GM Files for Bankruptcy

Robert Farago
by Robert Farago

General Motors has filed for federal Chapter 11 protection. Official papers filed in Lower Manhattan court at 7:57 AM list $82.3 billion in assets vs. $172.8 billion in debts. The bankrupt automaker’s largest creditors are the Wilmington Trust Company ($22.8 billion in debts) and the United Auto Workers ($20.6 billion in employee obligations). Judge Robert E. Gerber has been assigned the case. The President of the United States will address General Motors’ insolvency in an official announcement later today. Meanwhile, a Rasmussen poll [via the Detroit Free Press] reveals that only 21 percent of likely voters support government aid to GM. Some 67 percent oppose the Obama administration’s plan to bless the troubled automaker with $50 billion (in total) in exchange for a 70 percent ownership stake in the reconstituted company. “Given a choice between providing government funding for GM or letting it go out of business, most of the respondents (56%) said it would be better to let GM go out of business.”

Robert Farago
Robert Farago

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  • Charly Charly on Jun 01, 2009

    Menno, The USA had the bomb in 1945. But it had only a few bombs at that time. It wasn't until the late '50 that they had enough to defeat the enemy by bombs alone. And in 1945 the largest army with the best weapons etc. wasn't the USA but the USSR. Something you don't hear on discovery but is obvious the truth

  • Rpn453 Rpn453 on Jun 01, 2009
    menno : Nevertheless, Pete, you can’t deny that the United States DID have the bomb - alone - and it could very easily have been used to simply make a one-world government under the United States. You really think it's that easy to control billions of culturally diverse people? It's ridiculous to think that large populations of people would just allow themselves to be controlled without at least a few decades of social engineering and brainwashing. They'd resist, and it would be no more profitable than Vietnam or Iraq (though Iraq is certainly strategically important, and may pay off eventually). The U.S. could mass bomb the resisters, but then they'd just destroy the wealth that they instead gain through economic means, and there would always be plenty more resisters.
  • Phillip Phillip on Jun 02, 2009

    @ KatiePuckrik Whilst I agree that it is immoral to allow fascism, you talk about socialism in the same vein, which I cannot agree with. Socialism can work and does work, provided it is executed properly. One only has to look at France, the UK (believe it or not) and pretty much the whole of Western Europe. None of those countries are socialist, not even close. Socialism is a transitional phase to communism. Likewise there are no, and never were any true communist countries; all "communist" nations were actually socialist as none achieved true communism. Soviet president Brezhnev even mentioned this in a speech referring to the USSocialistR. One of the most important traits of a socialist state is that it is a dictatorship (read Marx). So simply be being democratic and holding elections, exludes a state from being socialist.

  • Campisi Campisi on Jun 02, 2009
    I haven’t seen that line in months though. Farago courteously requested that I stop posting them. So, I did. I think that at a minimum, the folks who posted that type of comment... should come back out of the woodwork, suck it up, and admit they were wrong, like real men do. Wrong about what? I said he'd get to GM Death Watch 250, and he did. I never said he was wrong. I've disagreed with much of his writings and much of his tone (very rarely speaking out on it), but I accepted long ago that GM was going under in some way.
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