My brother was a 30+ employee of GM. College graduate, smart, exemplary family man, terrific brother. He took a job with GM right out of college and never looked back. He was fiercely dedicated to GM. He worked very long, hard hours for GM the entire time he was with the company. And he was successful. A few years ago he retired. This week he learned his GM pension is no longer. Gone, thanks to the greedy UAW to whom GM is married and who took it all and GM’s own financial mismanagement. And now GM wants a bailout.

Here’s my “special offer” to you. I will continue to purchase GM cars if you immediately reinstate my brother’s full pension. He gets it all. He earned it. He depended on it and he worked his life for it and he trusted you to deliver. If not, I am forever through with GM. That’s the deal.

That’s interesting. Were you aware that the total public debt during Bush’s last 4 months increased 50% faster than in Obama’s first 4 months?

Were you also aware that M1 declined from December 2008 to April 2008, and that M2 rose by only 1.7%? From August 2008 to December 2008, it rose at 3 1/2 times that rate.

You also seem to think that we have inflation problems, when in fact we are experiencing the first annual deflation in over half a century.

Total operating expenses for the first 3 months of this year totaled $27.2 billion, which is about $9 billion per month. Of course, they had $22.4 billion in revenues. That amounts to an operating income of -$4.8 billion, which is roughly a $1.6 billion per month drain.

Their net change in cash was -$2.6 billion for that quarter, which is a little under $900 million per month.

Check out the 10 year treasury price/yield over the past two weeks..

The 10 year has shot up so fast that the mortgage market is in chaos.

Printing money has consequences…

GM’s operating monthly budget runs between $12-15 Billion per month. Yes, per month.

Tick, tick, tick…

A friend of our family was a pilot for United Airlines and after 30+ years of faithful, accident-free service, United declared C11 and his well-earned pension was gone. Now he receives 1/4 of his original pension via the so-called Pension Guaranty Corporation…Funny thing how the executives all seemed to have bankruptcy-proof pensions. We all have many things we do not like about these dealings, but I hope that somehow, attention can be brought to pension and benefit funding reform. Everyone in the industry has to conform to Sarbanes-Oxley on every deal written, yet when it comes to pension reform, Washington seems to not mind it one bit when companies drop their obligations and place more and more workers onto their rolls.

Someone on here once opined that ‘ Once of the greatest tragedies of the last 30+ years has been the slow death of shame’….I concur.