Bankruptcy for GM. Ford Next?
Thursday, June 11, 2009
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PDF General Motors on Monday filed for bankruptcy protection, even after $19.4 billion in federal bailout money. It now appears that taxpayers will end up with a 60% stake in the restructured company. Cato scholar Daniel Ikenson has long suggested bankruptcy as the best course for GM, and now worries about Ford's future: "The government has a 60 percent stake in GM. Who's going to want to own Ford stock—and therefore, will Ford be able to raise capital—when the U.S. government has an incentive to tip the balance in GM's favor wherever it can?"
- Full statement from Ikenson
- "An Overdue Reckoning in the Auto Sector," by Daniel Ikenson
- "Don't Bail Out the Big Three," by Daniel Ikenson
Bankruptcy for GM. Ford Next?
[Source: Good Times Society - by The American Illuminati]
Bankruptcy for GM. Ford Next?
[Source: Abc 7 News]
Bankruptcy for GM. Ford Next?
[Source: Channel 6 News]
Bankruptcy for GM. Ford Next?
[Source: World News]
Bankruptcy for GM. Ford Next?
[Source: Nbc News]
posted by tgazw @ 9:44 PM,
,
Government Motors Goes Bankrupt-- Asks For $30 Billion More
PrintEmailPDF 
General Motors filed for bankruptcy this morning.
They are the 4th largest US business and largest industrial company to ever file for bankruptcy.
Yahoo Finance reported:
General Motors filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Monday as part of the Obama administration's plan to shrink the automaker to a sustainable size and give a majority ownership stake to the federal government.
GM's bankruptcy filing is the fourth-largest in U.S. history and the largest for an industrial company. The company said it has $172.81 billion in debt and $82.29 billion in assets.
As it reorganizes, the fallen icon of American industrial might will rely on $30 billion of additional financial assistance from the Treasury Department and $9.5 billion from Canada. That's on top of about $20 billion in taxpayer money GM already has received in the form of low-interest loans.
Meanwhile... The US dollar now has dropped 19% against the pound in the last 3 months and 14% against the euro.
Government Motors Goes Bankrupt-- Asks For $30 Billion More
[Source: Good Times Society - by The American Illuminati]
Government Motors Goes Bankrupt-- Asks For $30 Billion More
[Source: Spanish News]
posted by tgazw @ 9:04 PM,
,
THE FUTURE OF MANUFACTURING AND THE AMERICAN WORKER.
PrintEmailPDF What's the administration's specific aim in bailing out GM? I'll give you my theory later.
For now, though, some background. First and most broadly, it doesn't make sense for America to try to maintain or enlarge manufacturing as a portion of the economy. Even if the U.S. were to seal its borders and bar any manufactured goods from coming in from abroad -- something I don't recommend -- we'd still be losing manufacturing jobs. That's mainly because of technology.
When we think of manufacturing jobs, we tend to imagine old-time assembly lines populated by millions of blue-collar workers who had well-paying jobs with good benefits. But that picture no longer describes most manufacturing. I recently toured a U.S. factory containing two employees and 400 computerized robots. The two live people sat in front of computer screens and instructed the robots. In a few years this factory won't have a single employee on site, except for an occasional visiting technician who repairs and upgrades the robots.
Factory jobs are vanishing all over the world. Even China is losing them. The Chinese are doing more manufacturing than ever, but they're also becoming far more efficient at it. They've shuttered most of the old state-run factories. Their new factories are chock full of automated and computerized machines. As a result, they don't need as many manufacturing workers as before.
Economists at Alliance Capital Management took a look at employment trends in 20 large economies and found that between 1995 and 2002 -- before the asset bubble and subsequent bust -- 22 million manufacturing jobs disappeared. The U.S. wasn't even the biggest loser. We lost about 11 percent of our manufacturing jobs in that period, but the Japanese lost 16 percent of theirs. Even developing nations lost factory jobs: Brazil suffered a 20 percent decline, and China had a 15 percent drop.
