if the CEOs weren't getting paid over 20 million a year they wouldn't be in backruptcy!

Honestly the amount the CEO's get is a extremely small amount when looking at the big picture. I believe the downfall of GM came from bad management and the fact they simply became to large. How many brands do they have? Buick , Chevrolet, Cadillac, GMC , and like 3 or 4 more. Also a big factor is that they didn't care to compete with other companies when it comes to pricing and gas mileage.

yeah, because 20 million can somehow negate needing 20 billion.

Well, I think nuclearShadow has a point, but the question that might be missed is why does a CEO of a failing company that can't compete getting 20 mil? I think it's important for GM to survive, but the survival needs to allow the new company to be a competitive comapny in the world market. The current culture of GM (which seem to emanate from the top down...) will never allow it to reach that goal. Also, as long as the unions control the workforce GM has no chance to be competitive. Good luck to us all...

As it stands, $20 million+ is just a little bit too much to pay anyone whos not going (or willing) to efficiently manage and improve a company, let alone for what would be in the company's, and the country's, best interests. And with as important as a company like that is, a CEO can't afford not to, ironically.

I do agree though, the CEO must not've had enough incentive to do even that... so why was that much being paid to begin with? Standard Expected Salary...? Must've been. Why try if you're just going to get that much regardless of how hard you work?

Overpaid...? Definetly. And they are very much so at fault as a result.

Thank goodness we loaned them 20 billion a few months back so that they could survive *intense sarcasm*

This is like the sub-prime crisis, Bush had successfully wrecked the economy by 2005, so the banks were so kind as to agree to extend huge credit lines to people who couldn't possibly pay it back, in exchange for being bailed out later. Had the banks not done this, we would've had a Soviet-style collapse well before the end of Bush's 2nd term, however, all of our "career politicians" will do anything to stay in power one more day, even if it leaves us much worse off when that day does come...

LATTEH

What an idiot!

Please stop wasting tax payer money trying to save a company that is not savable. This company has been downright worthless for the past 15 years and hasn't done anything to fix itself. Kept building bland cars, huge SUV's, low gas mileage vehicles, using crappy parts, having recall after recall, spouting off endless brands, etc. Not to mention what the UAW has been able to do to them for the past 40 years. Their wages are out of this WORLD even with a 28% reduction they are still laughably high. A 60%+ reduction should be in order for the level of work and difficulty of work they do.

General Motors, or should I see U.S. Government Motors, isn't worth saving. Let a crappy company die. We already owe China about 11 trillion lets quit while we are ahead.

You have no clue what you're talking about. The "melt-down" of our economy can be traced back to two primary sources, relaxed lending standards implemented by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac at the behest of democrats AND republicans and the blind-eye towards commodity trading that has existed for decades.

It starts with attempts to achieve the great American dream of owning a home. Democrats, and to a lesser extent Republicans, during the late 90's began pushing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to begin relaxing standards on their mortgage "auto-buy" program. In essence, if a bank lent money for a home and that loan matched Fannie and Freddie's "auto-buy" standards then they would automatically buy the loan up, no matter the conditions. Fannie and Freddie would then take these bought up loans, package them together as a mortgage backed security and sell them on the open market. When those bad loans began to default these securities quickly became near worthless. Without people buying their securities, Fannie and Freddie were no longer able to buy loans from community banks. Unable to sell their loans to Fannie and Freddie, banks began to tighten up on home loans given out which dried up an important part of their revenue stream, closing costs and origination fees. With tighter credit people were no longer able to buy new and existing homes for sale which led to an oversaturation of homes on the market. Law of supply and demand states that with an increased supply and lower demand, prices must fall, thus home prices began to tank. Lower home prices meant people had negative equity which dried up many peoples line of credit on their homes. With lower lines of credit and unable to sell their homes more people began to default and the circle continues. As this scare perpetuated through the economy more and more people began to not spend (which is the last thing you should do during a recession, unless you are jobless which is understandable.) Less spending hurts every company out there thus the trickle down effect throughout our economy.

The other issue being the lack of regulation on commodities market. This one is self-explanatory. Nobody should be able to corner the oil futures market and drive up the price, not when it is a neccessity of life. This loophole has existed for decades and needs to be closed.

This, along with the lower spending capacity as mentioned above, is what has put GM in the place it's at. They planned poorly with poor fuel economy vehicles so soaring gas prices killed them and then on top of that people stopped spending money in general. Very little of this had to do with Bush and his administration and I'd challenge you to point out what in his 8 years influenced the outcome we're at.

PS I'm not a Bush fan, but I'm tired of people jumping on an obvious "popular" bandwagon.

With the economy in the state that it's in, people can no longer afford the "nostalgic" tax GM puts in its vehicles. Their looking for the most MPG/Performance/etc they can get for their money; which sadly to say, American vehicles are lacking in every aspect (except Tesla.)

Finally, someone with a clue!!

fixed.

We have a chev silverado 2500 and a chev venture at home. GM sucks and deserves to go bankrupt imo. I swear that every year, the only things their vehicles get is BNG (bold new graphics). Everyone is hurting in the recession, so should the auto workers... they should have massively reduced their wages a long time ago and invested it into R&D. I think it's sad that the Japanese [honda, suzuki] put more effort into their motorsports alone than GM puts into everything combined.

