Obama: Nationalization of GM to be short-term

US doing well to seek remedy for GM motors.

Lehman,WorldCom and Washington mutual needed to do the same bankruptcy process.

Bankruptcy will create new GM via courts. Obama says Govt should not run GM.

New GM will be 60 percent US govt owned,and needs to make fuel efficient cars,that will sell.

US government can help buy more GM cars via governmant servants to boost future sales.

Obama says Govt should not run GM.

What a liar. He says this despite deciding who its new president would be, and who would be sitting on its board of directors. Not running it? What a joke.

Wasn't it just recently how we were being told, GM and Chrysler need money to avoid going into bankruptcy, and how if they did, it was the end of the world? Well, both are now in bankruptcy, and both hope to come out on the other side, profitable. Well, Chrysler does, GM being essentially owned and operated by the government won't be allowed to be profitable. At least not while Obama is running the show.

I will never, ever, for as long as I live, buy a GM vehicle. I've owned at least 6 different GM vehicles in my lifetime, but never again.

Like Rajakumar, todays newspaper said that GM made the wrong decision to keep producing big cars, instead of making small cars like the Japanese manufacturers. But GM could not and can not make fuel efficient cars because if it did it would be competing with Toyota and Honda. I just don't think that the American factury workers are prepared to put the effort into making cars to the extent of those working in Toyota or Honda plants. I have heard rumour that in Japanese car factories, toilet breaks are timed to the second, and folks run around the factory when their is a slight hold up on the line. The guys I see on the news coming out of American car plants do not seem fit enough to compete with the workers in Toyota and Honda. If you want to go home and have a barbeque and beers after you finish work then it may be difficult to compete. The Japanese car makers seem to have the dedication of sportsmen, and they demand that from the part timers too.

On the other hand, Japanese companies do not seem to do system engineering so well. American systems managers, (sales managers, systems engineers, programmers, financial systems designers and salespersons) often have the dedication of sportsmen. Perhaps GM could find some way of becoming more like Apple or Dell, and selling other people's cars, or rebranded versions of other people's cars. Dell and Apple leave the making of things to those that excell at it. I hope GM can follow the same model.

Japanese car manufacturers have relatively inefficient retail divisions, with cost to sale per car far higher than American companies.

I think privatising GM again would be a mistake as it simply cannot compete with the Japanese. And when Obama says the government should not run GM he's not being hypocritical at all. He believes that to be true but right now the government has to run GM or it will go bankrupt and cease to exist. I think we can all accept that to be true?

A move Long overdue..GM has been limping along for years now but its just been a matter of national pride to let it remain untouched..until now.

It will take some radical fundamental shifts to make a long lasting and highly competitive GM...it may even become unrecognisable except for the name itself...but this will be the only way forward. They will have to cooperate more in the developing countries economies,shifing more production closer to the cheap labour and crank out more green technologies, produce cheap ass cars for India, and steal designs from japan

Maybe they should train up 1000s local staff and send them all to Brazil and China to live!

Timtak: Good post. May just be the way.

short term as in a cosmological time frame?

I'm somewhat familiar w/ Japanese automakers, and I do see things differently. If GM wishes to turn things around in the correct way, I would have every major executive ask this question while thinking, "If Henry Ford was CEO for GM today, what would he demand?" Need a role model? Get Steve Jobs to advise on the Board of Directors, not in auto manufacturing, but in outlook in manufacturing a world class product.

Own 60% of GM and not try to manage it. Might have a few suggestion though like who the CEO will be and a few officers. All democrats? A lot of power and money in this area. We shall see.

The real reason you won't buy another GM car is that you've found out they've been selling you crap for years.

Why does Government Motors have to saved? Let if fail. The other car makers can pick up the slack.

Government Motors is going to be Obama's Vietnam.

What I find riduculous is that we dumped all that money into the bailouts, an act that still fills me with shame, to keep it out of bankruptcy and now...its in bankruptcy.

The real reason you won't buy another GM car is that you've found out they've been selling you crap for years.

Oh yeah, I'd much rather pay $20,000 for a toyota just so that I can pay the massive repair bills the second the warranty expires.

Timtak - You do realize that the majority of Toyotas and Hondas sold in the US, are actually produced in the US as well, right? The people coming out of the American plants, are working for Toyota and Honda. And the companies are forced to comply with the labor laws of the governments as well.

Molenir,

You are right... Let's also not forget that the people coming out of the Toyota and Honda plants in the US are non-UAW (except NUMMI, which is an ex-GM plant).

Yep, is the reason why they're able to be competitive in the US, they dont have 60 years plus worth of competitive bargaining agreements saddling them with debt.

After what has to be the largest swindle in US history, Obama will simply hand what is left of America's largest company over to the autoworkers union who will further drive it into the ground. The fleecing of America has just taken another turn for the worse.

It will be interesting to see what kind of company GM will be with a more level playing field.