Michael Moore on the GM bailout, today: PS, the government isn't going to make money

[beforeyoureyes]

Start with the end:

P.S. Don't believe for a second the government is going to "make money" on its bailout of the car industry. Everyone was shocked when shares went up as high as $35 today. To just break even, the government will have to sell its 500 million remaining shares at an average of $53.

And so, that is that. With the government selling a chunk of its stock in General Motors today, you and I are no longer majority shareholders in one of the world's largest industrial companies. And the window that was briefly open for the most important kind of democracy -- democracy at work -- has closed, at least for now.

Last year, when General Motors declared bankruptcy, I wrote you a letter called "Goodbye, GM." In it, I called for us to use our ownership to create a new kind of company: one without layoffs at the whim of a CEO, one that didn't try to sell millions more of the cars that are destroying our cities and planet. Instead, the new GM, our GM, should have retooled and hired our many skilled unemployed to build the future: bullet trains, light rail, electric buses, windmills and solar panels. I hope you can take a moment to read it now and imagine what might have been.

Because, while it may not seem like it today -- as hedge funds snap up what were our shares, and Wall Street banks gulp down $118.3 million in IPO fees -- we will have another chance. I am telling you, as sure as god made little green Hondas, we will own GM again. That's the way capitalism works: the big boys rake it in when things are working, then we're on the hook to pick up the pieces when it all falls apart. And even then we never get a real say in what happens.


Full letter...here:
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/gm-capitalism-dodge-bullet

[leftstreet]

1. Temporary Socialism for the Capitalist Class

:grr:

K&R

[beforeyoureyes]

3. Not to mention loss of pensions, decreased wages, and union busting

I just read the front page top rated post about how Obama saved Michigan....

I just shook my head. Wow.

[unkachuck]

2. K&R....

"...we never get a real say in what happens."

....why is that?

[ChimpersMcSmirkers]

4. "the new GM should have retooled and hired our many skilled unemployed to build the future:

bullet trains, light rail, electric buses, windmills and solar panels" So take a company whose core competency is car making and turn it into a solar and train company? Michael's a good guy but he says some dumb stuff sometimes.

[AdHocSolver]

11. GM manufactured buses and diesel engines for train locomtives, so why not. nt

[veganlush]

5. K&R n/t.

[chriscraft]

6. And who on Mainstreet even had a shot at the IPO

or the massive underwriting fees generated by it?

We've been royally had again.

[donco]

7. The next time you hear a repug bitching about

gubment motors, inform them that by funding GM means there is $20 billion that the gubment doesn't now have to print.

[chriscraft]

8. You had better do a little research

In addition to the 50 billion bailout and the at least 45 billion tax forgiveness going forward the taxpayer lost an additional 9.5 billion on the IPO today.

[Hannah Bell]

9. kr. the taxpayers got screwed, the workers got screwed, the retirees got screwed.

[Amonester]

10. K&R. and the banksters laughed themselves silly all the way to the bank.

Again.