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GM Gets To Dump Its Polluted Sites
ParticleGirl writes with this excerpt from the Detroit Free Press:
"GM's unusual, government-engineered bankruptcy allowed the Detroit automaker to emerge as a new company — and to shed billions in liabilities, including claims that governments had against GM for polluting. Environmental liabilities estimated at $530 million were left with the old GM, which has only $1.2 billion to wind down. Administrative fees and other claims will soak up that money, and state and local officials told the Free Press they fear the cleanups will be shortchanged. ... The New York Attorney General's Office, seeking to protect environmental claims for cleanup at Massena and other sites, argued that federal and state regulatory requirements should not be eliminated by a bankruptcy sale. ... But [US Bankruptcy Judge Robert Gerber] ruled otherwise."
Both GM ans Chrysler were let off the hook on the 10's (or it is hundreds) of billions that they owed. Then we forced Chrysler to be sold to Fiat for next to nothing. Fiat Will keep it open for th next 2 years and then close all American plants (unless some are newer than theirs) after absorbing the IP. GM is currently forcing their partners to move operations to China, rather than keep them here. Chinese gov. is insisting on it (jingoism at its best). Worse, we are STILL subsidizing them with loans as well as CARS garbage. What should have happened is that GM and Chrysler SHOULD have been broken up into multiple companies and than allowed to compete. The problem with both of these was BAD CEOS. OTH, if you break them up, then you have multiple CEOs, which is likely to leave at least several of them doing OK to great. As it is, these companies will be gone within 5 years.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
As radio announcer Thom Hartmann says, corporations want to privatize the profit and dump the liabilities on the commons. That's the ticket.
is paved with good intentions. Notice to government officials and their supporters: QUIT TRYING TO FIX STUFF, YOU ONLY MAKE IT WORSE.
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
They have no money to pay for it. Even if the government didn't excuse the debt, it wouldn't ever be paid.
However, because Americans allowed Washington (and Barack Hussein Obama) to effectively nationalize GM, Americans received the worst of all worlds. Washington poured billions of dollars into the company, and that money comes from future taxpayers. GM retains its rotten management although some talking heads at the very top of the pyramid were replaced: that management misread the market and failed to steer research and development toward highly efficiently small cars when gas prices were skyrocketing. Unions with their gold-plated medical insurance (now paid by the government) retain a stranglehold on the company, now literally owning part of GM.
Worst of all, we discover that the "new" GM will not be paying the costs of cleaning up the environmental pollution that the "old" GM caused.
We could have avoided all these problems if either Toyota or Renault had purchased the relevant bits of GM. Why do Americans "fear" working for a Japanese or French boss so much they are willing to nationalize a car company?
They declared bankruptcy.. the company failed and went into bankruptcy protection in an attempt to salvage something.
Their shareholders (owners) lost billions of dollars, and the GM of old is no more.
Yes, it's important to recognize the responsibilities of old-GM that are not being addressed now that they are gone. But, this should not be surprising, and it's not that unusual either.
While the bankrupcy itself was unusual, it's not unusual at all for corporations to receive relief on environmental cleanup and associated fines during bankruptcy. State and Federal governments ends up with the tab for the cleanup.
And since when does the federal government own up to things?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Wall Street, instead of having to wait for Reagan's tax breaks to make money found a new comer who accelerated the plan buy just paying them the money upfront.
GM and Chrysler were bailed out for Wall Street and the Unions. Though don't confuse Unions with the rank and file, I am talking about the leadership who decides where the money is spent and offer muscle to intimidate anyone the administration doesn't like (see AFL-CIO's new leader who thinks murder and violence are fine if you can get away with it - or pay it off).
GM had the ultimate sweet heart deal of the two rescues. Not only did they get out of cleaning up all their pollution they also got a tax bump by keeping the tax write offs from bad GM to prop up new GM. Hence companies which play by the book and make sensible deals like Ford get doubly screwed.
Send Washington a message, avoid GM and Chrysler products. We are being run over by the goons in Washington and since our vote counts for very little the next year the only fight we have left is our pocketbooks
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The profitability of the 'new' GM requires no explanation. $533M in environmental cleanup is a negligible expense by comparison to the value of the brands GM has developed globally. If the government was willing to buy out GM entirely, obviously they would be willing to absorb the clean-up costs to facilitate GM's survival under other ownership. The costs were inevitably going to fall on taxpayers no matter who bought GM, but only by buying out GM do taxpayers stand to get anything back. Anyone wishing a company that has employed millions of Americans through to retirement to be sold to a foreign corporation over some messy dump sites has a tainted sense of patriotism. Even critics of the Obama administration should praise them for keeping GM American.
