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A makeshift homeless person's structure is seen with GM's world headquarters in the background - Source: Reuters -
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President Barack Obama's use of the word "bankruptcy" in association with General Motors was one of those coded expressions that means different things to different people.
To the bondholders, the people GM is in hock to, it means, "Don't try and hardball us just because you think we'll subsidise the company until the ink in the Treasury's dollar bill printing press runs out. We can shut the company down, and we may. Um, will, if we have to."
To the unions, and the ex-workers who were promised comparatively generous retirement benefits, it means, "Tighten your belts even tighter."
Much easy right wing red meat is generated by insisting that greedy unions have helped place the company in its perilous state. But if the executives are worth their salt, they'll take responsibility for that.
In my experience of working, admittedly in the comparatively de-unionised grotto of magazine journalism, companies don't do anything unions ask them to, that they didn't want to do in the first place.
What's interesting is that Obama, who was very praising of GM, even of Rick Wagoner, the CEO whose head he demanded on a platter, wasn't as sanguine about Chrysler. That company's plan to restructure won less support amongst Obama's car task force. It has 30 days to merge with the Italian car maker Fiat.
As I write this, I detect a reactionary twitch in my fingers... "The Italians, come on! How can they help?"
In fact Fiat was forecasting that it would make a profit in 2009. That however, was in late January of this year.
So much seems to be changing so quickly at present.
I opened the story we did for the 6pm news with footage of a worker outside a Michigan GM dealership slugging his boss after finding out he was being made redundant. They're gripping images, the pure violence of anger is present. To him, Obama's words will be the certification of what he already knows. When large companies fail, small people get ground to dust. They feel angry and afraid. They lash out. It's usually at the wrong targets, but the hurt and fear are real.
Contradictory emotions, sorrow, rage, all of that stuff tends to accompany economic upheavals. I remember the first time I got sacked from a job on a magazine that was being wound up. The accountant who'd shut us down came and watched as we dolorously put stuff into boxes. I made a call to someone. "'I hope that's not a toll call," he said.
He was an asshole, as they say here, for making this observation.
The second time I was sacked, the night that it happened, I sat in my car outside our place, talking with my girlfriend of the time, trying to understand what had happened.
Earlier in the day, we'd been ushered into a corporate boardroom. The board table was bare, aside from a box of tissues with flowers on the outside. From memory, the flowers were yellow. One of my colleagues, on seeing the tissues, made a very simple calculation, and burst into tears.
It was dark, a few cars were slipping down Mt Eden Road. I wondered how I would pay rent, and live.
Fortunately that time, I'd accumulated a lot of unpaid holidays so my redundancy kept the rent paid, and living expenses taken care of.
I've made a habit since then of briskly saying that the first time you lose your job is the worst, but on reflection, that's not true. You lose your job in different ways, at different times, and it never feels right, and it's never easy.
If GM falls over, and Chrysler too, the sense of a lack of rightness, or of ease, what we also know as a security, will be magnified in the US.
What we saw outside that dealership in Michigan will be nothing at all.
What do you think about the issues Tim is discussing? Share them on the messageboard below.
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Post new commentNewzgal said on 2010-01-03 @ 15:46 NZDT: Report abusive post
Hi Tim, great blog. I agree right wingers have a Hobbesian view of existence, and like many I welcomed Obama’s presidency. However I always watched Fox News just to see how they were framing up the news (which far too many people rely on). I now find it more useful than ever to tune into the right just incase there is a kernel of truth in their rants as it seems the media and world have been far too soft on the new president and democrats, perfect recipe to slip things in!
jackdoitcrawford said on 2009-09-11 @ 23:24 NZDT: Report abusive post
Please don't label all people you disagree with, and put them in the same camp. Ayn Rand was pro abortion, achievement, reason, freedom, capitalism and happiness. She was definitely neither a conservative nor a libertarian. She also didn't want to live under a dictatorship. I see nothing wrong with this at all.
Kiwi in USA said on 2009-09-11 @ 17:58 NZDT: Report abusive post
I would have to disagree with Tim saying Bill ORielly is a right wing loon as if it were. He is defintly a independet and he always tells his viewers that. I know that there is plenty of loons like rush but come on, Obama is really turning America in the wrong direction. He has spent more money than all the presidents have combined. America is in trillions of dollars worth of debt.