Tag: auto industry

To Bail or Not To Bail, GM Edition

For those who can’t get enough of the GM topic, Economix (NYT) has links to posts for and against bankruptcy. Right now it’s 10-5 in favor of bankruptcy, although I’m not sure that Mitt Romney’s vote should have the same weight as those of, say, Martin Feldstein, Gary Becker, and Paul Krugman.

However, the bankruptcy/bailout dichotomy leaves out what I think is the best solution: a government-brokered reorganization, which may or may not require bankruptcy – a prepackaged bankruptcy, as it’s sometimes called. This would be very different than just letting GM go into Chapter 11 and hoping for the best, especially given the lack of debtor-in-possession financing these days (thanks to the commenters who pointed this out). Andrew Ross Sorkin, for example, argues for a prepackaged bankruptcy, and even Romney calls for a “managed bankruptcy” (without many deatils) – yet they are lumped in with the the others, like George Will, who argue against any government intervention. (See the link above for all the links to individual posts.) So I don’t think 10-5 is a very accurate count.

Update: Five professors who really are experts on the auto industry (and one of whom is a colleague of Simon at Sloan) have a highly readable paper with their proposal out. They favor a non-bankruptcy restructuring plan that is overseen by the government and also has some provisions to ensure that the reorganization is in the public interest, such as increased fuel efficiency standards and a prohibition on paying dividends to shareholders.

Yet More on GM

My two earlier posts on the auto industry and GM have been among the most-commented-on posts in our brief history. For those who want a crash course on GM’s problems and whether or not bankruptcy is a possible solution, I strongly recommend two podcasts from Planet Money.

  • Kimberly Rodriguez, an economist, talks about the importance of the industry, but also the problems with simply giving GM an operational loan.
  • Steve Jakubowski, a bankruptcy lawyer, explains the risks of GM entering Chapter 11 (if you’re curious about the market for debtor-in-possession financing, listen to this), but also explains how a “prepackaged” bankruptcy, possibly funded by the government, could work.

Simon also tells me he talked through the arguments on both sides of the GM issue in his latest installment for the MIT Sloan podcast. (I haven’t had time to listen to it yet.)

If there’s a consensus between them, I’d say it’s that some kind of brokered solution is better than either simply leaving GM alone or simply handing them a loan without strings attached. (It is possible, however, that a loan might be necessary just to buy enough time to broker the solution.)

The New York Times is reporting that it could all be academic, since Senate Republicans and President Bush are opposed to doing anything for GM, and GM could be unable to pay its bills by the time Obama takes office.

Why Not Let GM Go Bankrupt?

GM is mounting a massive PR campaign to convince Washington that a GM bankruptcy would be catastrophic to the national economy, resulting in the loss of millions of jobs, costing taxpayers over $100 billion, and plunging the economy into a depression (whatever that is). In addition to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reed, Barack Obama has now called for an auto bailout.

I don’t want the US auto industry to go away. Yes, if GM and every one of its suppliers and dealers stopped operating tomorrow, that would cost hundreds of thousands or millions of jobs. But it’s not clear to me why bankruptcy would have the same effect. Ordinarily, when a company goes bankrupt – especially a big one – it goes right along doing whatever it was doing before, except now it doesn’t have to pay off all its creditors, and its operations are monitored by a court. The bankruptcy process is intended to find a reasonable outcome for all of the stakeholders that reflects the order of priority of their claims, but also (in the case of a company as big as GM) reflects the public interest. Airlines, for example, have been going in and out of bankruptcy for years in order to force their unions to negotiate long-term cost reductions, and even use the threat of bankruptcy as a negotiating tool.

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Should the Government Bail Out the Auto Industry?

Over in the real economy, perhaps the biggest story is the impending and highly likely merger of GM and Chrysler, in which GM would swap its 49% stake in GMAC, its consumer finance company, to Cerberus (which owns the other 51%), in exchange for Chrysler, which is currently owned by Cerberus. It seems that the deal may hinge on financial assistance from the government, at least according to six governors attempting to pressure the dynamic duo of Paulson and Bernanke to help out. Until Thursday, GM was seeking $10 billion from the Treasury Department’s $700 billion bailout fund – yes, the same one that has been used to recapitalize banks – but Paulson’s preference is that GM tap a $25 billion low-interest loan program set up by the Energy Department in September.

It’s easy to argue for bailing out the auto industry, with its hundreds of thousands of factory workers, as opposed to the financial sector and its Wall Street bonus babies. (It’s less easy to argue for bailing out Cerberus, which is a private equity firm.) But I want to point out one difference.

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