The certain destruction of GM

Do we need another example of how bad things get when this administration and this congress gets involved in running part of the economy?

This from Dr. David Cole as reported by a senior Chrysler executive http://www.themedc.org/Boards-Committees/Executive-Committee/Detail.aspx?ContentId=14c66f7c-6a3c-48ae-be66-7b7331367229

Monday morning I attended a breakfast meeting where the speaker/guest was David E. Cole, Chairman, Center for Automotive Research (CAR and Professor at the Univ. of Michigan . You have all likely heard CAR quoted, or referred to in the auto industry news lately.

Mr. Cole, who is an engineer by training, told many stories of the difficulty of working with the folks that the Obama administration has sent to save the auto industry. There have been many meetings where a 30+ year experience automotive expert has to listen to a newcomer to the industry, someone with zero manufacturing experience, zero auto industry experience, zero business experience, zero finance experience, and zero engineering experience, tell them how to run their business.

Mr. Cole’s favorite story is as follows:

There was a team of Obama people speaking to Mr. Cole (Engineer, automotive experience 40+ years, Chairman of CAR). They were explaining to Mr. Cole that the auto companies needed to make a car that was electric and liquid natural gas (LNG) with enough combined fuel to go 500 miles so we wouldn’t “need” so many gas stations (A whole other topic). They were quoting BTU’s of LNG and battery life that they had looked up on some website.

Mr. Cole explained that to do this you would need a trunk FULL of batteries and a LNG tank at big as a car to make that happen and that there were problems related to the laws of physics that prevented them from…

The Obama person interrupted and said (and I am quoting here) “These laws of physics? Who’s rules are those, we need to change that. (Some of the others wrote down the law name so they could look it up) We have the congress and the administration. We can repeal that law, amend it, or use an executive order to get rid of that problem. That’s why we are here, to fix these sort of issues”.

Today's WSJ had a story about how congressman are now butting in on cost saving decisions being made by GM management in an effort to keep GM from closing facilities that employ people in their State or district. GM is doomed when they have to answer to Congress and this administration and the union trained Car Czar that Barry put in place.

Wait until they start dictating to the medical industry like they are in the financial services industry and the automotive industry. We are in for some rude days ahead.