So GM's filing for bankruptcy today ...

One county in Michigan is losing 6,000 jobs from the auto plants closings. That's not including workers from the dealerships that will be cut, as well as the suppliers and the white collar cuts from the people who live and or work at the Tech Center.

This is not going to be pretty.

 

And isn't Fox News pushing for the death of journalism? What a world we weave...

 

This is the last manufacturing sector alive in the United States.

Newspapers represent first amendment rights.

Both are dying, forcibly.

Say bye-bye to freedom.

 

I think I heard that GM at the height employed close to 600-thousand workers. That is down to about 90k. And I hope those factories get turned into something else pretty quick. Its akin to closing military bases. Do you want to keep the status quo even if its redundant,or use that space for a high-tech corridor, science center, something outside the box.

 

Well it appears that the government is going to bankroll recovery with Chinese loans to itself.

That will work.


We have sold our infrastructure and our financial spine.

 

My front-page article announcing that GM had chosen Spring Hill as its plant's headquarters still hangs in the factory's foyer...and I later worked at a paper that was started specifically to feed off the factory...so I have a little history with the place.

I can only assume GM's shuttering of the Saturn plant is temporary (as rumored), since the facility is pretty much state of the art, and the production costs there are far less than in Indiana or other Rust Belt locations...and I can only assume GM closed the plant to give a big Fuck You to Sen. Corker, who was front-and-center in trying to block any assistance to the company.

 

I'm not sure it's that political. GM is moving the production of the Traverse to Lansing, where the other GM SUVs are made. I'm sure GM will look for something to move into that plant for the reasons you stated.

 

Wrong tense, and to finish the sentence "15 years ago."

 

Here's something I don't get (I know, line forms to the left.) We as a country tripped all over ourselves to prop up the financial sector, on pain of everlasting doom. But 99% of what a bank, brokerage or insurance company consists of is intellectual capital. If you have enough of the best and brightest people, they can attract investment capital, make good returns which attract more capital, etc. It would take some time and it would be painful, but you could theoretically wipe out a Bank of America or a Wells Fargo and in time someone would fill the void. The barriers to entry are low, as your economics professor would say.

So we can do all that for the money guys, and essentially put no restrictions on their play money, but we tell two of the Big Three to pound sand? People aren't starting mass-production car companies anymore. If GM or Chrysler go away, nothing new is going to replace them. That sales volume goes to an existing foreign brand, and those jobs and profits are gone forever. If the damn terrorists had crashed planes into Ren Center or River Rouge we'd all be mad as hell and willing to pay any price to get the car companies moving again. Instead we're doing it to ourselves and remaining strangely calm while General Freakign Motors goes the way of the dodo.

 

To put this in perspective:

The year GM was founded (1908) was the last time the Cubs won the World Series.