Teh Ricer Civic!

I hereby nominate Z-06 for worst pun of the year award.

Naw, this is not really a practice that is looked upon highly, however when a company incorporates, it has the right to issue some number of shares (it can always petition for more), and it can issue them whenever it wants. It USUALLY has some form of anti-dilution clause in there somewhere for existing shareholders, however if they are issuing these shares greatly above current share prices, i cannot honestly see anyone taking them up on this offer. So in that regard, it is a suspect business practice, but certainly not fraud.

Its simple finance. Just grab a finance book and read up... or read it on the internetz. Finance is always a good thing to know, its actually useful in routine stuff like looking for an auto loan etc etc. The more technical stuff is dry and boring, but the basic stuff is interesting to learn about, and with the basic stuff you can at least have an idea of the more complex stuff.

Yes, i would love to take care of the house and the kids. I am kinda a slacker when it comes to making food and cleaning, but oh well, just well enough to make it look like i did something. I know its a ton of work, but i feel like it would be worth it. Plus i can teach my kids to be excellent video game players sadly i have not found a girl who is willing to support my lazy ass to do so

...yeah... the company still isn't worth very much. Recapitalizing with equity actually DECREASES the firms value because there are no tax benefits to equity. Weird huh? Now i am not saying that it is not a good thing to get debt off your balance sheet, because i certainly am not! I hate debt. BUT, simple market forces dictate that there is an "optimal"-ish level of debt to be had. If you have too much you go bankrupt, too little and your not recognizing your full potential. Now, IF GM was truly undervalued, there would be several firms who would be looking to buy up GM recognizing that a tidy profit could be made by restructuring GM. However that has not happened, so obviously GM has more pressing issues at hand that has driven its market value very low. Finance is a very weird and complicated beast that only makes sense if you think about it for way to damn long.

I know, i am simply saying that there will likely be very few, if any, private sector areas that would even bother paying $1 per share when the company quite simply is not valued at that much at this time. To raise 60 billion in cash is trying to raise 60x the current market cap of the company! So unless the government is buying all the shares, i don't know who in their right mind would... i certainly would not.

Yes Olds, i am fully aware of what a reverse stock split is. I am saying the stock price will continue to plummet to around $0.0165 because that will be roughly the value of the stock if they do in fact issue all 60 billion shares (GM market cap has been hovering around 1 billion for a while). Theoretically according to efficienct market theories GM stock should already be worth nothing after this announcement, but i guess things take a bit longer to happen in the real world. The Reverse stock split is true if, and only if, existing GM shareholders are allowed to buy a proportional amount of this new issue so they can maintain their stake. OTHERWISE it will in fact wipe out their shareholding power. Now if GM was issuing a 100:1 stock split then yes, it would still make the stock worthless, however proportionally everyone would own the same amount. But this is a new STOCK ISSUE, which is different. It will wipe out exiting shareholders unless they can buy proportional amounts in this new stock as i have said. Although after re-reading it, since it seems they want the US government to own it, they may pay some ridiculous premium for the company because that is what governments like to do. The US government would then have majority ownership in GM... after the 1:100 reverse stock split is complete, all preexisting shareholders would be down to only about 1% of their previous holdings (just as they will be down to a 1% holding without the reverse stock split). In other words, if you decide you would like to buy some shares in GM after this... make sure you purchase in increments of 100 shares, because otherwise after the reverse stock split you will have NOTHING... price should be equal roughly to what it is now per 100 shares since this is essentially 100x the current amount of shares outstanding.

There are currently 610,500,000 shares outstanding. Those are trading currently at $1.66. The stock will continue to plummet until they issue these shares. Current market cap is 1 billion. So 1 billion / 60.6105 billion shares = $0.0165 Thats right, GM will have to issue these shares at less than 1.65 cents! This stock issue will raise around $1 billion for the automaker and will make the stock WORTHLESS if they issue all the shares. GM will have to be VERY careful as to who they sell these to, because at this point it would be extremely easy for say Kirk Keorkian to buy all $1 billion of these shares and thus have a 98.99% ownership in the company. So in other words, unless GM can magically convince people that they should pay more for this stock issue, this would be pointless and EXTREMELY dangerous.