What happened to manufacturing? In two words, higher productivity. As productivity rises, employment falls because fewer people are needed. In this, manufacturing is following the same trend as agriculture. A century ago, almost 30 percent of adult Americans worked on a farm. Nowadays, fewer than 5 percent do. That doesn't mean the U.S. failed at agriculture. Quite the opposite. American agriculture is a huge success story. America can generate far larger crops than a century ago with far fewer people. New technologies, more efficient machines, new methods of fertilizing, better systems of crop rotation, and efficiencies of large scale have all made farming much more productive.
Manufacturing is analogous. In America and elsewhere around the world, it's a success. Since 1995, even as manufacturing employment has dropped around the world, global industrial output has risen more than 30 percent.
More after the jump.
--Robert Reich
THE FUTURE OF MANUFACTURING AND THE AMERICAN WORKER.
[Source: Good Times Society - by The American Illuminati]
THE FUTURE OF MANUFACTURING AND THE AMERICAN WORKER.
[Source: News Argus]
THE FUTURE OF MANUFACTURING AND THE AMERICAN WORKER.
[Source: State News]
THE FUTURE OF MANUFACTURING AND THE AMERICAN WORKER.
[Source: World News]
posted by tgazw @ 8:09 PM,
,
The other Susan Boyle
PrintEmailPDF The global success of the Britain's Got Talent star has had an unlikely impact on one unassuming Texas artist. Stuart Jeffries hears how
There is, you might think, room in the world for only one Susan Boyle. But you would be wrong. The American artist, Susan K Boyle, was living her quiet, unassuming life in the pretty hill country of Kerrville, Texas, when a friend sent her an email.
"It was a link to Susan Boyle's YouTube performance a few days after her audition," recalls Susan K. "I thought she was wonderful - what a beautiful voice and what a compelling story. But I thought it was just an interesting coincidence, nothing more."
Except that back in 2002, Susan K Boyle had set up a website, susanboyle.com, to display her artworks. That site had been rusting in cyberspace for a couple of years - until the Britain's Got Talent finalist sudenly came to the global consciousness last month, and something rather strange happened. "A journalist called me and said, 'Do you know your site is getting 1,800 hits per hour?' I had no idea - I hadn't upgraded the site for a couple of years." Yesterday, she calculated the cumulative total of hits to be more than 172,000.
Susan K's website shows her figurative line drawings and head studies in oil. Like her namesake, she has got talent, though not the sort to irrigate Simon Cowell or Amanda Holden's tear ducts.
And then the madness, as it does in such cases, began in earnest. "A couple of Susan Boyle fans emailed me to say they thought I sang beautifully. Another thought I sang beautifully and liked my artwork! Among the emails were inquiries for price quotes on a couple of my art pieces. However, I have had no sales as a result of this. Yet."
So is Susan K expecting a surge of sales as a result of the sudden celebrity of an unglamorous though sweet-voiced woman who lives on the other side of the Atlantic? "That would be too weird, wouldn't it?"
Next, she started getting calls and emails from people wanting to buy her website's domain name. "One guy, within a minute, had increased his offer from $100 to $500,000. I'm not sure how serious he was, but that sort of thing is very strange to happen to someone like me." She consulted a company called Sedo that sells domain names and, following their advice, has now put her web address up for sale for a cool $25,000. She hasn't sold it. Yet. (She has moved her artwork display, though, to sboyleart.com).
Surely she'll be rooting for her namesake to win tomorrow night's final? "I haven't heard the other finalists, so I can't say." Admirably diplomatic - but Susan K now has a pecuniary interest in the other Susan's success. According to Sedo's director of business development, Nora Nanayakkara: "The value of the domain name really depends on the sustainability of Susan Boyle's popularity."
