Premte Peeves

Today, in addition to being Premte Peeve day, is National Quitter’s Day but I ain’t about to.

Quit.

Motors Liquidation Company (the old GM, formerly known as General Motors Corporation) filed for bankruptcy on June 1, 2009. On July 5, 2009, the bankruptcy approved the sale of substantially all its assets. They had no choice. The ObamaNation determined that government could run a business better and that centralized planning made up for good engineering. On July 10, 2009, Government Motors Inc. purchased the ongoing operations and trademarks from General Motors Corporation. The purchasing company, in turn, changed its name from Obama Motors Inc. to “General Motors Company.” The name of the original stock changed to MTLQQ.PK so we losers would be lost in the national celebration.

Clever, innit.

At one time, GM was the second largest employer in the world; only Soviet state industries employed more people. Imagine that.

Today is also the day the government of the United States of America reaps the benefit of stealing what was once America’s largest business from its owners (that would be pension funds across the country and me) and giving it to Obama’s cronies.

This is not an ordinary peeve. I wrote to my Congressional when Government Motors first announced it would place today’s IPO. “It is your job to assure the company ownership stolen from us by the government is returned to its rightful owners,” I wrote.

Not one single congress critter replied, not even with the canned “I am determined to find the best course for America” reply.

Not one.

They came first for GM,
and you didn’t speak up because you didn’t work there.

Then they came for the insurance companies,
and you didn’t speak up because you hated insurance companies.

Then they came for the houses,
and you didn’t speak up because your mortgage was paid.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and you didn’t speak up because you weren’t a trade unionist.

When they come for your newspaper …
by that time no one will be left to speak up.
(Thanks but no apologies to Pastor Martin Niemöller)

I spoke up. The people we elected didn’t. You didn’t. And that hurt all of us. Yeppers, I AM™ more than peeved.

3 thoughts on “Premte Peeves

  1. They came first for GM, and you didn’t speak up because
    (1) you didn’t work there, or
    (2) you were a union guy who worked there and you knew that once the company was stolen from the rightful owners, YOU would own it — so why mess with YOUR success?
    (3) because you had been taught that GM was an evil corporation, one of the biggest and worst, and besides, you hated their crappy products (even though they made more efficient vehicles, class by class, than most of their competitors)

    You didn’t know that because you never actually checked the performance of the last GM vehicle you actually owned, to compare it to others. Nor did your Ford or Honda or Toyota friends — you all “knew” your non-GM products were better… which often they were NOT.)

    (No, go stuff your EPA numbers. I checked every car and truck that I ever rented. Only GM consistently and significantly beat the EPA numbers. You want to argue? SHOW ME YOUR DATA!)

  2. What assets did GM actually buy from Motors Liquidation Corp (MTLQQ.PK)?

    Not Pontiac, nor Saturn, nor Hummer, obviously. Nor I suppose Saab, which apparently was eventually sold by MTLQQ.PK with the money presumably paying off a sniff of the GM debt that had been left on that company.

    But what about Opel, that GM was SUPPOSED to be selling? That must must have been left with MTLQQ.PK since it was (initially) perceived as an albatross. But then GM was able to make the point that Opel’s intellectual property (including direct injection, I believe) was critical to the success of the new GM. So somehow Opel is still there.

    And what about Holden (GM Australia?)

    And the GM-SAIC Chinese operation? (You DO know that Buick is one of the best and fastest-growing automobile brands in China, right?) What did you EVER see in the papers about THOSE aspects of the GM bankruptcy? Who knows what is going on? I suspect someone does. In the executive branch of the US government. But certainly not in Congress! Unlike the legal precedent for automotive bailouts (Chrysler around 1980) there was NO Congressional enabling legislation for what the Executive branch did. Which further underscores the question as to whether this GM fiasco was in ANY WAY legal…

  3. @Rufus: “What assets did GM actually buy…”

    The profitable ones. The smaller GM now “employs 205,000 people in every major region of the world and does business in some 157 countries.” The company produces Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, and GMC cars and trucks in 31 countries. Their largest national market is China.

    Portfolio manager Mirko Mikelic at Fifth Third Bank “wouldn’t really call it a new GM, it is just a smaller GM. That would be more of an apt description.” The government’s 60 percent equity share of that smaller GM came by forcing everything else off on us, the current holders of what they now call “Motors Liquidation Corp.”

    So far, Motors Liquidation has raised $125 million through asset sales.

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