sleeper;1263464 wrote:Tell me if I'm wrong here. If we let GM fail, does that really end the American auto industry? I mean those companies still have assets that perhaps a leaner, stronger, more innovative company can buy on the cheap and rebuild; bringing back those jobs that were lost anyway. Why save GM with piss poor management and overpaid inefficient unionized labor?
Such a joke.
Well, to be fair they did restructure wages, and the pensions were the big one, to be more competitive.
It's also a really tough question on whether GM would have been bought. At the time, credit markets were frozen. Yes, someone would eventually have stepped in but it may have very likely been a foreign company. I'm not sure that's a horrible outcome, but when you are dealing with a company the size of GM - and the hundreds of thousands of suppliers and their workers - every day lost is devastating to an already extremely fragile economy. The latter would have been devastating to Ford, as well, which didn't receive bailout money (but still benefited from the new CBA).
Now I've said the govt has or will get all its money back from the bank bailouts. It's making money on the toxic mortgages (this was given with unlimited liquidity able to ride out return to fair value). But on the surface, we've lost a boatload of money on GM. However, it was actually the lower cost alternative. First, the PBGC would have assumed that massive pension liability at about 60 cents on the dollar. That is BILLIONS (probably going to get it one day anyway, but oh well). But then consider the tax revenues on workers wages, sales and profits - not just at GM, but all those suppliers. Finally, think about the massive increase on the unemployment/welfare/SNAP programs.