

Fisker Karma  (Source:
A total of 26 employees were laid off












Sources: The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek

Comments     Threshold


RE: In related news....
By Reclaimer77 on 2/7/2012 1:34:22 PM , Rating: 2
Well never know because due-process never took place. People call me a partisan hack, but I was very vocal here against what Bush did. Our Congressmen are supposed to be our representatives. What Bush did was frankly suspending Democracy and taking the decision out of the peoples hands.

if GM had gone under, you'd be talking about how bad the Obama administration was for losing all the jobs.

No I wouldn't. I believe in Capitalism, that includes destructive capitalism.

Shig, demand for vehicles doesn't just stop and go away because GM "goes under". It would cause an increase in demand for other manufacturers cars, THUS, a huge surge in job openings would have taken place.

Had GM been forced to severely atrophy or liquidate, the other automakers would have had greater revenues, more market share, and probably higher profits. They would have been able to attract GM’s best engineers and line workers. They would have more money to invest in R&D and to lead the industry into the future. Instead, by keeping GM in the mix, some of those industry resources remain misallocated in a company that the evolutionary market process would have made smaller or extinct.

The auto industry wasn't rescued by GM. GM was "rescued", at the cost of other automakers and the taxpayers.

RE: In related news....
By Shig on 2/7/2012 1:34:28 PM , Rating: 2
But their bailout was attached to TARP money, are you saying we shouldn't have passed TARP and let all the banks fail too?

It's not as though GM was making awful cars that no one wanted, GM got caught up in all the silly finance mess with all the other banks. A bulk of their profits were from their finance division and all the 'derivative' schemes, not cars.

RE: In related news....
By Reclaimer77 on 2/7/2012 2:02:00 PM , Rating: 2
Okay you really have no clue what you're talking about. Bush allocated $16 billion of TARP funds for GM and Chrysler. But he also opened the door for Obama to then go ahead and pile another $60+ billion on top of that. There were other key differences as well. As Bush's solution was more of a "blank check", while Obama's Administration took a much more on-hands, and widely illegal, approach.

Are you trying to pin me in a corner where if I don't support bailouts, I'm FOR the wholesale slaughter of businesses? That's a morally bankrupt position.

If the role of our Government is to permanently reside over all business and decide who fails and who doesn't, there's a word for that, fascism.


That wasn't the banks fault. GM failed because of bad financial policies. Failure to be competitive, and others reasons. Just lots of bad decisions in general.

Here's a good summary if you care:

Basically when a company does all of this, they really SHOULD fail.

RE: In related news....
By FITCamaro on 2/7/2012 5:57:00 PM , Rating: 1
This assumes GM would have tanked to begin with.

They could have gone into bankruptcy, reformed under a new organization (exactly what they did anyway), and kept going. Without the US tax payers writing off all the pension benefits that GM owed the UAW. The difference would have been that the law would have been followed. Preferred stock holders wouldn't have had what they were owed illegally seized. Dealerships wouldn't have been closed based on who the owners gave campaign contributions to.

All that's going to happen now is that in 15-20 years, the UAW will drive the company into the ground again with outrageous pay and benefit demands.

RE: In related news....
By Keeir on 2/7/2012 7:51:37 PM , Rating: 2
Congrats Fit. You've identified the individuals we should actually blame for the auto bailout.

The establishment at the UAW. Our political leadership.

Blaming 1 out of dozens of products at a particular company is not only wrong but stupid. Worse, you waste alot of energy attacking something whose success and failure essentially make no difference to those actually to blame (I highly doubt the UAW cares what GM produces as long as they get paid).

RE: In related news....
By Dorkyman on 2/7/2012 8:07:27 PM , Rating: 2

And, by the way, GM has not been rescued, it has simply been given a transfusion so that it can live a little longer. I expect it to do the swan dive into an empty pool within the decade. THEN the best parts will come back as something else, something better. And pensions and pay will be cut back to reasonable levels.

RE: In related news....

I think most people would be surprised.





RE: In related news....




