Speaking in Ohio, Vice President Joe Biden admitted that auto workers lost jobs because of actions taken by the Obama administration:
"In the president's sense of a distressed company, he says, 'everybody is in on the deal,'" said Biden. "GM and Chrysler had to make some tough decisions: They shed some dealerships, they closed plants--two in my own state. Auto workers lost their jobs--a heck of a lot of them. Bond holders, bond holders--the so-called big guys--they lost money, too. But everybody was in on the deal."
The Detroit Free Press reports that “General Motors made $1 billion in the first quarter, beating analysts’ expectations before being dragged down by a special accounting-related $590-million charge in struggling Europe.”
Just to close the loop on President Obama’s claim that GM is “now making a profit for the first time in decades,” reader D.B. sent along GM profit-loss statements from 1990 to 2000.
Yesterday I pointed to President Obama’s alarmingly statist“reasonable” view of his government’s handling of Chrysler and GM. But in focusing on Obama’s ideology, I missed the bigger story. To refresh, here’s what Obama said:
Contrary to what you're hearing out of Detroit, the auto manufacturing business in the U.S. isn't so bad. That's because foreign auto company plants, mostly in the South, are thriving. This is largely because such plants are free from the union albatross that hangs around the neck of the big three auto manufacturers.
As it stands now, the American workers in these foreign auto plants are extremely happy with their jobs, observes this Bloomberg report:
Why not just call for an individual Chevy Volt mandate? "General Motors Co. CEO Dan Akerson wants the federal gas tax boosted as much as $1 a gallon to nudge consumers toward more fuel-efficient cars."
Hey everybody--it's the Age of the Electric Car! Sales numbers for the Chevy Volt are out and you'll never guess how many of these future machines consumers gobbled up in the month of February. Go ahead and try. I'll wait.
Motor Trend says the Volt has some of the most advanced engineering ever seen in an American car. The Volt can run up to 50 miles in pure electric mode before a backup gas engine kicks in to give it more range.
The age of the electric car is here. Everyone says so. There it is emblazoned on the cover of the latest Wired magazine: “The age of the electric car is here. CHARGE!” In the New York Times, Thomas Friedman laments that the Chinese are embracing the electric car while America (sigh) is again failing to keep pace with enlightened Chicom authoritarianism.
The new issue of National Affairs is out, which means it's time to read CCNY professor Daniel DiSalvo's piece on public sector unionism. DiSalvo explains the history of public sector unions, and the damage they've done to state finances. My favorite part:
Motor Trend magazine's blog reported this week that Cadillac, the flagship luxury brand of our very own Government Motors, has engaged in a sponsorship deal with a state-owned Chinese propaganda film company to link its cars with a new film on the glorious history of the Chinese Communist Party.
The Wall Street Journal today reports that General Motors has "begun to once again contribute to political campaigns, lifting a self-imposed ban on political spending put in place during the auto maker's U.S.-financed bankruptcy restructuring last year." That means, the automaker that Americans purchased in 2009, because it was too big to fail, is now giving money to American politicians.
Andrew Ross Sorkin has a very interesting column this week examining the signal sent by GM’s purchase of AmeriCredit. The short answer: GM looks like it’s trying to revive the old patterns of demand before the recession. It’s doing so by following some of the same business practices that led to its bankruptcy filing last summer.
Since 2008, the federal government and the Federal Reserve have spent some $3 trillion to secure the financial system and prevent a second Great Depression. What did all this money buy us? A really expensive life jacket.
