Don’t believe the hype on GM’s loan repayment | Hacker News Reader

Don’t believe the hype on GM’s loan repayment

edmondsun.com

63 pointsdwwoelfel24 comments

I confess to loving a good conspiracy theory (some of them must be true, we just don't know which), but this "GM paid everything back 5 years ahead of schedule, with interest" story is making my propaganda Geiger counter beep. Just like the Toyota takedown did a couple months ago.

"To claim success at this point is nonsense ... The bailout was and is a complete failure."

So it's too early to claim success, but evidently not too early to claim failure.

Your statement doesn't follow from that quote. The bailout failed, so to claim success is nonsense. At this point, or at any point in the future.

I believe that Marty was saying it is too early to claim the bailout failed. Gm has not gone out of business, and while I would not place any money on gm thriving in the future, it is still within the realm of possibilities that they could. If the point of the bailout was to save gm from failing, you cannot declare the bailout as having failed unless gm fails. Likewise, you can't claim that gm won't pay back the money eventually as long as they remain in business. You can say the bailout is likely to fail, but that is hugely different from saying it has already failed.

Edmond, OK is my hometown. Seeing its paper on HN is a major shock. What are you doing reading their op-eds? :-)

(I just spent 5 minutes figuring out how to mention that I currently live in Edmond and make it relevant to HN. I couldn't.)

I feel bad about not subcribing to the Edmond Sun though- they have much better articles than The Oklahoman.

All the questions of juggling funds and how this will be re-payed and how that will be afforded etc seems fruitless and pointless.

Sales are falling, they are loosing money; there may be many things to do, but everything is for naught if they can't do the most important thing.

MAKE A CAR PEOPLE WANT TO BUY.

Maybe I'm naive, but I figure if they do that most of the other problems can be sorted out- and if they can't do that, they have no business doing business.

This American Life had an episode a month ago that went into previous attempts of GM's to fix their problems. It has some great details on why their corporate culture is so messed up, and why they're so incapable of fixing their problems: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/403/n...

It's so interesting that the most vital journalism in America is from the margins: TAL, Daily Show... I wonder what's out there that I'm missing.

I highly recommend noagendashow.com if you're interested in media deconstruction

Unfortunately, the guys on it know almost nothing about anything, but rather only follow up stories that confirm their biases.

I like Curry and Dvorak, but -- as the other replier says -- Curry is quite ignorant and Dvorak isn't far behind. Neither seem to understand the concept of fair-minded evaluation. Everything is a conspiracy by some evil faction, usually the Bilderbergers or the CFR or somesuch. H1N1 was manufactured, according to Curry, to generate profits for vaccine makers. Seriously?

I'll check it out, thanks, but I do have to say the name rubs me the wrong way. It's the kind of name you'd only use if it weren't true.

If you like TAL, you might like Radiolab from WNYC (Science focus) and Planet Money (Economics focus).

Rolling Stone is another one -- they've published some great investigative journalism:

http://searchyc.com/submissions/rollingstone.com

WOW! What a great piece! It's the systems that matter. There's all this discussion lately about "Never hire job-hoppers." No, that's completely wrong. It's all about the systems that companies have in place.

The Freemont experiment took the workers and put them in a different system and things changed even though they were the worst workers before.

Glad you liked it so much :)

I've just finished listening to it and I recommend it too. It truly helps to understand why it took so long for GM to change its way despite having most of the answers staring it in the face.

iirc, even in the good old days, GM was more profitable as a car financing company than a car manufacturing company... profits which were then transferred to employee benefits rather than reinvested in the company

>MAKE A CAR PEOPLE WANT TO BUY. > >Maybe I'm naive,

Well, I think that's naive. It's not enough to make something that people want to buy. There is always a number of people wanting to buy a given car, but that number depends also on the car's price.

Of course, GM cannot simply lower the prices if their cost per unit is still high in comparison to the competition. And they probably cannot lower the cost while keeping ridiculous agreements with the autoworkers' union.

For comparison, as the article says, GM has been making in Asia and South America. In particular, GM is very profitable in Brazil.

Er, I meant GM has been making money in Asia and S. America. (couldn't edit due to noprocrast)

They found an alternative strategy that works pretty well:

GIVE LOTS OF MONEY TO POLITICIANS

UAW will suck down more billions of our dollars in our lifetimes. Give them time.

Here's a strategy: with government having a financial interest in your corporation's success, you have government regulators crack down on minor violations in your competitors' products, then get reporters to write stories about how "GM's cars are regaining popularity now that Toyota's cars were proven to be unsafe" (paraphrase of an article in a local paper read by hundreds of thousands of subscribers).

It sounds like a nutty conspiracy theory, but it's just too convenient that Toyota gets hit with a record fine shortly after the government buys GM.

The GM bailout marked the arrival of state corporatism to America. Truth is one of the casualties.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com