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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (44638)	8/3/2010 7:47:25 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Re: [It is called "Debtor in Possession" status.] "Call it anything you want" I call it the law. And, NOTHING NEW. It has long been a feature of American bankruptcy law and ENTIRELY CONSISTENT with the main purpose of American bankruptcy law (not the same as some foreign laws...) to craft a strong commercially viable enterprise out of the ashes of it's previous commercial failure... and ONLY OF SECONDARY PURPOSE is the maximization of returns for earlier debtors. When push comes to shove the American process is supposed to favor creating a viable enterprise over the 'sanctity' of debts. Re: "I'm not disputing the doctrine, I'm disputing the idea that the government becoming the "debtor in possession" was a good idea" Hey! NOBODY ELSE was willing to step up to the plate with the big bucks required to speed the bankruptcy process along so that there would still be a viable business at the end of the process! GM would have dissolved by now... over 2 million jobs would have been DIRECTLY LOST (with God only knows what other effects that would have caused to the economy at the depths of the Great Recession... most likely the loss of confidence and tax revenues and unemployment spike and knock-on effects would have kicked us into Depression.) C.B.O. just reported that the DIRECT COSTS ALONE of allowing the failure (lost tax revenue from the lost paychecks and the unemployment costs) would have already EXCEEDED what the government injected in funding... much of which (all of which for GM, perhaps not all for Delco...) will be repaid.

To: TimF who wrote (44638)	8/5/2010 10:54:25 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Whitacre Says GM Eager for IPO to Shed `Government Motors' Tag By Mark Clothier - Bloomberg bloomberg.com General Motors Co. Chief Executive Officer Ed Whitacre said while an initial public offering filing isn’t likely in the next few weeks, he is eager for the U.S. to sell its shares to investors. GM, the largest U.S. automaker, is preparing to file a registration statement for an IPO this month so the stock sale could be held by November, people familiar with the matter have said. When asked today whether he expects a filing within a couple of weeks, he replied: “No, I don’t.” The automaker is 61 percent owned by the U.S., which would sell a fifth of its stake in the initial offering and reduce its ownership to less than half, people said. Reducing or eliminating the government’s stake will help with employee morale and sales, Whitacre said. “We don’t like this label of Government Motors,” he said in a question-and-answer session after his speech, which closed a four-day automotive conference in Acme, Michigan. “We know it turns off customers. It turns us off.” Whitacre told reporters today that it doesn’t matter whether the IPO is held before the mid-term elections Nov. 2. “I don’t think that’s really a factor,” he said. “Everybody would like to make it that, but I don’t think that’s really a factor.” Market Watching Steve Girsky, a GM vice chairman, declined to comment on whether GM could still hold an IPO this year. “There are factors that go into this, one of which is our performance, the other of which is the market performance,” he said. “One of which we control, the other of which we don’t.” In May, GM reported first-quarter net income of $865 million, helped by higher production and smaller discounts. Whitacre said today second-quarter results will be “impressive.” “If you liked our first-quarter earnings, stay tuned for our results next week,” he said in the speech. All eyes were on Whitacre, who was making his first appearance at the Center for Automotive Research’s annual conference. He repeated a common theme this week that the auto industry had come a long way in a year’s time. “I’d like to congratulate Chrysler and Ford for their progress during this period as well as the suppliers, who toughed it out with all of us,” he said in the speech. “At GM, we were pretty much flat on our backs a year ago. Now, we’re on our feet again, getting into fighting shape and taking the fight back to the marketplace.” To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Clothier in Acme, Michigan, at mclothier@bloomberg.net