By John W. Lillpop
President Obama delights in boasting (endlessly) about the success of the government seizure of General Motors. He unashamedly points to the GM “success” as evidence of what government can do, when allowed to interfere in the affairs of private business people.
What Obama conveniently overlooks are the real facts behind the government interference and the actual bottom-line results. As with Solyndra and other “Obama Business” follies, when objectivity and net profit considerations are applied, the myth of government business acumen vanishes in a heart beat.
Like the fabled trillion-dollar “Stimulus,” the disastrous ObamaCare nightmare, and just about every other program that Obama has sullied with his Marxist hands, the Volt is proof positive that it is impossible to convert a non-productive community organizer into a business man just by giving said man an Oval Office and access to the national treasury.
Being “clean and articulate” may be enough for moon bat Democrats looking for an object to worship; however, honest profit and loss measurements are far more demanding and disciplined.
As reported at Reference 1, the Volt experiment is not going well, despite all the crowing and braggadocio spewing from deluded Democrats at the DNC last week:
At their convention, Democrats swore that GM is “thriving,” but the market doesn’t think so: GM shares have lost half their value since January 2011. And while the passing of the Great Recession has meant growing sales for all auto makers, GM is seriously lagging behind its competitors: Its sales are up 10 percent, a fraction of the increases at Kia, Toyota, Volkswagen, and Porsche. With its sales weak, its share price crashing, and its business model still a mess, some analysts already are predicting that GM will return to bankruptcy — but not until after the election.
The Obama administration talks up all of the “jobs” it saved at GM — but jobs doing what? Manufacturing automobiles that are not competitive without a demand. Propping up an economically non-viable enterprise just long enough to get Barack Obama reelected? As much as it will pain the hardworking men and women of GM to hear it, it is not worthwhile to save jobs at enterprises that cannot compete on their own merits. So long as the federal government is massively subsidizing the operation, a job at GM is a welfare program with a fairly robust work requirement. (And we all know how the Obama administration feels about work requirements.)
We have bankruptcy laws and bankruptcy courts for a reason. It may make sense to expedite the proceedings for very large firms such as GM in order to prevent disruptions in the supply chain that would, as Ford’s executives argued, harm other, healthier firms. But bankrupt is what GM was, and bankrupt is what GM is, a fact that will become blisteringly apparent should the government ever attempt to sell off the shares it owns in the company.
The GM bailout was a bad deal for GM’s creditors, for U.S. taxpayers, and, in the long run, for the U.S. automobile industry and our overall national competitiveness. No wonder the Democrats are campaigning on a fictionalized account of it.”
UGLY MATH details about the disaster at GM are provided at reference 2:
General Motors Co sold a record number of Chevrolet Volt sedans in August — but that probably isn't a good thing for the auto maker's bottom line.
Nearly two years after the introduction of the path-breaking plug-in hybrid, GM is still losing as much as $49,000 on each Volt it builds, according to estimates provided to Reuters by industry analysts and manufacturing experts.
Cheap Volt lease offers meant to drive more customers to Chevy showrooms this summer may have pushed that loss even higher. There are some Americans paying just $5,050 to drive around for two years in a vehicle that cost as much as $89,000 to produce.
And while the loss per vehicle will shrink as more are built and sold, GM is still years away from making money on the Volt, which will soon face new competitors from Ford, Honda and others.
GM's basic problem is that "the Volt is over-engineered and over-priced," said Dennis Virag, president of the Michigan-based Automotive Consulting Group.”
There is a glimmer of good news for General Motors and taxpayers in all this:
On November 6, the American people will have a chance to fire the misguided, clueless , profit-hating executive responsible for this Marxist scheme.
Let’s hope we the people are wise enough to do so!
Reference 1:
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/316379/democrats-gm-fiction-editors
Reference 2:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/10/us-generalmotors-autos-volt-idUSBRE88904J20120910
