Posted by
Playful Walrus on Monday, June 08, 2009 6:00:00 PM
There are some great points made in this batch of letters to the Orange County Register.
James Haynes of Irvine wrote:
How would you feel working at Ford, Honda, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz and BMW manufacturing plants in the United States, knowing that your government just gave your competitor $50 billion?
Very good point.
Deese will force GM to make smaller cars. How will he get people to buy the cars no one wants? That's easy. Don't fix the energy problem. Oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear resources won't be developed. The government will subsidize ethanol, which drives up food prices.
The whole letter is worth a read.
Bobby Florentz of La Habra wrote:
The trouble with the president buying GM for "us" is that now the company is owned by people who don't want it and who will never profit from it.
A better solution would have been to give these billions to the stockholders to buy the company for the autoworkers union. Let's see the union take on debt and turn a profit while saddled with the exorbitant salaries, pensions and restrictions it imposed upon the industry.
Wouldn't that be something? But the best solution would have been to let the market work.
Harold McDonnel of Fullerton wrote:
As a former employee of a General Motors subsidiary, I purchased a few General Motors bonds in 2002 to aid my retirement. I paid full price for senior bonds that had first claims on all the assets of GM, should GM go bankrupt. It was a gold-plated investment.
Then the U.S. government decided, senior though my bonds are, that the assets should be given to other people. The union workers were put first in line, then the government, and then me.
Hope and change, baby!
Two and a quarter cents on the dollar is what I can expect for my bonds. I wish the government would follow the bankruptcy laws. I hate playing poker with a government that makes my three aces lose to a pair of sevens.
Yes they can!
What a mess.