GM and Ford Chapter 11 soon 82

Scott Auge

dividends?

They're keeping their quarterly dividend this quarter, but are delaying it by about a week. They should issue 50 cents per share to people who held GM shares on May 9, but that date has been moved to shares of record May 19. There was talk that GM would discontinue their dividend (or drastically lower it the way Ford did several years ago), but the main bad thing they did this time around was the delay.

Because regular investors usually have 100 shares or fewer, dividends mostly benefit the fat cats. Regular shareholders with 100 shares get 50 bucks every three months, but corporate big cheeses have millions of shares and get zillions of dollars which they spend on mansions and jets.

still gasoline

GM vehicles are such gas-guzzlers, even their hybrids get terrible mileage. The hybrid Silverado is rated at something like 18 MPG city, 20 highway. GM recently destroyed all their electric cars.

GM and Ford are indeed socialist: huge amounts of taxpayer dollars are used in bribes to keep their plants open.

GM is also in bad shape because their finance division (a huge portion of the company) is negatively affected by the bad economy.

Bankruptcy rips off taxpayers and current investors. Kmart is perhaps the best example of how normal people get ripped off. Kmart stock became worthless when they declared bankruptcy, they were forgiven all their debts, then they re-emerged and merged with Sears and now their new stock is over $100 a share, with the original shareholders getting NOTHING. Worldcom and Conseco are more examples of companies who cheated by declaring bankruptcy. Good if GM's bankruptcy forgives them of pension and health care obligations, but bad for the other effects.