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General Motors General Motors Company, also known as GM, is a United States based automaker with headquarters in Detroit, Michigan.
By sales, GM ranked as the largest U.S. automaker and the world’s second largest for 2008. GM had the third highest 2008 global revenues among automakers on the Fortune Global 500. GM manufactures cars and trucks in 34 countries, recently employed 244,500 people around the world, and sells and services vehicles in some 140 countries.
On June 1, 2009 General Motors filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings from which it emerged on July 10, 2009 in a reorganization in which a new entity acquired the most valuable assets. GM is temporarily majority owned by the United States Treasury and to a smaller extent the Canadian government, with the US government investing a total of US$57.6 billion under the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
While no GM shares are currently available to the public, the company plans an initial public stock offering (IPO) in 2010.
GM plans to focus its business on its four core US brands — Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick, and GMC. In Europe, following a period of negotiation to sell a majority stake in its Opel and Vauxhall brands, GM decided to retain full ownership of these operations.
On January 26, GM announced that it had reached an agreement to sell SAAB to Spyker Cars NV. GM also has an agreement to sell its Hummer brand, awaiting Chinese regulatory approval, while winding down its Pontiac and Saturn brands as they remain under the old GM, now known as Motors Liquidation Company. (Wikipedia Jan 2010)
The McKinsey Heresy
By John Schroy, on April 6th, 2009 |

The root problem with big banks today is organizational and product line complexity. Excessive complexity in banks can be traced to the reorganization of Citibank in 1956, under Walter Wriston, following the advice of McKinsey and Company.
Under the McKinsey structure, banks were transformed into industrial-type marketing institutions with matrix organization by product line. Bank managers were paid to meet budgetary targets, rather than for being prudent bankers.
The threat of inflation
By John Schroy, on March 31st, 2009 |

The supremacy of the US dollar is not yet dead, but portents of a fatal cancer — inflation — are there for all to see.
The extreme, profligate spending of the Obama administration, combined with populist, irresponsible bank lending policies promoted by Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, portend rising interest rates, the collapse of the bond market, and the end of dollar supremacy.
Furthermore, a large part of the American electorate doesn’t understand or is unaware of what lies ahead.
Baby Boomers' retirement threatened?
By John Schroy, on August 5th, 2006 |

In a study of the effect of the retirement of Baby Boomers on the price of equities, the GAO assumed that equities will provide real returns of 7% over the next decades. This figure is often cited in Wall Street promotional literature, but has no scientific basis.
Baby Boomers whose retirement plans are predicated on a 7% return on equities may find out, too late, that they have been misled by marketing flim-flam.
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