You may recall that we gave Jim Cramer shit for voting for GM’s stock before he voted against it. Yesterday, while listening to my local talk radio financial advice show… sorry, what was I saying? Right. I’m awake. I’m awake. A caller asked if they should buy GM stock, ’cause you know it used to be a 40 and now it was at 4 and wow such a deal. The expert said Hell no; GM was going to be broken-up and/or go bust. As the Autoextremist might say, that’s a barmitzvah-sized coffee urn of not good. When TTAC started the Death Watch, the experts were singing a different tune. And the General’s public knew nothing– as in zilch– about its troubles. Now that the financial crisis has hit the mainstream press, GM’s distress is an open secret. How long before the possibility of C11 affects new car sales? Maybe not now, but soon. Meanwhile, there are plenty of people either ignorant or willfully ignorant of what’s going down at GM (hint: GM). Here’s a comment from Al “Who He?” Diaz over SocialPicks.com (“Invest Smarter Together). Oh, Al reckons GM’s a buy. “I have confidence GM will make necessary adjustments to ensure the merger with Chrysler goes through by the end of October; ensuing cuts WRT Plants and other hourly wage earners should help the company get back on its feet and in time the fruits of their labor will become apparent. I don’t see GM going out of business anytime soon.” But when he does…
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A fool and his money are soon …
Robert Schwartz :
A fool and his money are soon …
Aaah, but Robert brings up a good point. When the WHOLE MARKET is out of the market, it can no longer sell.
So there’s only one thing people can do…
That’s why there are so many books on contrarian investing.
But it’s also true that stocks that go below $5 have an exponentially greater chance of going to ZERO than they do of going to $50.
So what does one do? Personally, I like lottery tickets over GM stock!
While I would not invest in GM stock ( I invest all my money with the Ex-Wife) Recent events have started me thinking that GM will in fact be around for a long time – with its new majority shareholder – Uncle Sugar.
The Dem’s are not going to let GM go under – they’re just not. The pseudo free market response will be a massive purchase of GM special class stock by the US Federal Govt. The net effect will be something similar to the Canadian Crown Corporations – which incorporate the worst of both economic models – Socialism and Capitalism.
And if you think that is bad, just wait until UAW contract time and the sight of workers demanding a clawback of all their previous concessions; not from management but from their elected politicians. Why not, they are all civil servants now and the government has yet to have a losing financial quarter
Devil’s Handmaiden
Jim Dollinger
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Dear Friends,
It’s high time to call a spade a spade. Mr G Richard “Red Ink Rick” Wagoner is nothing more than the evil incarnate, purposely placed atop General Motors for no more ryhme and reason than the planned decimation of the world’s once largest industrial enterprise. This man, born in Wilmington Delaware, has been intentionally fast tracked. His placement as chief financial officer made no sense to outsiders as he leapfrogged many senior executives. His mission, which he readily accepted has been mostly fulfilled, spinning not winning, leading to our eventual bankruptcy. He is without doubt the worst sort of corporate criminal, personally responsible for the suffering of thousands across the US as GM declines into oblivion on his watch. Mark my words, the end is near for General Motors. The international bankers who support this phony flake are standing ready to pick up the pieces for cents on the dollar. Wilbur Ross and his friendly Rothschild banker friends will feed off the carcass once the planned murder of General Motors has occurred.
Buickman
GENERAL WATCH NEWS
The Cause
Imagine…As the Rothschilds financed both sides of the Civil War, master capitalists, after giving their backing to the Japanese, use the invisible hand to guide GM softly down the stairs of diminished share. As GM becomes weaker, the foreigners invade our shores, setting up their fortresses of non-unionized production. Meanwhile, the ever-increasing costs of organized labor are halted by fierce competition, and a massive media campaign against their portrayed unrealistic demands. The tide of improving standard of living for the masses is halted, and through the might of popular opinion, concessions are wrought. As unionism is weakened, the purse string holders win on both sides of the game. Record profits for the invaders, and lessened expenses for the domestics. The demise of old time factory towns, who suffer setbacks in jobs and tax revenue, is a minor side effect of the intended outcome. The remaining relics of the battle for recognition are forever eliminated from the landscape…
Wow, Buickman. I just lost a vast amount of respect for you. International bankers are using Wagoner as a Manchurian candidate to take out GM?
That is hilarious. DA JEWS DUN TOOK OUR JOBS!
Gm needed no help to reach this crash. As much as I’ll rag on Rick for his many many flaws, the company was on this course with or without him. Ricks flaw as a leader is something I suspect both of you share; an inability to understand that GM isn’t invincible. And so instead of drastic measures he took incremental measures. He worked to keep profits up (concentrate on SUVs and Trucks), volume up (anyone with a pulse) under the axiom that GM really couldn’t fail.