And the term "Barack Hussein Obama" is the undisputed flag of politically bigoted. Please continue using it to openly declare your ignorance and irrational paranoia.
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
The fundamental basis of Chicago economics (which we've been using for the past 40 years) is that people and thus businesses are rational actors and make decisions that are best for their own interests.
That's pernicious fucking bullshit. People and companies make irrational decisions all the time. Consider the EPA cleanup mess: according to the idea of rational expectations, the prospect of having to pay for an EPA cleanup would be a strong deterrent to polluting. In reality, nobody cares, because the person who decides whether to pollute will be gone by the time the consequences of a decision to pollute become apparent. Thus, the company as a whole makes a rather irrational decision to pollute regardless.
You need proactive enforcement to stop these kinds of violations. Generally, trying t stop a given behavior by threatening companies (or people) with consequences over a time horizon of a few years is completely ineffective in stopping that behavior.
Or whatever it's called.The US people are now completely crispy fried when it comes to our debt. At this point I just laugh and cry a little every time I hear about a new 'program' or 'bill' or 'solution' that comes out of the administration's or Congress's mouth.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Horseshit. Why do the birthers, etc. always refer to him as Barack Hussein, but average people do not? The answer is perfectly obvious.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
II didnt hear him complain when they were calling our former president "Dubya"... Bama's a big boy, he doesnt need you to stick up for him...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
This is a classic example of externalities being dumped onto the community. No matter what happens the taxpayer will bare the burden of cleaning the toxicity of GM's effluent be it a federal or state government. What's worse is I doubt there are any obligations on the "new GM" to improve their practices to avoid the exact same scenario in the future.
Clearly our (international) systems of corporate governance is so outdated that requires significant review and improvement to bring it into the 21st century.
This is not capitalism any more it's corporatism, if it was capitalism you wouldn't hear phrases "Too big to fail" you would be hearing "You should have managed your business better". What I don't understand is why individual welfare that mitigates social problems such as preventing people from falling into crime is discouraged and corporate welfare that encourages white collar crime is applauded(???).
For there to be future sustainable business models they must go beyond environmental sustainability, which is the entry point. We are going to have to see business models emerge that are fiscally sustainable, socially sustainable and have agencies with enough teeth to re-write or revoke corporate charters if business does not behave like a good corporate citizen. I don't just mean the veneer of 'corporate responsibility' but measurable responsibility as in 'how much waste was re-processed' and liability that reaches right back into those who made and funded the type of decisions that leave communities hundreds of millions of dollars of externalities to contend with. In essence that is converting taxpayer money into shareholder dividends by forcing those externalities onto the taxpayer.
If we don't we are going to find ourselves in a real depression when the real costs of these externalities are realised, capitalism a spent economic force and corporatism too big to sustain.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
You want to know why we are seeing the slow death of the US car companies? It is actually very simple: Free trade is a lie. does anybody remember when we had TVs and stereos made in the USA? I do, and I remember what killed them. Free trade is a lie. It is a lie and a fantasy because you can NOT call allowing countries like China, which allow the corps to poison the land and their own people, to place their products on the same shelf as those that don't fill the air and ground and water with toxins "free trade". It is like placing you HS football team against the Denver broncos and them having the refs fixed for the Bronco to boot.
That is why I am predicting that we are heading for a Soviet Union style collapse. It is because our government has become so corrupted by special interests that they know work against their own countrymen under the guise of "free trade" which simply doesn't exist. your company can't compete with a Chinese one, simply because we don't allow you to poison us. You can't compete with an Indian that gets a master's degree for less than 20 grand, yet thanks to H1-B you are expected to live on the same wages as he. this system is simply unsustainable and WILL collapse. There is simply no other outcome. You can't export all the jobs and continue to import all the goods and expect the economy to continue to function. There WILL be a total collapse, the only question is when.
But what you see now happening to the auto companies is the same as what happened to the manufacturing sector before them. They had to compete with those that had unfair advantages and of course they lost. can't very well win a rigged game, now can we?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.