97QuasarBlue3.8

Ah, so perhaps you have a piece of wall-art like I do, for a GM, ahem, "Liquidation Motors" share of stock that is effectively worse less than the paper it's printed on. I hear your pain there, although, I literally only owned ONE share of their stock

guionM

It's not a legal aspect.

Your tax dollars pay for the military. Are you allowed to walk into any military base?

You hold no debt to the General Motors Company. They owe you nothing.

Your debt was to the General Motors Corperation.

The General Motors Corperation sold most all of their assets to a group that included the Canadian and US governments, the UAW, the German government, and a few other "investors" who aquired those assets in an organized bankruptcy that was granted a ruling by a bankruptcy court.

Those assets formed under the the name "New General Motors Company"

The company you held debt on was renamed "Motors Liquidation Company". and like the name suggests, it's purpose was to sell off GM to satisfy all responsibilities (and as in your case, debts). Despite the rumblings of the crackpots, the whole thing was perfectly legal, and there are many other companies (especially airlines) that have done the exact same thing before, where previous debtholders, vendors, and even employees (via pensions) lost everything.


Even though the Feds (and your tax dollars) went into buying GM's assets, you have no specific rights to any of the profits since this will directly or indirectly go towards repaying the Federal government (which you'll benefit from regardless).

Although I used the military base as an example above, a more simple way to think of it is this.

You go to college with money borrowed from the Feds via student loans. Yet, you have many, many years to repay.

Does that mean that I get a share of any money you make after you leave college because it's still my tax dollars that's benefitting you and you still owe me??

There is more money lost by college loans going into default over the past couple of years than taxpayers are likely to lose from helping GM. Yet, you never hear a peep, and in both instances, both are going to pay many times over the lost amount in taxes that they wouldn't have paid without the help.

Then there's Federal grants. Money simply given to college students for dozens of reasons. Does that mean you have an investment in them, and therefore you are specifically entitled to their earnings?? Again, like GM, outside of the taxes they pay to the Federal government (which benefits you via roads, bridges, air traffic controlers, the military, and your general safety and well being), nope.

You're already reaping the benefits because they are paying taxes instead of consuming federal spending. And that's the whole idea.

I didn't get a chance to read your deleted post, but I think this will help clear up what I suspect was a retorical question.

Chrome383Z

How does that stack up against other Auto Manufacturers? I would imagine the Gross Profit Margin in the Auto Industry is rather low do to extremely high competition (including foreign competition). That may just be the nature of the business this day in age...

What gets me is companies like Facebook that earn billions hand over feet and essentially produce nothing... doesn't seem right.

guionM

You are absolutely right.

Facebook (as do many internet companies) have an almost obscene profit margin, since outside of the investment of time setting up the site and perhaps monitoring it, there's very little real cost until it explodes on the internet. By that time, you're likely making more than enough to expand and hire additional people.

Yet, the automobile industry has a relatively low profit margin. It's labor intensive, you're at the mercy of material costs, you are in a almost impossibly competitive enviroment (some makers from countries where both material and labor costs are far lower than in our market), and you don't have the luxury of raising prices to make up for loss in profit (cars today aren't much more expensive than they were 10 years ago (cars with dramatic content increase...ie: Camaros and most other cars on the road... have gone up significantly, yet cars that have remained virturally the same...ie: Impalas, and to some extent base Mustangs... are not much more than a grand or so more...on a $20K, that's less than 5% in a decade where the dollar has lost at least 33% of it's value, and inflation over that time has run about 8-10% if not more).

El Duce

That has nothing to do with the point I was making. Post on this subject and the fact that the bankruptcy and the diversion from traditional bankruptcy laws regarding the process are not allowed (at least unofficially).

You know exactly what I was trying to highlight with my statement.

It was hardly 100% legal and any discussion of it was mooted by the Supreme Court without a reason given. Long standing legal aspects and processes of bankruptcies such as "secured debt," "deficiency claims" and "section 363s" were completely ignored. Can you tell me why secured creditors got 29 cents to the dollar and unsecured creditors got 40 cents to dollar? In the cases of GM and Chrysler, the government essentially pushed through a re-organization disguised as a sale, and so denied the creditors their rights. Instead, the administration criticized these investors who were standing up for their legitimate legal property and contract rights as profiteers.

And I'll stop here since I know the powers that be don't like this discussion even though it's not in violation of the rules.

STOCK1SC

5thgen69camaro

This bothered me since it was posted. It hit home and is understandable that people think this who do not have a knowledge of the field. Before getting in the field, I used to have no idea about how the internet worked other than it was probably cheap software somewhere that you could install and forget. I can respond in detail but that would be unethical. Ive been in Monitoring for 11 years. If you browsed certain sites related to events on 9/11 when things were happening some of those were physically located in my building and several teams were trying to keep those sites browsing. I am very proud of that.

So here I go standing up for or explaining what are probably our competitors. Facebook and Google are not our client so I think Im ok here. Somewhere they are hosted in a Data Center, not just a computer with some software, along with all expenses that go along with it. They cant just call Go Daddy and get services for $10 a month. Anyone watch American Chopper where PJD cant use ceratin equip like the flow jet because they would bring down the power grid until they were set up to handle the kind of power they needed? Same kind of deal. They have to maintain a site with that kind of traffic 24/7. Think in terms of transportation. You going to Go Daddy renting one server or part of o could be like you and your camaro. It will get you where youre going and 3 other people if needed. Facebook on the other hand has to handle the traffic of the world that would ruin your car fairly quickly. What they have to implement is closer to a freight train with flat cars behind it with people continuously jumping on and off that at any given moment the world can figurtively catch a ride and bring down the strongest trains. So when you type in Facebook, Google or anything the site will be there its a testament to the, tech team which isnt cheap, for that company working 24/7 to fix the site, network, or content.

Ive been on Facebook since 2010. I havent spent a dime. At any time people can migrate to Google + and turn Facebook into a Myspace story so personally I hope they are as profitable as possible. Keep in mind I tried to walk a fine line with general analagies about clients that arent ours to give some perspective without betraying my own company so I may not be able to go further into this which is fine because I dont want to derail the thread anyway.