Not true. Ford is making some great decisions right about now. Their 2010 model vehicles are looking great. The new Fusion, Fusion Hybrid, Focus Coupe, Focus Electric, etc. They have declined government money and are doing FINE without it by focusing on innovation, interior/exterior design quality, miles per gallon, and alternative fuels. They are abandoning the huge SUV plants unlike GM who keeps pumping out massive vehicle after massive vehicle.

The ford eco-boost is amazing. Look it up if you aren't familiar with it.

I don't see how our housing economy has to do with our government economy. People in the US are losing money, which means that it's going somewhere, just not to us. I mean, the government can't just give these companies billions of dollars to fix themselves, then have all that money just fizzle away.

nice job comrade obama, our tax dollars are being spent on a company that over the past two decades fails to make a profit.

at least we still have our social security and modestly priced health care to fall back on....

@Chripuck: It was the Republican congress who repealed the Glassner-Steagall Act, which was put in place after the Great Depression. It was the product of vast amounts of research into WHY the Great Depression happened. Fast forward to the 90s/00s, where the Gingrich/Limbaugh/Bush Republicans feel that the rich ought not be subjected to regulation and laws. Look at the average salary of a CEO, when Reagan took office, it was 40x the salary of an average employee at the same company. Now it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 500x the average salary of an employee at the same company. Cleary the "Grand Old Party(of greed and stupidity)" are squarely to blame for this mess.

don't worry they are definitely going into bankruptcy and hopefully after that the government will stop giving them money.

While there are exceptions, all the CEO's I have known have been pompous, self righteous over paid, uncommitted low level politicians. Most of the time not bothering to even spend more than a few days a week actually attending to company business. The rest of the time they are off on "business trips" or events usually out of town or out of state. CEO's are a plague on the modern US economy.

Ridiculously uninformed. The money is being spent, perhaps futilely, to preserve the jobs and the segment of the economy that depends on auto production. Remember, if they are out of jobs, they don't pay taxes (and consume unemployment and other services). The cost of negligence would be magnitudes greater, and permanent if they industry dies. Blame the previous administration for profiteering and incompetent oversight for allowing the conditions to develop when it could have been prevented.

The only worthwhile America Automaker is Ford. GM isn't even at the place now that Ford was 4 years ago when it released the Fusion. The Malibu is a step towards it but really, the Malibu is just a rehashed Saturn Aura is a body that makes it look better.

At least with shares at $1.06, the employees wont worry about the value dropping too much. LOL

A real shame they are going under but I kinda knew this day would come and I think so did they.

you sir are truly an idiot! I work with the auto industry, both foreign and domestic car manufactures. True these workers will be out of work and not paying taxes but they are currently getting paid with tax dollars. So what you are telling me is I should be happy I am getting 10 cents for every dollar I give you to work on a product I don't want. You should teach business 101 to the mentally challenged, they will anoint you their king!

my comments where meant for joeman not scryer, sorry there's no edit button

there isnt a car they product that i want - thats the first major issue to me

general motors need to go asap. it's bad but it's also good. but i stongly agree that it will be a very good thing.

The usless trillians spent in iraq didnt help. If i didnt just wake up i would shell out alot more of that idiot monkeys mistakes but TBH he was a waste on the country. it would be a much shorter list and way easyer to tell me what the dip nut did right and DIDNT do to tank the econemy.

Unfortunately, for America to really become competitive again we need to close GM, Chrysler, and Ford. They each have their problems with fiscal responsibility only being a fraction. I will say this, however, too many folks complain about gas guzzlers, SUVs and Trucks. Well, some industries (construction, farming, and ranching to name a few) would have a difficult time doing their jobs with a Civic or Prius. And foriegn trucks are not much better than the American ones. In that area the entire industry needs to be fixed.

If the reform of how we did business didn't change in the 1970's to rewarding higher ups instead of pay raises equivalent to raises in productivity the minimum wage in the us would be nearing 20 dollars that's the national minimum wage. Greed motivates apparently the people are gm were not greedy enough to be motivated enough to save their company.

This is what you get with out of control union labor cost. The union has been dictating for years what its members were going to get paid/benefits.

A company cant succeed if its losing money on the products it sells. In 2007 GM spent $4.6 billion on health care alone. Thats $1,525 per vehicle sold.

This maybe bad for me to say. But a failed company needs to fail. To throw billions at it like the government did and have it still fail is a total waste. GM received 25 billion in bailout money...all for nothing.

What the government is doing is wrong. They are just delaying the inevitable by throwing money out to failed companies like GM. Yes, I understand losing jobs is bad. But people, and companies, have been living/operating beyond their means for years now. The inflation bubble has been growing exponentially. It was just a matter of time before it burst...and it did. Now its time to cut the fat.

Recessions are a necessary evil. Recessions culls away weak companies and force stronger ones to reduce expenditures (cut the fat).

Anyways I better stop because I can go on and on.

What pisses me off is that GM COULD HAVE been at the forefront.. They had the Saturn EV1 and they puposely abandoned and destroyed any chance for it to grow into somthing more mainstream. Also thanks to the great CARB board for lifting the mandate that set a timeline at which all auto manufacturers were required to have a certain % of electric vehicles.