On your recent purchase of GM…

Do any of you really believe that a government-run GM will succeed? Really?

Now that you’ve bought the company, you’d better read the owner’s manual. GM will need to shed a lot of it excess weight. Unfortunately, a lot of that weight translates into human beings. The whole reason the government felt it needed to stave off a collapse of the auto giant in the first place was to avoid a shock to the economy. Well, get ready to be shocked.
You’re losing breadlines full of jobs, and dump trucks full of taxpayer cash.
And then get ready to watch GM die, anyway.
The company’s major shareholder — your government — has a seemingly unlimited supply of taxpayer money and a lot of special interests in line ahead of consumers. All of which is a recipe for a Yugo.
Read an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal by Ion Mihai Pacepa. He was appointed by Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausecscu to start a national car company back in the mid-1960s, and he talks about the folly of thinking governments can run private businesses successfully. (Read “What I learned as a car czar” here.)
President Obama is no Ceausescu. I believe him when he says he is reluctantly going into the car business. But it will be difficult for politicians not to assert themselves into GM’s business decisions. They just can’t help themselves, the dears.
You can start with executive pay and go straight down the list. A lot of choices look differently to a politician than to a business leader.
As Pacepa points out, even Britain’s takeover of Jaguar was a disaster.
Who will win in all this? Ford. If it survives these rough times, Ford — the only one of the big three not to take a bailout — should be a great position to lead the market.