Friday, May 29, 2009

Make Way for the New GMC, the Government Motor Company


Any moment now GM is going to file for bankruptcy following in the footsteps of Chrysler and America is going to go from three major auto companies to one, Ford. Maybe it is only fair that the first car company in America is the last one standing but what does that say about America?
GM Headquarters in Detroit


Well, call it what you want we have temporarily nationalized the car companies because all of their money is coming from our government and the Obama boys are calling all the shots from who will manage the companies, what debtors will get the most money back, what cars will be made in the future and about everything else about the business of management.

It is already clear that the unions will be the big winners of the debtor pool as they have received better terms than any other bond and debt holder. The unions could own 24% of General Motors and the government could own 51% and since the unions helped get Obama elected it looks like the unions will be running the GM of the future.

I've got nothing against unions being management but it somehow seems like a conflict of interest for the workers and management to be the same people, especially since it was the legacy costs of union pension and health insurance for retired auto workers that got the companies in trouble in the first place.

Chrysler will be run by Fiat so there is no American Pie left in that company. GM must shed all of its foreign holdings which were the only part of GM that made a profit recently. Rumor has it Obama will give GM $30 billion more to get through bankruptcy.


Forcing GM to change to energy and environmental cars of the future is great for the future but pretty radical in America where it often seems cars were guaranteed in our Constitution just like guns. Here we like powerful and efficient cars but I cannot imagine the little, very little cars designed for European cities where traffic is always jammed, selling in America. Give me a Thunderbird or Corvette before you try and stick me in one of those mini-death traps.


And speaking of the alternative energy cars being required by the Obama gang, and especially the electric cars, if they do not improve the batteries the cars will never really sell. Right now if the battery breaks down, and none have been tested over a period of many years, the battery replacement cost could easily exceed $10,000. Some car efficiency. Why don't we just make more efficient internal combustion cars until we have mastered the new batteries required for massive market penetration by the alternative vehicles?

In spite of the ranting and raving of global warming advocates, it is power plants, not cars, that are contributing the most to the problem. You might want to add our nation's capitol as the second biggest cause because of all the hot air expended in DC. So cars are not the main problem. So we have right now sufficient oil and natural gas reserves to supply our current needs for about 300 years. New technologies and new techniques to improve auto efficiency have constantly improved auto performance, even the autos running on gas.

Oil prices have reached new highs in a stable market as oil reached about $66.00 a barrel this week when demand has collapsed and inventories are at all time highs. All the nonsense and predictions from our government about how bad things have gotten seem to be falling on deaf ears. And did you hear Al Gore or any other global warming advocate answer why we are in a period of advanced global warming yet the average temperature of the Earth has fallen the last couple of years?


I suspect if you checked to see who owns stock in the new energy efficient companies and solar efforts you might find a lot of names of environmentalists, thus putting them in yet another conflict of interest which seems all too common in Washington.

Now before any tree huggers blast away at me I will put my environmental record up against any of them as back when many of them were in diapers I was involved in environmental initiatives from waste recovery to mandatory recycling, active and passive solar systems to hydrogen cars, restricted land use management to wetlands and forest recovery, and I was even involved in the creation of the Federal Energy Administration and US Department of Energy.

Oil and natural gas are critical to our transition to a more energy efficient future. The Obama gang chose to slam the door on what works and bet the future on what hasn't work yet. I say increase oil and gas reserves while we create the new alternative energy economy, a manufacturing base that does not even exist yet. Don't bet our future on speculation.



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