Perception problems for GM

Perception is everything, or almost everything. Perception influences reality. This article wants to add more to GM reality.

Perception: It is that the GM of 20 years ago is the same GM today -- the same insular corporate culture, a Midwest car company wedded to the belief that the only good horsepower is more horsepower, a corporation unalterably opposed to even the most reasonable fuel economy and clean air regulations.

Reality: That old GM disappeared in the early 1990s. It was replaced by a company that continued to make mistakes -- for example, initially establishing its Saturn group as a stand-alone company and wasting money on the horrid Pontiac Aztek crossover utility vehicle. But the new GM at least recognized its errors and moved with reasonable dispatch to correct them.


Perception: GM was alone in pursuing truck dollars.

Reality: That's baloney. Nearly all car companies doing business in the United States went after that money. But here's the kicker: An amalgam of Southern states gave hundreds of millions of dollars in tax incentives to GM's foreign rivals to build nonunion assembly plants in their region. Beneficiaries of those states' "business-friendly" policies included BMW, Nissan, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota -- all of which used taxpayer dollars to set up nonunion truck plants to go after the truck business dominated by union-represented GM, Ford and Chrysler manufacturing facilities.

They went after the truck money. Toyota launched and re-launched its Tundra pickup, even Suzuki has cobbled together a full-size Equator pickup.


Perception: All Detroit needs is deep restructuring and federal bailout money for long-term viability.

Reality: Wrong. Detroit needs what America sorely needs -- a Congress with the leadership chutzpah to devise and implement industrial and energy policies that will help to keep native manufacturing industries alive. Detroit's problem isn't poor products or lack of products. It's a nationally collapsed financial system. And it's governmental hypocrisy -- our willingness to pour tax dollars into foreign enterprises, most of them not unionized, while griping about doing the same for homegrown, unionized manufacturers largely responsible for building America's middle class.


Ernest Ionescu

http://investing-manage-properties.com
http://winner4us.com