I ask if Susan K's life story is as heart-rending as her namesake's. "I don't know much about her biography," she replies. I'm thinking of the fact that the 46-year-old singer from West Lothian claimed - apparently as a joke - never to have been kissed, at least until Piers Morgan made her life story even more harrowing by kissing her backstage last week. "Oh, I've been kissed," Susan K replies finally.
The 64-year-old from Kerrville is an art major who has drawn and painted throughout her life, while working mostly in the airline industry. "I was a stewardess, as they were called in the 60s, for PanAm. I left just before Lockerbie [the PanAm crash in 1988]."
In addition to Susan K's new website, her work can be seen in a show called Turning Point at the Hill Country Arts Foundation in Ingram, Texas, from 6 June. She is understandably eager for the media circus (ie me calling her at the prearranged time of 7.30am from London) to move on, so she can walk her "lovely old dog" and then get back to her art.
After the interview, she sends me a disarming email: "Please be kind to me in your article. Another outfit in the UK wrote about me yesterday and made me sound stupid AND greedy - and they hadn't even spoken with me!! Egads!"
For the record, Susan K Boyle is neither of those things (and I'm always a sucker for a woman who exclaims "egads"). She is, like her namesake, a breath of fresh air. The last thing the "other" Susan Boyle says sounds sweet coming down the line to this celeb-crazy nation. "I am an artist and am happiest in my studio working on my art. I don't deserve, or want, fame".
guardian.co.uk ? Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
The other Susan Boyle
[Source: Good Times Society - by The American Illuminati]
The other Susan Boyle
[Source: International News]
The other Susan Boyle
[Source: Sun News]
The other Susan Boyle
[Source: 11 Alive News]
The other Susan Boyle
[Source: Channels News]
The other Susan Boyle
[Source: World News]
posted by tgazw @ 6:37 PM,
,
'People used to say I looked like Steve Martin. I met him once - he didn't see it'
PrintEmailPDF Michael Craig-Martin, artist
What got you started?
Discovering modern art through a schoolteacher when I was about 12. It was the 1950s, and modern art was still a secret - I thought I'd stumbled upon a magic world.
What was your big breakthrough?
Getting into Yale art school. I happened to be there at the school's golden moment, when it had some fantastically good students - Richard Serra, Brice Marden, Chuck Close.
Who or what have you sacrificed for your art?
Personal life. You can't be an artist without having an unusually irritating level of self-absorption.
Why do some people have such difficulties with conceptual art?
In order to feel really comfortable with art, you have to gain familiarity with it. People might go to Tate Modern and be sceptical in the first room or two, but by the third room they've found something that captures their imagination. And by the fourth room, they've found four things.
What has been your biggest challenge?
Just keeping going. You have to learn to persist in the times when things are not going well, in the hope that some day they will.
How does Britain's art scene compare with America's?
Britain's art world is amazingly active, considering its size. It sits in a very odd position between Europe and America, and negotiates a strange path of its own.
Complete this sentence: At heart I'm just a frustrated ...
Layabout. I'm essentially a very lazy person.
Which other living artist do you most admire?
Too many to say. Of my own generation, Bruce Nauman, Gerhard Richter, Richard Serra.
In the movie of your life, who plays you?
People used to say I looked like Steve Martin. But I met him once, and I don't think he saw any similarity.
What work of art would you most like to own?
Seurat's Bathers at Asni?res, for its wonderful combination of modesty and grandeur.
What's the worst thing anyone's ever said about your work?
One review of an early show called it a "waste of a beautiful gallery".
Is there anything about your career you regret?
No. Certainly not the years I spent teaching. Many of my students - Damien Hirst, Gary Hume - have gone on to do well. That's a very nice reward.
In short
Born: Dublin, 1941
Career: Exhibited conceptual work An Oak Tree in 1974. Taught at Goldsmiths. Currently co-curating the exhibition This Is Sculpture at Tate Liverpool (0151-702 7400).
High point: "My 2006 show Signs of Life at the Kunsthaus Bregenz in Austria. Everything just seemed to work."
