The Light Bulb Switches on in the Heads of GM Executives
"The Light Bulb Switches on in the Heads of GM Executives" certainly caught my attention and provided me with an instant visual while catching up on my headline and google alerts yesterday. I don't know John Peeples personally, for all I know it might just be a pen name, but whoever it is certainly has a perspective on GM.
Here's a snippet from the short piece - "The closure of underperforming dealerships was considered a key component of last
year's hastily contrived, government-sponsored bankruptcy plan. But, a
strange thing happened along the way to financial redemption under the government's direction: the dealers slated for termination objected to their untimely demise."
He goes on to say ..."With the guidance of the legal system, President Obama's hand-picked management team has experienced an epiphany; put simply, GM
management has determined that it needs dealers in order to sell GM
cars and trucks! But, if the company adds
back all of those ineffective dealerships, won't the company's costs
skyrocket? After all, the company earlier claimed ..."
To read the rest of the piece
This piece can be found on the American Thinker Blog.
Do you think he summarized things well on the GM front?
Here's a snippet from the short piece - "The closure of underperforming dealerships was considered a key component of last
year's hastily contrived, government-sponsored bankruptcy plan. But, a
strange thing happened along the way to financial redemption under the government's direction: the dealers slated for termination objected to their untimely demise."
He goes on to say ..."With the guidance of the legal system, President Obama's hand-picked management team has experienced an epiphany; put simply, GM
management has determined that it needs dealers in order to sell GM
cars and trucks! But, if the company adds
back all of those ineffective dealerships, won't the company's costs
skyrocket? After all, the company earlier claimed ..."
To read the rest of the piece
This piece can be found on the American Thinker Blog.
Do you think he summarized things well on the GM front?
Tags: american, bankruptcy, general, gm, john, motors, peeples, thinker
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by Dominic J. Sorresso on -
Not sure if he wrote the piece on GM or to comment on the current healthcare debate. Could GM have overreacted? Possibly, but it is a fact that Toyota sells similar number of units with far fewer points. Frankly, I discount articles like this that appear to have an underlying political agenda.
-
Permalink Reply by David Ruggles on -
This was well said, although the segue into health care was questionable. While I'm not a a Big Government guy per se, there are times when government should get involved. One can always point to situations where government got involved and screwed things up. In many ways, that happened with the Auto Task Force. I am convinced that Steve Girsky was the author of the dealer terminations. The fact that he is now on the GM board of directors troubles me. But when GM IPOs, pays off the taxpayers, and thrives, at least for a while, we can say that the overall "rescue" was a success. Even a Chrysler liquidation would have shut down Ford and all auto production in N.A. It would have impacted aerospace and defense as the many of the same folks also supply the auto industry. The fact that it was done imperfectly, doesn't mean it shouldn't have been done. It's easy to nitpick after the fact.
I wonder what will happen when the government figures out that the old style of D3 doing business, push marketing, sells cars and expands assembly lines? It ruins resale values, but adds to employment. There will be pressure. GM seems particularly confused at the moment as they churn through executives. Whitacre wants volume and market penetration. So does the administration.
-
Permalink Reply by A Jay Gould on -
In America, that is until last year, a citizen was intitled to put his money at risk and own his/her business. Then it was determined that no, that's not the case, lets just shut them down based on whatever premise we determine to be in our best interests. Trouble was is that the dealer base was far more powerful in the political arena than they imagined and much better organized and capitalized not to mention the backbone of thier business model.
Now they are trying to position themselves as "born again" car companies and trying to seek forgivness. Personally I'm sick of all this posturing especially in the light of all the suffering and job losses this has cost.
I love the automotive business and I love car dealers. They are what helped make America the country it is today and they had and still have a far reaching impact especially in rural communities across this nation .Lets fully reinburse the dealers who lost thier business and its too late to save and reinstate the others and start selling and servicing our customers.
TO HELL WITH THE POLITICS OF IT!
-
Permalink Reply by David Ruggles on
-
Jay,
I don't understand your comment about "until last year" a citizen was entitled to put his money at risk and own his/her business. Are you referring to the terminated dealers? The dealer terminations were a total abomination but it was accomplished under settled bankruptcy law. These are the same laws that allowed United Airlines to renegotiate its own labor agreements and shed debt. The terminations were counter productive. IF GM and Chrysler survive it will be in spite of the dealer terminations, no because of them. But my point is that these bankruptcy laws have been around for a long time and were not conjured up last year.
There have been plenty of dealers in other industries who have been caught in their OEM's BK. A few of those industries would be appliances, boats, and airplanes. Of course, those franchisees didn't have the clout of auto dealers. I'd like to see all dealers reinstated, but the fact is many were forced into insolvency by being terminated and don't have the resources to continue on. To pay settlements would establish precedents they couldn't live with, although I'd love to see it.
© 2010 Created by Greg Goebel.
