Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (458918)	2/23/2009 6:31:52 PM
From: longnshort	Respond to of 1573433

But! But! But! I thought that President Bush was Eeeeeevil & dead wrong 1,000% of the time? ***** Continuity Cont'd Jonah Goldberg The Corner From the New York Times: <<< The Obama administration has told a federal judge that military detainees in Afghanistan have no legal right to challenge their imprisonment there, embracing a key argument of former President Bush’s legal team. In a two-sentence filing late Friday, the Justice Department said that the new administration had reviewed its position in a case brought by prisoners at the United States Air Force base at Bagram, just north of the Afghan capital. The Obama team determined that the Bush policy was correct: such prisoners cannot sue for their release. “Having considered the matter, the government adheres to its previously articulated position,” wrote Michael F. Hertz, acting assistant attorney general.... [snip] The Bush administration had argued that federal courts have no jurisdiction to hear such a case because the prisoners are noncitizens being held in the course of military operations outside the United States. The Obama team was required to take a stand on whether those arguments were correct because a federal district judge, John D. Bates, asked the new government whether it wanted to alter that position. The Obama administration’s decision was generally expected among legal specialists. But it was a blow to human rights lawyers who have challenged the Bush administration’s policy of indefinitely detaining “enemy combatants” without trials. The power of civilian federal judges to review individual decisions by the executive branch to hold a terrorism suspect as an enemy combatant was one of the most contentious legal issues surrounding the Bush administration. For years, President Bush’s legal team argued that federal judges had no authority under the Constitution to hear challenges by detainees being held at the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and elsewhere. >>> corner.nationalreview.com thks to Sully

To: tejek who wrote (458918)	2/24/2009 1:53:25 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1573433

GM has not been chronically non profitable Yes it has been. --------------- Over the past decade, the capital destruction by GM has been breathtaking, on a greater scale than documented by Mr. Jensen for the 1980s. GM has invested $310 billion in its business between 1998 and 2007. The total depreciation of GM's physical plant during this period was $128 billion, meaning that a net $182 billion of society's capital has been pumped into GM over the past decade -- a waste of about $1.5 billion per month of national savings. The story at Ford has not been as adverse but is still disheartening, as Ford has invested $155 billion and consumed $8 billion net of depreciation since 1998. As a society, we have very little to show for this $465 billion. At the end of 1998, GM's market capitalization was $46 billion and Ford's was $71 billion. Today both firms have negligible value, with share prices in the low single digits. Both are facing imminent bankruptcy and delisting from the major stock exchanges. Along with management, the companies' unions and even their regulators in Washington may have their own culpability, a topic that merits its own separate discussion. Yet one can only imagine how the $465 billion could have been used better -- for instance, GM and Ford could have closed their own facilities and acquired all of the shares of Honda, Toyota, Nissan and Volkswagen. online.wsj.com GM Trailing 12 months EPS -38.74 finance.yahoo.com GM earnings going back to 2000 123jump.com Time to Pull the Plug on General Motors realclearmarkets.com Has General Motors Earned a Bailout? November 26, 2008 Recently John Tamny wrote an article, Pull the Plug on General Motors (GM), in which he discusses the various reasons why it is essential to let GM fail. So we thought we would give you a graphical representation of GM's historical ability to create shareholder value, along with a Value Expectations scenario of what GM must generate to sustain its current price. The Economic Margin chart below displays GM's consistent inability to earn its cost of capital and continuous destruction shareholder value. Given such poor levels of Economic Margins there is no surprise its relative returns to the market have plummeted. ... As shareholders you have to ask yourselves, will GM ever be able deliver those levels of EBITDA Margins? As taxpayers we have to ask ourselves if a bailout would just be a waste of tax payers' money. Given GM's consistent destruction of wealth and the tremendous amount of restructuring it would need, a bailout looks more like life support. seekingalpha.com