Low point: "Feeling, at about 40, that I hadn't come close to achieving what I'd hoped to."
guardian.co.uk ? Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
'People used to say I looked like Steve Martin. I met him once - he didn't see it'
[Source: Good Times Society - by The American Illuminati]
'People used to say I looked like Steve Martin. I met him once - he didn't see it'
[Source: Newspaper]
'People used to say I looked like Steve Martin. I met him once - he didn't see it'
[Source: 11 Alive News]
'People used to say I looked like Steve Martin. I met him once - he didn't see it'
[Source: Advertising News]
'People used to say I looked like Steve Martin. I met him once - he didn't see it'
[Source: News Weekly]
'People used to say I looked like Steve Martin. I met him once - he didn't see it'
[Source: Mexico News]
posted by tgazw @ 2:17 PM,
,
THE FUTURE OF MANUFACTURING AND THE AMERICAN WORKER.
PrintEmailPDF What's the administration's specific aim in bailing out GM? I'll give you my theory later.
For now, though, some background. First and most broadly, it doesn't make sense for America to try to maintain or enlarge manufacturing as a portion of the economy. Even if the U.S. were to seal its borders and bar any manufactured goods from coming in from abroad -- something I don't recommend -- we'd still be losing manufacturing jobs. That's mainly because of technology.
When we think of manufacturing jobs, we tend to imagine old-time assembly lines populated by millions of blue-collar workers who had well-paying jobs with good benefits. But that picture no longer describes most manufacturing. I recently toured a U.S. factory containing two employees and 400 computerized robots. The two live people sat in front of computer screens and instructed the robots. In a few years this factory won't have a single employee on site, except for an occasional visiting technician who repairs and upgrades the robots.
Factory jobs are vanishing all over the world. Even China is losing them. The Chinese are doing more manufacturing than ever, but they're also becoming far more efficient at it. They've shuttered most of the old state-run factories. Their new factories are chock full of automated and computerized machines. As a result, they don't need as many manufacturing workers as before.
Economists at Alliance Capital Management took a look at employment trends in 20 large economies and found that between 1995 and 2002 -- before the asset bubble and subsequent bust -- 22 million manufacturing jobs disappeared. The U.S. wasn't even the biggest loser. We lost about 11 percent of our manufacturing jobs in that period, but the Japanese lost 16 percent of theirs. Even developing nations lost factory jobs: Brazil suffered a 20 percent decline, and China had a 15 percent drop.
What happened to manufacturing? In two words, higher productivity. As productivity rises, employment falls because fewer people are needed. In this, manufacturing is following the same trend as agriculture. A century ago, almost 30 percent of adult Americans worked on a farm. Nowadays, fewer than 5 percent do. That doesn't mean the U.S. failed at agriculture. Quite the opposite. American agriculture is a huge success story. America can generate far larger crops than a century ago with far fewer people. New technologies, more efficient machines, new methods of fertilizing, better systems of crop rotation, and efficiencies of large scale have all made farming much more productive.
Manufacturing is analogous. In America and elsewhere around the world, it's a success. Since 1995, even as manufacturing employment has dropped around the world, global industrial output has risen more than 30 percent.
More after the jump.
--Robert Reich
THE FUTURE OF MANUFACTURING AND THE AMERICAN WORKER.
[Source: Good Times Society - by The American Illuminati]
THE FUTURE OF MANUFACTURING AND THE AMERICAN WORKER.
[Source: Market News]
THE FUTURE OF MANUFACTURING AND THE AMERICAN WORKER.
[Source: News Article]
THE FUTURE OF MANUFACTURING AND THE AMERICAN WORKER.
[Source: The Daily News]
THE FUTURE OF MANUFACTURING AND THE AMERICAN WORKER.
[Source: Daily News]
THE FUTURE OF MANUFACTURING AND THE AMERICAN WORKER.
[Source: Advertising News]
posted by tgazw @ 1:54 PM,
,
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