Obama Motors

WTF are you talking about? I think you misread something. If I'm a shareholder of Ford stock and the U.S. government is giving a tax break for consumers to buy GM products and not Ford products, that's a problem. Are you advocating that it's OK for the U.S. government to favor one company over another. This isn't Venezula....yet.

And I have no clue how my statement shows an impressive lack of understanding of basic investing.

It should be noted that we're arguing hypotheticals, and grilling Obama here for something he hasn't even done yet: institute tax breaks especially for GM cars while under government ownership. It's kind of putting the cart before the horse to get on his case about this.

But, swooping in and buying up a controlling interest in GM after its management has positioned it to become one of the biggest failures in American business history? That shows highly suspect knowledge of business and investing.

I'd feel better if it were just a bailout, but buying up shares? Borders on reckless.

It should be noted that we're arguing hypotheticals, and grilling Obama here for something he hasn't even done yet: institute tax breaks especially for GM cars while under government ownership. It's kind of putting the cart before the horse to get on his case about this.

But, swooping in and buying up a controlling interest in GM after its management has positioned it to become one of the biggest failures in American business history? That shows highly suspect knowledge of business and investing.

I'd feel better if it were just a bailout, but buying up shares? Borders on reckless.
Obama said earlier today that tax breaks will come for all hybird type cars.

The problem is even with all this bail out money there is no guarantee any of this will work. We have dumped 20 billion into GM and are going to now dump another 30 billion and if that does not work they will dump even more money into GM. I'm guessing within a year we are going to dump another 20 to 30 billion more into GM over the 50 billion.Well, when GM spends that money, it's not going to be burned in a fire. The money that they are spending is revenue to somebody, and most likely, that somebody will be a private entity. So, the contributions of the taxpayers aren't going to be in vain in the way you are suggesting. All that's happening is that the current state of the economy is forcing you to reinvest some of what you would otherwise consider discretionary income into our economic system in the name of stability. Wheter via a bailout increasing taxes, or an increase in the unemployment tax seems like semantics to me.

We're a society that is interdependent on each other to an extent. A scenario where a major part of society could just fall out and everyone else is unaffected just isn't feasible. From an economic standpoint, the bailout doesn't guarentee the success of GM per se, but unless the capital ends up being sucked up into the pockets of shareholders, it's guarenteed to benefit the overall economy in some way.

It should be noted that we're arguing hypotheticals, and grilling Obama here for something he hasn't even done yet: institute tax breaks especially for GM cars while under government ownership. It's kind of putting the cart before the horse to get on his case about this.

But, swooping in and buying up a controlling interest in GM after its management has positioned it to become one of the biggest failures in American business history? That shows highly suspect knowledge of business and investing.

I'd feel better if it were just a bailout, but buying up shares? Borders on reckless.Agree on the hypothetical argument, we definitely need to wait and see. And agree 100% about buying up GM, not a good idea. I would've rather seen a bankruptcy without the U.S. government holding an ownership stake. On the unemployment vs. owning GM, I'll take the unemployment insurance route, at least the unemployment eventually ends. This GM could be an albatros on the gov't neck for many years (Amtrak).

WTF are you talking about? I think you misread something. If I'm a shareholder of Ford stock and the U.S. government is giving a tax break for consumers to buy GM products and not Ford products, that's a problem. Are you advocating that it's OK for the U.S. government to favor one company over another. This isn't Venezula....yet.

And I have no clue how my statement shows an impressive lack of understanding of basic investing.



I have misread something because I assumed you were merely referring to being upset if gov to told Ford how to run their business. Apologies. As for giving a tax-breaks to one company but not another in the same industry, well, that's unconstitutional and I would have a hard time envisioning anyone being that stupid.

p.s. The Obama administration has done a terrible job with the auto companies. I would have taken them over outright and resold them to the highest bidder after a few years. Shareholders should have been bought out and those who wanted to stick around would get first dib during the resale of the company.

Your arguement would make sense if American jobs were being saved when in fact GM is shipping jobs over-seas. The plant in Fredericksburg is being closed or so I've heard. So they're jobs are not beign saved? I say a picture of Detroit in a magazine. It doesn't look to me like the government did a really good job of saving people's jobs there, neither did GM. So why throw bad money after good?Well, the foreign companies employ American labor as well, but that doesn't mean it's acceptable for our GDP if GM and Chrystler stop producing automobiles and their market share gets spread around to Ford, Toyota, VW, etc.

If the economic response to failure of the american auto industry were a systematic movement in demand from the automotive industry to mass transportation, this would be an entirely different argument. Unfortunately, it just means people would go get their personal automobiles from a different manufacturer, and that certainly means fewer american jobs available.

GM absolutely can compete with the foreign automakers, they've just lost the batter over the last 30 years or so. I worry that maybe the entire industry may not be worth much in the long run, but that doesn't mean things won't improve in the near term future.

Obama said earlier today that tax breaks will come for all hybird type cars.

Like this?

http://www.superuse.org/images/952.jpg

I once warned about the "slippery slope" of government getting too involved, and many disgarded my thoughts...here we have government getting involved in a private entity getting 60%, and giving away 12% to Canada and we are worried about more about investment issues?
Furthermore, many here have called the Obama campaign "bordering on socialism", but most refuted that as well. Even went so far as to call others a bunch of names for thinking it.
hmmmm:
socialism definition | Dictionary.com (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/socialism)

I have misread something because I assumed you were merely referring to being upset if gov to told Ford how to run their business. Apologies. As for giving a tax-breaks to one company but not another in the same industry, well, that's unconstitutional and I would have a hard time envisioning anyone being that stupid.

p.s. The Obama administration has done a terrible job with the auto companies. I would have taken them over outright and resold them to the highest bidder after a few years. Shareholders should have been bought out and those who wanted to stick around would get first dib during the resale of the company.No worries.

If the Obama Admin had a plan like yours with a more finite exit point, I'd be more comfortable with the plan. Although the Bush Admin had some issues with finite exit points also. :)

No worries.

If the Obama Admin had a plan like yours with a more finite exit point, I'd be more comfortable with the plan. Although the Bush Admin had some issues with finite exit points also. :)

Funny how that tid bit hasn't been tossed around enough, first Gitmo, now GM. That my friend is a "pattern".