GM: General Misunderstanding about the stock

There shouldn’t be anyone left on the planet that doesn’t know GM went bankrupt. At least not amongst people who might buy and sell stocks. It came to me as some surprise then, when I checked GM’s stock price today, that it was actually up. The stock was up 2.5% today to a whopping $0.52 per share! Lest you think only a few shares traded hands, some 32 million shares traded today and has averaged about this volume since filing chapter 11. That’s $16 million of GM stock trading each day. (By the way, the name of the “old” GM was changed to “Motors Liquidation Company” under ticker symbol “MTLQQ”).

Car Czars

We have had vigorous debate about the government’s helping of Detroit (see GM: General Mess). I have argued there is no ‘saving’ of GM and Chrysler except through bankrupcy, at least not through loan programs as proposed by the government. So, I’m reading a WSJ article about Obama’s “Auto Task Force” describing their approach.

GM: General Mess

Time for bit of a rant on General Motors since they are all over the news this week. The issue at hand is whether the government ought to save GM by providing at least $25 billion in low cost loans to the automaker. As expected, there is vigorous debate on the subject and it is rife with emotional arguments.