Life in Peru » bailout

GM Bankruptcy

wwelvaert — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 19:26:01 +0000

More talk today about a possible GM bankruptcy. Well, a monkey with a calculator could have figured out GM was bankrupt years ago, if you accounted for their off-balance sheet liabilities. Instead of addressing the problem then, GM stuck its head in the sand, overproduced cars and offered in-house financing to sell cars that the market couldn’t support, and thus to make their own numbers look better. The credit crisis didn’t hurt GM, GM helped create it.

On a different note, instead of fixing their disastrous labor relations GM tried to get rid of its union workforce and go to the greener pastures of Mexico. How’s that whole globalization thing working out?

Let’s have a look at a US made car, as seen on the road here in Peru, shall we:

US made car in Cusco, Peru

Now take a look at the vast majority of cars on the road in Peru: made in Japan, Korea, and China.

Kind of says it all. The US auto industry messed up globalization beyond belief.

I’m not a happy camper about this: my brother works for GM in Europe, he and a lot of other good people might lose their jobs. This weekend I’m going to the beach. I’m writing a turnaround plan for GM, see if I won’t.

Bailout mascot

wwelvaert — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 16:25:20 +0000

A friend of mine sent me this. Crude, but funny. Also sad actually, because it’s becoming increasingly obvious these bailouts are set up to protect greedy incompetent executives who caused the mess in the first place. If anyone knows of the correct origin, please let us know in the comments.

AIG bailout politics

wwelvaert — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 18:29:44 +0000

The political posturing around the AIG bailout back home in the US almost makes Peruvian politicians look sincere…

Remember when former NY Attorney General Elliot Spitzer – not exactly the poster boy for ethics himself – keelhauled then-CEO Maurice “Hank” Greenberg in 2005? Here’s what Greenberg recently said about credit default swaps at AIG:

“However, he said AIG’s sales of credit default swaps “exploded” after he left the company in March 2005. He said AIGFP reportedly wrote as many credit default swaps in the nine months after he left than it did during the previous seven years combined and, he maintained, too much of its new business was tied to the subprime market.”

Instead of all the posturing, let AIG fail. It was just a house of cards. AIG’s business model of insuring investments only created a false illusion of security. Letting AIG fail would be a good first step to cleaning up both the financial system and ethics in business.

Bailouts and political posturing don’t change the fact that money is just a funny printed paper. Real productivity, what we contribute to society in tangible terms, and the tangible things you expect to get in return, is what matters. Just printing up more money so old guys in suits can continue to get ridiculously rich doesn’t seem like the solution to me.