23 thoughts on “Government Motor’s Plan”

1. Chris Gerrib must be doing fine if he’s getting name-checked in posts.

   1. Not sure I understand your logic. Hitler gets name checked in posts, too. Do you think that Mark Whittington is doing fine?

      1. Jim uses logic?

2. Jim was going on the old adage that even BAD press is better than NO press.

3. Although my day job is not “arguing with Rand” since you asked, GM is in fact a profitable company, earning 1.5 billion dollars in the second quarter of this year. That’s more than they earned in all of 2008 and 2007 combined.

   GM taking advice from an opinion columnist is like getting your advice on global climate from an oil company lobbyist.

   1. Because Academic and Environmental lobbyists are so much more trustworthy.

      1. No, but climate scientists are more reliable.

         1. Hilarious. You mean climate “scientists” like the frauds Mann, Trenberth, Jones, Hansen, Briffa…?

            1. Or Richard Muller, who co-founded a team “two years ago in order to independently assess what he viewed as questionable evidence of global warming. ”

               His findings? Again from the article: “Muller and his colleagues implicate carbon dioxide emissions by humans as essentially the sole cause of global warming.”

               When even the skeptics start to believe, maybe, just maybe, there’s something to the claim.

            2. Muller was never a skeptic on climate change. That’s a media myth.

            3. so when Muller calls himself a “converted skeptic” in an article he himself wrote that’s a “media myth?”

            4. so when Muller calls himself a “converted skeptic” in an article he himself wrote that’s a “media myth?”

               No, what that is, is a lie.

            5. He clearly overstated it for dramatic effect:

               …the story in the press – describing a ‘skeptic’s’ Damascene conversion – doesn’t seem to make sense. In fact, in his 2009 book Physics for Future Presidents, Muller doesn’t question the fundamentals of climate science, or indeed that humans are contributing to the greenhouse effect.

               Asked if it’s really accurate to say he was ever a skeptic, Muller replies: “I have considered myself only to be a properly skeptical scientist. Some people have called me a denier – no, that’s completely wrong. If anything, I was agnostic.

               “I just hope that some people like you will read my books and papers, and read what I say – not what people say I say.”

               That’s not to say he still doesn’t have problems with sweeping statements about climate change: “90 per cent of what’s said about climate change is nonsense. That when people attribute Hurricane Katrina, or dying polar bears, that’s not based on any science whatsoever. In fact in many cases, it’s wrong. So there’s plenty of room for skepticism.”

               Which is why I remain a skeptic. Because that is the default mode of science. And he still excoriates people like Mann.

   2. On revenue of $37.6 billion, that’s a little under 4% profit. For an auto maker, that’s a sign of a company in transition; if its trends are up, great. If they are headed down (this is a 41% reduction in profit), so is the company.

4. In Nov. of 2010 GM had their ipo at $33. Today the stock price is $20.19.

   1. Usually one considers a profitable company with a depressed stock price as a buying opportunity.

      1. It’s not a depressed stock price. It’s overpriced.

         Do you really not consider anything in evaluating a company’s value than whether or not it is “profitable”?

         You’d get taken for a lot of rides if you were in charge of M&A.

         1. Having done M & A work, yes, I can say that there are more things to consider than profit. However, I can also say that an unprofitable company is much less attractive than a profitable company.

            But M & A isn’t the same as buying stock. In an M & A situation, I can consider things like changing management. When buying stock, I have to assume that the current management will stay, so current profitability is the most significant factor I can look at.

            1. I can also say that an unprofitable company is much less attractive than a profitable company.

               Anyone with multiple working neurons can say that, not that anyone proposed otherwise.

               When buying stock, I have to assume that the current management will stay, so current profitability is the most significant factor I can look at.

               You don’t have to assume anything of the kind. But you continue to treat “profitability” as a binary condition, when the amount of profit actually, you know, matters. Is math hard for you, too, as it seems to be for the president?

            2. Yes, the amount of profit matters, and yes the trend is down. But, GM is only losing money in Europe, which is stuck in the midst of a double-dip recession.

      2. If the other stockholders were other ordinary folks looking for come capital gains, you’d be right – at least as long as the company’s prospects were not obviously dire. But GM has Barack Obama as its major stockholder and he didn’t personally pay for any of those shares. He will do what is politically expedient for himself without regard to the best interests of the real shareholders, just as he earlier ignored the legal interests of bondholders. So… buying opportunity? Not until it looks incontrovertible that Romney is going to replace Obama as stockholder-in-chief. Maybe not even then.

5. gm is cheap by many metrics, ps, pb, pe,etc. etc., but perhaps it is cheap for a reason. Their revs year over year are down 4.5% in the latest quarter, and their earnings were also down year over year by some 38%. I look for opportunities in the market constantly, and truth be told, even if I thought was gm was a buying opportunity ( and I don’t) I would not purchase it. There are certain stocks and situations that should not be promoted. For some it might be philip morris or lockheed martin, for me it is gm. I think that fascism is a present danger in this country and that gm is the poster boy of that movement.

6. For me, the huge problem is how much of this profit is due to government interference? How golden will GM look when a new administration comes in and drops any sweetheart deals that GM has with the current administration?

   I don’t think it unlikely that GM will revisit the bankruptcy courts.

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