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Do we really want to own GM stock?

The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 3, 2009

So now we're all stockholders in General Motors? That used to be a good thing, but many of us already have enough worthless stock these days to not want more. We have it, though, whether we want it or not.

Plenty of people have been screaming and stomping their feet from the second President Obama was elected. Most of them are wrong. One thing they aren't wrong about is Obama's decision to throw billions and trillions of taxpayer dollars at businesses to keep them afloat.

Most all economists - conservative and liberal - believed our country had to deficit spend to get out of our economic crisis. And most of them agreed that certain institutions such as AIG had to be saved. Its collapse would have possibly left our financial institutions in a pile of rubble. Now comes GM.

Most of us want GM to succeed. We like their vehicles, although apparently not enough, but we understand that a lot of people will suffer if it implodes. Thousands already are out of work from GM closures and more are coming. What's troubling to most Americans is trying to figure out how all of sudden GM will now be successful.

A leaner, more agile GM still will face competition from Japanese and German auto makers who have been beating us for some time. So how long will it take GM to reinvent itself? We're guessing this won't be a fast process by any standard and there's no guarantee it will ever happen.

We don't blame Obama for deficit spending for some specific businesses, but GM is another matter. At some point the market will decide what happens to one of our once greatest companies. Dumping public money into it is no guarantee it will be successful.

We all want GM to succeed. We want Detroit to rise from the ashes and be the most powerful automakers in the world. We also don't want American taxpayers to be the safety net for these monstrous corporations that failed on their own due to greed, lack of vision and an inability to give customers what they want. No government bailout can fix that.

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