Yeah, plus you don't get to shoot at the match heads.

Clearly she was a young gold digger and tricked the old man into taking a check which would never be found so she could keep all the money. Duh!

Woulda been faster just to bring in a priest to confess to But this is a good joke, i laughed.

This is eventually going to nip GM in the butt when Shanghai shanghais their designs and competes directly with GM.

If only i had the money to buy up Saturn...

How about filling it up with gunpower and shooting some tannerite that you wedge between the window and the door frame?

Personally i would take a rubber mallet and hit the engine block until it works correctly. You should also do this to the rear brakes.

What!? that quote makes no sense. Democracy is amongst the worst form of government (mob rule is always bad). Thus it is up to the Republic (preferably a democratically elected representative one) to fill the void. Anywho as for the money "lost" by the rising oil prices, the Federal Reserve tends to print a lot of money each year just as yearly allotments, it alone covers the money "lost." Whatever congress does only impacts against what the Federal Reserve is doing... thus the massive increase in monetary supply from the Federal Reserve more than makes up for the increase in oil prices, however with the addition of deficit spending from the government, it will likely lead to really awful inflation or very high interest rates in a couple of years to control said inflation. This would not have become a crisis because we have a fiat money supply. If we were on a gold standard this may have been a problem.

Now can GM get around these restrictions by BUILDING them in Japan? Or is that not allowed either?

No German cars too then right? The Brits killed us too, so no British cars either. Uhm... we fought Italy as well... nothing from them. French cars suck so doesn't matter if we don't get those... lets see... uh... Well there's Australia and South Korea. Allright! So we can buy South Korean, Australian, and American cars! Anyways, really, you guys like to push the "Necessity is the mother of all invention" even along the lines of fuel regulation and air pollution regulation. So along the same lines of artificial needs, having foreign competition here is an "artificial need" so your same "Necessity is the mother of all invention" line should hold true. As Ford is showing, it is definitely possible to be able to compete with Japan, even on uneven footing. And guess what? If Ford is successful in their gambit they will be a FAR BETTER company than Toyota could ever be because Ford has to be far more resourceful and efficient in its processes to compete... and once the playing field begins to level more as globalization progresses, Ford will be in the dominant global position over Toyota who had to rely somewhat on their own government to "move forward" whereas Ford has only themselves to rely on.

Well there is a GM japan that sells Opels, Chevy (well the corvette), Caddys and uh... Saab for some reason. As to Camino, go out there and innovate! The more Americans innovate the more we stay on top. The less we innovate and become protective socialists, the more we become "lowest common denominator" both globally and nationally.

again?

But to what degree are Japanese protectionists rather than extremely nationalistic? There is a difference, same outcome, but still a difference.

Alright, so we should be protectionist because the Japanese were able to learn from their mistakes, improve and eventually overcome Detroit????

Wow, nice job Ford.

I am not saying things would not have progressed. I am just saying that they may not have progressed as quickly. After all, Russian communist cars progressed, but not quickly. The more competitors you have the more things progress. Since this is all hypothetical anyways, who is to say that your LT-1 would ever have been invented if there was no foreign competition? I mean it COULD have been, but we don't know for sure. In other words, when you compete with THE BEST, you learn quicker and everyone progresses faster. When you compete with okay people of your own skill level, you still improve, but you will not improve as fast and likely THE BEST will continue to compete against the other THE BESTS out there and they will be lightyears ahead of the others who only competed with other okay firms. AMC and other companies fell by the way side because they could not compete very well against the other brands. Having AMC around now would only imply one of 2 things 1) AMC would have been more efficient with the lack of foreign cars (doubtful) or 2) AMC would still be around and not as efficient as most automakers are today.

Half of you seemed quite keen on "spreading the wealth" in the elections, why are you not so keen to spread it around the world? After all, us rich (relatively) Americans are not paying our fair share to the impoverished people of China/India/Africa/South America/Eastern Bloc/Russia nations. Not to get into a political thing, but really this is the same damn thing, except one benefits efficiency whereas the other benefits inefficiency.