Recently we learned that General Motors (GM) is going to lay off 15,000 workers and close 5 plants in the US and Canada. That follows buyout offers to 18,000 employees in the month of October. All of this comes at a time when the overall US economy is roaring at a pace not seen in decades, the unemployment rate is at a 50-year low, and interest rates for borrowing remain very favorable. So why is this happening now to GM (and not to the other car companies)? Media outlets are describing GM’s moves as “strategic”, as if everything is OK and just a few normal business adjustments need to be made. We have a different take.
Ten years ago, GM found themselves in similar “strategic” trouble, but at that time the economic and fiscal conditions in the country were far worse than today. GM made the case to the government that their situation was so dire that without financial assistance they would cease to exist as a company, wreaking untold additional catastrophe on the economy. They claimed the risk of laying off their very large workforce and starving future revenue for thousands of associated parts suppliers was unacceptable and made them “too big to fail” (a phrase coined for some similarly failing financial institutions at the time). Two Presidents, Bush and Obama, each faced a fundamental decision on whether or not to let capitalism run its course or to intervene and “save” GM. Starting with President Bush, they both decided to intervene.
Beginning in December of 2008 under President Bush, GM received the first portion of what would ultimately be a total of $51 billion dollars in government “investment” to enable GM’s survival. Part of that investment included the US Government purchasing 60% of GM’s stock (a controlling interest) thus enabling the government to make personnel and product management decisions for GM. Six years later, the government deemed GM was back on solid ground and exited their ownership stake in the company. At that time, in late 2014, only $39.7 billion of the original $51 billion-dollar taxpayer investment in GM had been recovered (an $11.3 billion-dollar loss was borne by US taxpayers).
On January 7, 2015 in a speech in Detroit, President Obama said this: “Last month, the rescue of the auto industry officially came to an end. The auto companies have now repaid taxpayers every dime and more of what my administration invested in.” Obama obfuscated the true nature of the cost to the taxpayers by intentionally confusing loans, stock purchases, and cash as well as what was given to GM under the Bush administration verses under the Obama administration. His contention that the auto companies (Chrysler received “investment” money as well as GM) had “repaid taxpayers every dime and more” was not even close to being true.
Now, only four years after the Federal Government extricated itself from its involvement with GM, the company is once again in trouble. As we see it, a big part of the original problem that reared its ugly head at GM in 2008 was never actually addressed. The government’s actions to “save” the company only transported the problem a little further into the future. We, of course, are not by any means big business experts or possessing of any special insider knowledge about GM. Our opinion comes from a very macro level viewpoint. We also admit to a strong belief in the natural self-correcting property of capitalism.
In 2008, if the government had not unnaturally intervened in the corporate affairs of GM, we think one of two things would’ve happened:
1. To save themselves, GM would’ve had to more radically re-organize under the same bankruptcy laws and tools every other U.S. company must use when they get into financial trouble. Knowing there would be no safety net to fall back on, GM’s downsizing plan, labor strategy, and product line-up would’ve likely have been much different than it was with government intervention. Hard choices would have had to be made with the binary clarity of a life or death outcome for GM instead of within the safe context of a giant government cash infusion. Would GM have survived? If so, would they still be facing the same problems they are today? Hard to tell, but the outcome would have been driven by natural market forces and the quality of GM’s own business decisions as opposed to those of the government.
2. GM would’ve simply gone out of business. This is the ultimate self-correction in a capitalist business environment. Other major US auto manufacturers, most notably Ford, but also the Asian car companies who build vehicles in the US using American labor, were not as crippled as GM in 2008. Conditions were bad all around, but these other car companies survived on their own because their business models were superior. Without any emotion, capitalism rewards the strong and punishes the weak. While it would have been heart wrenching to see an American corporate icon like GM fail, it would’ve been the natural order of things.
In both the above scenarios, taxpayers would not have lost $11.3 billion dollars. Prognosticators say that if GM had failed in 2008 the effect on the economy would have been much worse than what actually transpired. That’s an easy argument to make since we can never know if it’s true. Nor can we know what would’ve happened if the government had made different choices at the time as regards the failing financial service corporations.¹ We believe the government should never “play God” and intervene in these situations. Simply being “too big” cannot be an automatic insurance policy against failure. In a capitalist society, the Government doesn’t decide which companies live and die, free markets do. The American economy was founded on Capitalism, and while we are taken through cycles of highs and lows, in the balance it has served us well for a very long time.
¹In 2008, two other iconic American companies, Lehman Brothers (founded in 1850 and 58 years older than GM) and Bear Stearns (founded in 1923) both failed and were not “saved” by the federal government. However, AIG, a large finance and insurance company founded in 1919 was saved by the federal government via a $180 billion-dollar bailout. AIG ‘s bailout gave birth to the “too big to fail” theory.