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06.10.09 - 12:18 PM
Big Ed's Learning Curve: I Think I Can, I Think I Can
The newly named chairman of General Motors, Edward Whitacre Jr., freely admits, "I don't know anything about cars." A 6-foot-4-inch Texan nicknamed "Big Ed," he used to run AT&T.
"A business is a business, and I think I can learn about cars."
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Show Allanother "Best of the Best" that needs at least $10M per year in salary...
It's alright 'Big Ed', you won't have to do much. Evidently, GM will now be making only "small cars" and in China, to boot.
An MP3 file is provided for the audio commentary of the following article, btw. I'll provide the Uruknet link, given it is short enough to not need to be broken over two lines (for CD posts) and the link for the original copy of the piece is provided in the Uruknet copy.
"R.I.P. Industrial USA. The Banksters Win, Even When They Fail",
by Glen Ford, BlackAgendaReport.com,
June 9, 2009 (originally June 3 at BAR)
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m54989
QUOTE:
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
"It was crystal clear that the finance capitalists would eventually destroy the industrial capitalists."
The corporate media’s stories on General Motor’s bankruptcy read like obituaries. But they are covering the wrong funeral. The automaker’s passing as an industrial giant marks the last gasp of industrial capitalism in the United States. And it was not a natural death.
General Motors became the biggest corporation is the world when the United States was by far the biggest industrial power in the world. There has always been conflict between industrial capital, which actually manufacturers things, and finance capital which, left to its own devices, will reduce the manufacturing base to its various parts to be squeezed of value, sold off or shut down. Two generations ago, finance capital got the upper hand in its battle with manufacturing capital, and began to deindustrialize the United States.
It was a long process, but a steady one, part of finance capital’s global "race to the bottom" that would transfer the world’s production to the low-wage South and East of the planet.
The handwriting was on the wall for General Motors and the entire industrial sector of the U.S. economy back in the mid-Eighties, when GMAC, the financial arm of General Motors, surpassed the car-making part of the company in profits. Almost immediately, GMAC went into the mortgage business. From that moment on, it was crystal clear that the finance capitalists would eventually destroy the industrial capitalists.
Then a funny thing happened on the way to finance capital’s total conquest of America. With the keys to state and federal government in their hands, and the Black, soon-to-be president in their pockets, the investment banking class imploded of its own contradictions. Having succeeded in amassing trillions while creating nothing useful, the finance capital parasites proceeded to the next stage of their pathology, creating vast amounts of fictitious capital called derivatives, based on – nothing. The house of cards collapsed.
"Barack Obama put the finance capitalist Steve Rattner in charge of finally bankrupting the auto industry."
The financial meltdown was near-total, but their political power was undiminished. Just as they had controlled the outgoing Republican White House, they took charge of economic policy under the incoming Democrat. Barack Obama put the finance capitalist Steve Rattner in charge of finally bankrupting the auto industry – which left economist Stanley Aronowitz has described as the largest exercise in union busting in U.S. history. President Obama’s own website brags that his White House was even "more aggressive" than the Bush Administration in wrenching concessions from the United Auto Workers union. The "New GM," now 60 percent owned by the people of the United States, will be allowed to build small cars – in China. Obama apologists actually believed that the unused auto infrastructure might be massively converted to building public transportation, or other green industries. They failed to understand that Obama is the bankers’ president, and the bankers build nothing useful or productive. That is the crux of the current crisis of capitalism: the refusal of capital to invest in productive enterprise except under conditions of extremely low wage labor. Nothing will replace General Motors until the bankers – and the politicians who serve them – are driven out of power.
For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to www.BlackAgendaReport.com.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
END QUOTE
That does not literally say only small cars and solely in China, but it also doesn't say that GM will be allowed to do any other manufacturing than this. So will it be both, or only the small cars in China, I wonder; because I get the impression the latter is what's planned, allowed.
Allowed by who? The fascist, corporatist, imperialist, aristocratic, anti-union, and shmuck(s) dictatorship running the White House? Evidently so.
Excellent article.
They can make them in China and cut the price to that of the Tata sold in India...Some 2000$$ therebouts.
That will be all the consumers in the United States of America will be able to afford.
Hey maybe Wal_mart can get in the auto business!
There one science fiction novel I read .Read this synopsis.
>>The story begins and ends in Los Angeles, which is no longer part of what is left of the United States, during the early 21st century. In this hypothetical future reality the federal government of the United States has ceded most of its power to private organizations and entrepreneurs.[1] Franchising, individual sovereignty and automobiles reign supreme (along with drug trafficking, violent crime, and traffic congestion). Mercenary armies compete for national defense contracts while private security guards preserve the peace in gated, sovereign housing developments. Highway companies compete to attract drivers to their roads rather than the competitors', and all mail delivery is by hired courier. The remnants of government maintain authority only in isolated compounds where they transact tedious make-work that is, by and large, irrelevant to the booming, dynamic society around them.
>>Much of the territory ceded by the government has been carved up into sovereign enclaves, each run by its own big business franchise (such as "Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong") or the various residential burbclaves (suburban enclaves). This arrangement resembles anarcho-capitalism, a theme Stephenson carries over to his next novel The Diamond Age. Hyperinflation has devalued the dollar to the extent that trillion dollar bills — Ed Meeses — are nearly disregarded and the quadrillion dollar note — the Gipper — is the standard 'small' bill. For physical transactions people resort to alternative, non-hyperinflated currencies such as yen or "Kongbucks" (the official currency of Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong).
but, this is "Change We Can Believe In"
I am heartened by Mr Whitacre's appointment as Chairman of GM. He will undoubtedly run the company totally to ground, which would be a wonderful thing.
The automobile industry has been, for the past century, the single most destructive economic enterprise in the history of the world.
There may be a sustainable way to provide automobile transport, but it will never come from the American auto industry. RIP and good riddance.
As for the realm of finance capitalism, I suggest Sarah Palin as the next Fed Chair.
Well, we definitely know what book "Big Ed" will be reading next: Automobiles for Dummies.
Good God!!!!
We are stuck in a lunatic assylum