Barack Obama

[Natalya]

Iunno dude. I mean, if it weren't for the stimulus plan, I wouldn't be able to ride the train to work and back because MARTA would have stopped running and such. Well, that or they would have hiked prices. So for me I've seen a positive outcome in my daily life for this.

And yea no one's denying that we're in the shit. I've also seen the threads on N/U about people losing jobs. Even my mom got laid off a couple months ago and hasn't been able to find a steady job since. (She's doing temp work.) I just haven't complained because I still have a job and so does my dad and brother so we're still okay.

As for govt. involvement in the private sector... I'm not sure where you're going with this. Did you want GM to fold?

[rjk83]

Re: GM...

GM isn't a victim of the poor economy (that's not to say that the economy hasn't impacted their already bad situation)... They haven't made money since 2005 and actually, they have lost almost $100 billion from 2006 to 1Q 2009. The only reason they were able to stay out of bankruptcy this long is because the banks have made it happen for them. The only real profitable portion of GM was the financing segment (GMAC, which the have been selling off).

GM's issues were amount of fixed costs, inability to innovate, and the inability to compete with other companies. Comparitavely, their vehicles were shit, they built them slower and at a higher cost than their competitors. 50 years ago, GM had a US market share that was well over 50%... They started ignoring competition and now their market share is well below 20%. The last piece was their extremely high fixed costs (union costs, health care, pensions, etc).

I guess, apart from just keeping some extra jobs around... Why do we want to put money into a business that isn't sustainable or viable. We are saving a company that is slow to innovate, can't adjust to a market that changes. makes cars that people apparently don't want and they have sold off GMAC which was the only profitable business in the past 5 years.

I don't think that the road to success is to inject money into businesses that are no longer a viable played based on their actions for the past 50 years. However, it will be interesting to see how the other companies like Ford will compete against a company that is majority owned by the US Government.....