HoodaThunk?

I said it was a bad idea to float the Detroit automakers on a pool of public money when it was 1st suggested. When they did what I said they’d do and came back for more when they’d burned through what we handed them the first time, I said it again. Bankruptcy was what was needed there, not more taxpayer cash going to float a busted business model.

Well, among others, I’m finding I’m in the position of getting to say “I told you so” to those people who told me we just had to “loan” them the money. The newly annointed GM CEO apparently thinks bankruptcy might be the best option for GM and he’s saying so on the record:

General Motors’s new chief executive told CNBC that filing for Bankruptcy may be the best option for the struggling automaker.

In a taped interview to be aired tonight on NBC Nightly News, Fritz Henderson said that because of greater demands from the Obama administration to restructure, GM is considering the bankruptcy option. The auto giant previously had ruled out such a move, saying it would discourage people from buying GM cars.

So, here we are now, after having been forced into making a $14 billion dollar investment into a company that I wouldn’t have bought 10 cents’ worth of stock in, and in spite of all of the due diligence telling anyone who had any idea what they were looking at that dumping money into GM was a fool’s errand we’re now looking at a failed investment. You cannot be seriously looking at the state of that company and the intransigence of both the management and the unions who have made it the money-losing monstrosity it is and think we’re ever going to see a dime in repayment.

Bankruptcy is what this company should have been allowed to enter 5 months ago when this was all being bandied about. It would have been better for the company in the longrun, for the economy in the mid- to long-run, and for the taxpayer in the here-and-now.