{"id":557,"date":"2009-03-05T11:46:00","date_gmt":"2009-03-05T15:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2009\/03\/05\/gms-going-concern\/"},"modified":"2009-03-05T11:46:00","modified_gmt":"2009-03-05T15:46:00","slug":"gms-going-concern","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2009\/03\/05\/gms-going-concern\/","title":{"rendered":"GM&#8217;s &quot;going concern&quot;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>U.S. car makers are in free fall.<\/p>\n<p>I can&#8217;t find anyone who knows the industry and thinks Chrysler will &#8211; or even should &#8211; survive. Ford just revealed its biggest drop in sales in the company&#8217;s history. The New York Times reports Ford finished 2008 with $24 billion in cash reserves, but <a href=\"http:\/\/topics.nytimes.com\/topics\/news\/business\/companies\/ford_motor_company\/index.html\">$25.8 billion in debt<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Today, we hear that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/03\/06\/business\/06auto.html?hp\">financial auditors at General Motors don&#8217;t see much of a future for the company<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Our recurring losses from operations, stockholders&#8217; deficit and inability to generate sufficient cash flow to meet our obligations and sustain our operations raise substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern,&#8221; the company said in the filing [out today].<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This sounds bad, but it could be pro forma. This blurb fits the mold of a corporate statement called the &#8220;going concern&#8221; letter. Other struggling companies use this type of language to force unions and suppliers to make concessions.<\/p>\n<p>And even after GM auditors say there&#8217;s &#8220;substantial doubt&#8221; about the car maker&#8217;s future,  other corporate executives said today that they&#8217;re confident the company can restructure and become viable once again.<\/p>\n<p>But, the road to recovery mapped out by GM is paved with a taxpayer bailout. A growing number of Americans say they don&#8217;t want any more money going to mismanaged companies &#8211; and GM is a poster child for this category.<\/p>\n<p>The latest proof of incompetence is releasing today&#8217;s auditor analysis. This is something that may have worked 10 years ago, maybe even five years ago. But now?<\/p>\n<p>A recent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.upi.com\/Top_News\/2009\/02\/26\/Poll_No_more_bailout_for_GM_Chrysler\/UPI-46041235701427\/\">Gallup poll<\/a> found nearly 75 percent of Americans oppose giving GM any more bailout money. Which means taxpayers are calling the company&#8217;s bluff.<\/p>\n<p>So, GM&#8217;s future may come down to just two questions:<\/p>\n<p>1) Who stands before Congress and the American people &#8211; in this economy &#8211; and says, &#8220;Y&#8217;know that $13 billion we borrowed from you a couple months ago? Well, funny thing, but we need $14 billion more &#8211; or we&#8217;ll go bankrupt.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>2) Why would anyone give this person &#8211; this company &#8211; a dime?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>U.S. car makers are in free fall. I can&#8217;t find anyone who knows the industry [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[10],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}