You blame GMs death on an international conspiracy; he blames it on an economic slowdown. Neither one of you really gets that this is because GM spent the last 30 years rearranging deck chairs because deep down they could not accept that the great and powerful GM could die.
@ Buickman,
Damn, and I had the Freemasons pegged as the orchestrators of this conspiracy.
I don’t understand the negativity. At this point it can only go down another 6 1/2 dollars!
GM spent the last 30 years rearranging deck chairs because deep down they could not accept that the great and powerful GM could die. they didn’t really want to make cars in the first place.
Adjusted slightly.
I’m not sure what GM wants to do, but they’ve given the impression that making cars, or at least cars that average people want to buy, was not what they wanted to do. The company seemed to be split between swinging dicks in Sales and Finance (who wanted quarterly numbers at all costs), swinging dicks in Marketing (who were so in love with themselves that they figured they could sell anything) and swinging dicks in Engineering (who don’t want to do anything so pedestrian as a family car).
Contrast Toyota or Honda: while they miss the mark, or decontent to meet a margin point, you never get the impression that they’d rather being doing something else. GM does that all the time, and it’s evident in their product planning: they still don’t want to make cheap, capable cars. They want to be a boutique product maker that sells perfectly engineered examples to select customers that worship their marketing and engineering brilliance.
GM wants to be Ferrari, or at least BMW.
No, seriously. They do. Look at the money they throw at their top-end products. Making low-buck cars is still, within GM, the career equivalent of french-kissing lepers. They don’t want to do it. They want to be a boutique.
The problem is, boutique makes have fractional marketshare and tiny absolute profits. Which, now that I think about it, is where GM is heading.
Remember the 5 steps. Right now GM is still in the Denial stage. It doesn’t look like they’re willing to go past that and get to the end where they can function and cope with the situation.
Doesn’t sound like an investment opportunity to me. Funny how Ford has gone right off the radar financially speaking though. It’s all GM, GM, GM. A good thing maybe? I’d take a run at Ford shares before GM. I certainly wish I had money to buy some.
Aaaahhhh yes…. now I see the ‘Mel Gibson effect’ in full swing. Why blame those responsible when you can simply click your heals and whistle the good old religions of Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford.
Sorry Buickman. The world has changed and competed for mutual betterment. The days of the John Birch Society and 1960’s racial masturbations are long gone.
But if you wanna relive those days of gory glory, go watch a Mel movie.
Buickman, wow.Just wow. Do you keep a copy of the Protocols of the elders of Zion by your bedside? I thought TTAC was an island of rationality is sea of madness…..
If you’ve really studied Buickman’s writings/rants, he’s always believed in the whole Jewish-bankers-killed-America’s-greatness bit. He hasn’t really hid it.
Of course, the truth is somewhat more sad than Buickman’s grand conspiracy theories, of course: A combination of high labor costs due to unionized labor and management stupidity killed GM (and Ford and Chrysler); probably more the latter than the former.
@psarhjinian:
GM wants to be a botique automaker. That’s an interesting point of view. When you think about that it does make some sense. At least when it comes to cars.
The Corvette variants and the CTS are the best cars GM currently makes, but when it comes to bread and butter autos they suck wind. Who here would really take a Cobalt over a Mazda 3? The Pontiac G8 is a thin margin and the Solstice/Sky is a good car, but not good enough to get enough people out of Zs and Miatas.
And its only just recently (new Malibu) that they’ve made a truly competitive car in the mid-size segment…but only if you either waited half a year for the 6-speed to be coupled to the 4-cylinder or you went ahead and purchased the V6.
They want to be a boutique product maker that sells perfectly engineered examples to select customers that worship their marketing and engineering brilliance.
Read: SUV/Truck owners.
Perhaps after C11 they’ll be pared down to a company that sells trucks/SUVs and the G8, Solstice/Sky, CTS, Malibu and Corvette under one brand.
They want to be a boutique product maker that sells perfectly engineered examples to select customers that worship their marketing and engineering brilliance.
As amended, doesn’t this simply describe RF’s branding concept. Take Honda for example, it’s a maker of fuel efficient, high reliability cars that that faithful worship as great examples of marketing and engineering (and not without reason).
As long as the current management stays, GM is no buy. My thoughts on this supposed merger are, could it be this is to ensure maximum government funding after they go belly up? After all, GM would have about 40% of the market?
bought chrysler in 1981 and made a lot of money, almost overnight…started buying GM (among other stocks) in August and have continued to buy until this week, since I am not yet fully invested and will continue for as long as this market lasts…I am, of course, part of the conspiracy that Buickman talks about (baruch ha’shem) but it is a conspiracy of intelligent people only (of all races and religions) a conspiracy that Buickman was excluded from at birth.