Geitner and the boys have told GM to get ready to file bankruptcy. GM is already spinning it as a "quick bankruptcy". Quick or slow the result will be the same. There will be a new GM and an old GM. You better hope you aren't at the old GM. The old GM will be dismantled, factories sold off, people terminated, unions busted, shareholders wiped out. The pension will be tossed into the new GM, but guess what, it is a cool thirteen billion light, so the Government (us) will pick up that tab. But the unions will take it on the chin. Basically, the era of the union will end when GM slips into BK land.That's what this is really all about. New economy and old economy and what emerges from GM will not resemble the old company. It better not. The only way consumers will return will be a radical transformation along the lines of Apple transitioning from Mac into IPOD. We all knew it was coming. Americans are not buying cars. In fact, Americans aren't buying much of anything and the great flush is under way. Detroit is getting flushed out weather it wants to or not along with the banks and every other company that doesn't really work anymore. Planned obsolescence finally zeroed in on one of it's own.
As my father in law said, do we really need new cars every five years? Not really. Cars now last ten years or more and that's a good thing because who can afford to replace them now? So went General Motors, so went the country. Well the country is undergoing radical change where newspapers, banks homes, cars, people are all being reevaluated in the light of a digital economy that changes with nanosecond speed and updates the consumer in the same flash of lightning. We had all better get used to pulling our own weight now because there is simply no fat left and now there will be no cars either. At least cars from General Motors.
