general motors

For Detroit’s automakers, the bad news just got worse. Just hours after Chrysler announced a request for $5 billion more in federal help to prevent bankruptcy, General Motors indicated it might need as much as $16.6 billion more. Combined, the two companies have already received $17.4 billion in emergency loans since December.
From The Associated Press:

Might have seen this one coming.
When the Bush administration agreed in December to tap Wall Street bailout funds to help Chrysler and General Motors avoid bankruptcy, the two auto giants said that $17.4 billion would see them through March — $13.4 billion for G.M. and $4 billion for Chrysler.
Now the numbers are growing.

Spencer sends over the story that General Motors has tried to keep quiet.
Following Sunday’s Super Bowl, the automaker — keeping with a marketing tradition — awarded the game’s MVP with the car of his choice. Santonio Holmes, the Steelers wide-out who caught the game’s winning touchdown, chose a Cadillac Hybrid Platinum. Price tag: $85,200.
Why we [...]

Car manufacturers looking for a bailout in December pledged to meet standards they now call unreasonable.

When Senate Republicans last week blocked Democrats’ efforts to bail out General Motors and Chrysler, which say they’re near bankruptcy, the White House was quick to swoop in to announce that it would lend the help that Congress didn’t.
Aside from the comedy surrounding that development (the Bush administration’s original refusal to help the automakers was [...]

A GM bankruptcy would be unprecedented, and probably controversial, because the company owns physical assets worth about $160 billion, directly employs 90,000 Americans and is an integral part of the U.S. economy. While the White House has signaled that it may come to the rescue in the short term, the pain of downsizing the auto giant would have a ripple effect across the economy.

Nearly a month after the executives of the Big Three automakers arrived in Washington on corporate jets to ask Congress for a bailout, a group of auto workers made the same trip by carpool. Their mission was the same, but the blue-collar image they projected was strikingly different.

The heads of Detroit’s automakers might be willing to accept $1 salaries as a condition of a federal bailout, but they won’t commit to capping their total compensation, even at $1 million.
So says Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), a liberal member of the House Financial Services Committee, which hosted the three auto execs this morning to [...]

Last month, when Detroit’s Big Three automakers stormed Capitol Hill in search of $25 billion in emergency loans, a number of lawmakers wondered aloud where that figure came from — and whether it would be enough.
It seems there was reason for their skepticism.
Chrysler yesterday afternoon was the last of the automakers to unveil its revamped [...]

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.) on Tuesday ended the speculation that Congress might return to Washington after Thanksgiving if Democrats fail this week to pass legislation to bail out the auto industry, Roll Call reported: