Volt-Talking Obama Bets On Pick-Up Sales
| The bailout of a Volt-producing GM was sold as an investment into a green future, a liberation from the terrorist-supporting Arabs. We have been fooled. The decisive turnaround of the company could be delivered by a new generation of big, gas-guzzling trucks. If successful, the trucks could help recover at least some of the money the tax payer sunk into GM.
Forget the Volt. GM “is counting on muscled up, more refined versions of its lucrative Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra full-size pickup trucks to show investors and car buyers the No. 1 U.S. automaker is back on the right track,” says an in-depth Reuters article by its Detroit star reporter Ben Klayman. GM needs to invigorate its trucks badly. Their last major redesign was in 2006. The 2009 bankruptcy made GM fall behind on development. GM is estimated to have invested between $3 and $4 billion in developing the new trucks and revamping the plants where they are built. The market share of the Silverado/Sierra has been dropping for year, while the competition by Ford and Chrysler are gaining. Currently, GM trades at $25.63, but a pick-up in earnings from the pick-ups is still a while away. Trucks are shown today, but will not hit dealers before the second quarter of next year. |
Publius Prime 
I don’t think anybody with a lick of sense and an interest in the auto industry had been fooled. Its no secret that trucks are the mainstay of the domestic auto industry , cars on the other hand are a necessary evil for the domestics.
Are there actually people who think that in 4-8 years that domestic industry, let alone the auto industry and its products would go green? Heh, not without some WWII level government edicts.
I’m not a fan of automakers or unions, in particular, but given that the government DID step into the realm of private enterprise in a MASSIVE way back in 2008, given that GM and Chrysler received MAYBE 1/40th of the taxpayer monies that Wall Street firms and banking institutions did in the aggregrate, given that GM & Chrysler probably employ many more people than AIG, Citi, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs or their Wall Street brethren, and given that GM and Chrysler actually produce tangible products that are wealth accretive rather than wealth destroying (contrary to much of what AIG, Citi, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, etc. produce), I am not going to complain at all that either GM or Chrysler were provided tax dollars.
I am not a fan of the UAW, and I am dismayed at how General Motors has been run over the years (and even recently, to some degree), but if government IS going to meddle, as they seem intent on doing, I will side with the GMs and Chryslers of this country all day and every day versus the AIGs, Citis, Bank of Americas, Goldman Sachs Vampire Squids.