 $2.00 even more if their ideas suggestion did workout effectively. Let me give you an idea now everyone is making hybrid cars Suv but nobody is buying. What happen to vans trucks they need hybrid they want to save too the commercial wants to save too.

YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!!!! If I didn’t run my business properly, no one would bail me out! Let them go out of business – survival of the fittest!! Someone who knows how to run a business will thrive in their place!!!

The bailouts are not the problem, our leaders are. There are about 545 people in Washington that are spending all of this money. They seem to have no concept of money management. Everyone in congress should have to take the Dave Ramsey coarse. I wonder if all of our Senators and Congressmen take care of their check books and personal finance’s they same way they take care of the peoples $$$$’s. If they do then I would think every member of Congress needs a bailout. Come on Americans we are letting these arogant people spend us into a hole we may not be able to climb out of, if we really want change everyone of us needs to vote every incumbant out of office and limit their terms.

What GM needs to use the money is to re-tool EL CAMINOs. Same style as previous years but with powerful 6 cylinder engines, automatic, and with Air Conditioning, and CD radios. MPGs at about 25 to 33. Priced between $10K and $12k. That ugly looking pickup/car that sells for $35 to $40k is overpriced and unusable. We need more BODIES BY FISHER. Otherwise GM will not be able to compete and continue making those awful vehicles whom nobody wants or likes.

This is a very good question. Somehow we need to keep our auto industry afloat. If they haven’t already done so GM and the othetrs need to define a niche for themselves. In the global market, what are American manufacturers uniquely qualified to do for the consumer that he should buy American?