Good PhD, do you go to Tech by any chance? M.E. '05 here.

Anyway, I agree with the sentiment about Detroit. The city is one of the worst I have ever seen and doesn't have much of a shot of getting any better due to the population's general lack of forethought, motivation to improve, or intelligence to elect responsible city officials. The inmates run the asylum over there. There are a few bright spots, but they're all owned by GM.

As far as the article's opinion about the General's fate.....just another doom and gloom/disparage anything American statement from a bunch of elitists in ivory towers.

 

Long live Detroit -- be it dead or alive!

 

Michigan Tech?
Cass Tech?
Wayne Tech?

 

At least Detroit's NBA championship hopes are still alive. Go Chauncey!

 

None of the big cities have that problem. At least no where near the extent that Detroit does. Literally the only decent area is that downtown section by the GM building and the Windsor tunnel.

 

The author is certainly entitled to his opinion. One thing to consider, however, is that Cerberus is now tied to the hip with GM through GMAC. Since most of GMAC's business comes from car loans, if GM goes down then so does GMAC and possibly Cerberus. Personally, I'd bet that Cerberus has a better financial handle on things than the author of this article.

 

I doubt that GM will go down. I'd see Canada and/or the U.S. stepping in to do something before that happened.

 

So, how is the above the author's "opinion"? I see a lot of numbers above.

The fact is, GM's financials remain in terrible shape, and Ford is even worse off. Talk all you want about the GMT900, the Kappa, the '08 Malibu, the whatever, but none of this excellent product changes the fact that GM is in debt up to its collective corporate eyeballs, and that the cash burn continues on.

 

In my case it's not that I don't believe the numbers, but the fact that I've already seen them and this is nothing new.

It upsets me when people get paid to do this and they're just regurgitating what we've seen for a year.

 

Maybe it's just the accounting lingo that tends to confuse (one can manipulate any figure to support their argument). For instance, (not being a financial guy) I can't distinguish between the $450 billion debt quoted in the article with the second article I quoted, which states....

One figure seems more manageable than the other. Conversely, $450 billion in debt seems insurmountable.

 

The difference is that once includes GMAC's debt, and the other is GM's debt from continuing operations. GMAC's debt is quite understandable given that it's in the asset and lending business, and besides, half of it belongs to Cerberus now. But the author doesn't fully explain these things in an attempt to bolster his opinion that GM's situation is irreversible. Like you say, a person can (mis)use numbers to support almost anything.

 

All I know is I was there 2 years in a row for NAIAS, and the Hotels around the Center I stayed at were doing restoration work, and the areas finished looked great!..
Downtown looked pretty similar to Columbus, as far as up-keep. It looked like the whole area I was in was doing some kind of remodeling...but i don't know about the less popular areas.

 

This is totally correct. I would add to it the re-tooling of machines, new machines, new buildings, new add-on's to building, infrastructure support and remodeling, etc. This all gets amortized over periods of time. This is a debit on the books and you do owe for that debit. These debts are rotating for every business and one could say all business's are in debt if you took all negative purchases and do not add any value they provide.