{"id":191958,"date":"2009-06-01T19:45:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-02T00:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/06\/01\/so-gm-went-bankrupt\/"},"modified":"2009-06-01T19:45:00","modified_gmt":"2009-06-02T00:45:00","slug":"so-gm-went-bankrupt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/06\/01\/so-gm-went-bankrupt\/","title":{"rendered":"So GM Went Bankrupt"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>They have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/\/id\/31040438\">filed for bankruptcy protection<\/a>, and while I have no illusions that this will be as smooth or quick as Chrysler&#8217;s bankruptcy, the stakes are far larger, and the consequences of a <span>mis<\/span>-step will be industry wide, it looks like they got their ducks in a row.<\/p>\n<p>They <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/05\/31\/business\/31gm.htm\">got most of the bond holders on board<\/a>, they <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/\/id\/30997515\">got a deal from the UAW<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/\/id\/30992219\">a deal was cut to sell Opel<\/a>, <span>GM&#8217;s<\/span> European division, though the Treasury almost killed that:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"><p>For the <span>Magna<\/span> deal to work, U.S. officials must abandon their opposition to German demands that Opel assets be temporarily placed in a trust to protect them from GM creditors.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I agree with <a href=\"http:\/\/michaelmoore.com\/words\/message\/index.php?id=248\">Michael Moore&#8217;s take on all this though<\/a>, it could be the start of something better, but only if the US government takes an <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">active<\/span> role in the running of the company, and redirect the unused industrial infrastructure into things like mass transit and alternative energy.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, the free market <span>Mousketeers<\/span> like Larry Summers, co-chair of the auto task force, are determined that this won&#8217;t happen, so instead, we will end up with something still dysfunctional, just a bit smaller.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>They have filed for bankruptcy protection, and while I have no illusions that this will be as smooth or quick as Chrysler&#8217;s bankruptcy, the stakes are far larger, and the consequences of a mis-step will be industry wide, it looks like they got their ducks in a row. They got most of the bond holders &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1108],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-auto-industry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191958"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191958\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}