Bailout Watch 421: Free Opel!

Robert Farago
by Robert Farago

Not literally. But close enough. At this point, GM would gladly transfer ownership of its German division to Daimler for about the same price Cerberus paid Daimler for Chrysler (without withholding a 19.99 percent share). Yesterday, GM’s European workers took the streets in Austria, Belgium, France, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden and Britain. They were protesting fact that their employers may stop paying them to build cars no one will buy. The International Herald Tribune ties cause to effect (not terribly difficult but needs must): “Targets outlined in the [congressional viability] report included the elimination of 47,000 jobs worldwide, including 26,000 outside the United States, $6 billion in grants from governments abroad by 2010 and labor-cost savings in Europe of $1.2 billion.” GM will no doubt use the industrial actions as a gun to the head of foreign governments, extorting bailout bucks in the great American tradition. (Collusion anyone?) Students of the Roman Empire know the deal: the foreign outposts revolt as the center no longer holds. Or, as Chinua Achebe pointed out, things fall apart.

Robert Farago
Robert Farago

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  • Diewaldo Diewaldo on Feb 27, 2009

    @Juniper: Most of the engineers in the "GM"-Design-Center in Rüsselsheim do have work contracts with "Opel" printed on them. So they were all on the Opel paycheck while working for GM globally. And you want to tell me that GM has pumped money into Opel? As I heard in the news the Opel's books are missing more than a billion € that GM has taken out and never has given back. Additionally all the IPs have been transferred to this dubious GTO GM company. As we all know Opel is having the lead on all front wheel drive platforms and four cylinder engines. Now tell me please how GM wants to reach the new standards set by the US government for fuel consumption without Opel's knowledge? Oh, yes ... they could take some more shitty Daewoos and brand them as Chevys. Now this will really save them ....

  • Wmba Wmba on Feb 27, 2009

    I find the argument that Germany refuses to bail out Opel because money could go to the USA a complete crock. Perhaps they mean the money could be swallowed by GM as an entity -- that I can understand. But GM is not the USA. However, all these bailout budgets in many countries do mean that people have to realize that today we have international trade, and that xenophobic calls that money has to be spent in the home country are ridiculous. And self-defeating. It's the global economy that's screwed as well as local ones, and nothing will return to normal anywhere until it all starts to return to normal everywhere. Thank goodness the average poster on TTAC swollen in righteous rage at the direction his government has taken, is not in charge of things. We'd be in the drink before you knew it if most of the hare-brained stuff I read here was implemented. At the very least there would be far more people unemployed and on the soup lines if some stone-faced person insisted on applying free-market principles to the letter, just because it's right.

  • Dave Dave on Feb 27, 2009

    GMe is struggling badly - they lost $1.6 billion last year because of the difficult market and currency movements. That's the same year that Ford Europe made $1.0 billion with the same market and currency movements. BTW - I think many multinationals have their IP owned by one entity and the national operations pay a licience fee to use it to build the product. Probably for tax reasons or just to make ownership of the IP clear. It would only become an issue in the case of a breakup/selloff ... oh yea, that's where GM is now.

  • Akear Akear on Feb 27, 2009

    GM has outsourced most of their passenger car engineering to Opel. How can they be separated from the mouth that feeds them.

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