Charlie Wilson caught a lot of grief for something he didn't really say. Charlie Wilson was the President of GM back in the 40s and early 50s. He died in October 1961. In 1954, Mr Wilson was hired by President Eisenhower to be the Secretary of Defense. In his confirmation hearing, it was reported that he said: "What's good for General Motors is good for the country."
What he actually said was: "For years I thought that what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa." Not exactly the same.
There was a newspaper cartoon by Al Capp that got made into a Broadway play and later a movie called "Li'l Abner." One of Capp's characters was a General Bullmoose. Capp skewered Wilson by having Bullmoose say "What's good for general Bullmoose is good for everybody!"
I think it's actually true that what's good for General Motors is good for the country. However, I'm not talking about bailing them out. What will be good for General Motors will be for them to to seek reorganization through bankruptcy.
It does not necessarily mean the end of GM. Delta Airlines has gone through it a couple of times in the past ten years. If GM has good bones, they will emerge from bankruptcy smaller and more able to compete. It will hurt. It will be painful, but just giving them a bunch of money to tide them over only staves off the inevitable. Just get it over with.
I understand it would be a bitter pill, but no one thinks giving the Big 3 a bailout will do much good except the execs and the UAW and few Democrats on Capitol Hill. Just about everyone else is saying it isn't worth the effort.
So take the pill now and get it over with so they can rebuild and we can get through it that much sooner.
VW
The quicker they file, reorganize, shrink the bloated entity that is GM and get back on track the better for EVERYONE. The exec should have been driven to DC in the backseat of a Cobalt with 3 other people to find out why people arent buying GM cars.
Posted by: WMD_Maker | Friday, November 21, 2008 at 06:38