General Motors to Invest $1 Billion in Brazil Operations — Money to Come from Bailout

[evilfunnystuff]

http://www.infowars.com/?p=6137

General Motors to Invest $1 Billion in Brazil Operations — Money to Come from U.S. Rescue Program

Russ Dallen
Latin American Herald Tribune
November 21, 2008

General Motors plans to invest $1 billion in Brazil to avoid the kind of problems the U.S. automaker is facing in its home market, said the beleaguered car maker.

According to the president of GM Brazil-Mercosur, Jaime Ardila, the funding will come from the package of financial aid that the manufacturer will receive from the U.S. government and will be used to “complete the renovation of the line of products up to 2012.”

“It wouldn’t be logical to withdraw the investment from where we’re growing, and our goal is to protect investments in emerging markets,” he said in a statement published by the business daily Gazeta Mercantil.

Meanwhile, he cut the company’s revenue forecast for this year by 14% to $9.5 billion from $11 billion, as the economic crisis began to cause rapid slowdowns in sales.

GM already announced three programs of paid leave, and Ardila added that GM Brazil “is going to wait and see how the market behaves in order to know what decision to take” with regard to possible layoffs.

For Ardila, the injection in Brazil’s automobile sector of 8 billion reais ($3.51 billion) recently announced by the federal and state governments of Sao Paulo “has already begun to revive sales,” which fell by 12% in October.

The executive said that the company will operate a “conservative” scenario in 2009 with an estimated production of 2.6 million units, and another more “optimistic” that contemplates sales of 2.9 million.

This year sales will reach 2.85 million vehicles, which represents a growth of 15% over last year.

[decatren]

no surprise. they just opened a factory in Russia too. GM wants to survive as a corporation, they dont give a shit who buys their cars - brazilian, russian or santa claus from another planet. They'll save a hellova lot on taxes in other coutries as well. It's just a shame that American born companies are turning their backs on people that made these companies - us - citizens and residents of this country.

[moostraks]

meanwhile the local plant is closed for a month....You know who pays for industry related layoffs? The tax-payers. Isn't that rich???

[Anti Federalist]

We pay billions, for GM to modernize in Brasil, to make current, fuel efficient cars, that cannot be imported here, for the Brasilians to build and drive.

God damned surrealistic nightmare, is what this is.

And the scoffers still claim there is no "master plan" behind all this.

WTF?

[satchelmcqueen]

no surprise. they just opened a factory in Russia too. GM wants to survive as a corporation, they dont give a shit who buys their cars - brazilian, russian or santa claus from another planet. They'll save a hellova lot on taxes in other coutries as well. It's just a shame that American born companies are turning their backs on people that made these companies - us - citizens and residents of this country.

Hey it happens everyday. the company i worked for for the last 4 years and made them tons of money have laid me off in favor of greed. there is no more loyalty anywhere that i can find. it happens everyday. very sad!

[KenInMontiMN]

Brazil is a country we have a virtually even trade balance sheet with, so I've no problem with Brazil as a trading partner of reasonably equal standing. Should our import/export ratio climb above 1.25 with them (or any country), I'd consider that to be the action level for tariffs across the board on that country's products. We can no longer allow ourselves to bleed out through trade imbalance, any more than we can allow bleeding out through increasing national debt. These are the directions our leaders must turn if the USA is to stop hemorrhaging and get back to its feet economically. I don't see our politicians coming to their senses anytime soon, though. Things will stay very ugly for the foreseeable future.

If GM were told in no uncertain terms that threshold of 1.25 i/e ratio would be rigorously enforced and maintained as a maximum, through varying tariffs responding to changes in that ratio, they would then factor that into their production plans there as well as here. That would be a good thing, and so would revenues raised from such tariffs, in order to pay the bills here.

[heavenlyboy34]

That seems to be attacking the symptom more than the problem. But you seem to know more than I do about this. Could you elaborate?


Brazil is a country we have a virtually even trade balance sheet with, so I've no problem with Brazil as a trading partner of reasonably equal standing. Should our import/export ratio climb above 1.25 with them (or any country), I'd consider that to be the action level for tariffs across the board on that country's products. We can no longer allow ourselves to bleed out through trade imbalance, any more than we can allow bleeding out through increasing national debt. These are the directions our leaders must turn if the USA is to stop hemorrhaging and get back to its feet economically. I don't see our politicians coming to their senses anytime soon, though. Things will stay very ugly for the foreseeable future.

If GM were told in no uncertain terms that threshold of 1.25 i/e ratio would be rigorously enforced and maintained as a maximum, through varying tariffs responding to changes in that ratio, they would then factor that into their production plans there as well as here. That would be a good thing, and so would revenues raised from such tariffs, in order to pay the bills here.

[KenInMontiMN]

1. Realize that the problem is massively expanded US debt, to the point now that the rest of the planet has hit the limits of its ability and willingness to support further growth of that debt. Understand that the increase in debt and the interest accumulating on that debt is our economic lifeblood flowing out to other places, and with economic growth over time we can sustain a fair amount of bleeding and outflow but not the unlimited hemorrhaging of the past decade.

2. Understand that the debt is comprised of two roughly equal-in-size sources: Public 'national' debt due to gov't deficits; and private external debt due to trade imbalances. They are both now a bit over ten trillion, each.

3. Implement measures to assure balanced budgets publicly and reasonable trade balance privately (our i/e ratio worldwide never exceeded 1.25 on any sort of ongoing basis until the late '90's, since then it has ballooned enormously. IOUSA correctly identified this as one quadrant of our national path to insolvency). Pull off both of those successfully and we are on the slow road back to solvency. Until that is recognized and implemented we continue towards insolvency.

[James Madison]

We pay billions, for GM to modernize in Brasil, to make current, fuel efficient cars, that cannot be imported here, for the Brasilians to build and drive.

God damned surrealistic nightmare, is what this is.

And the scoffers still claim there is no "master plan" behind all this.

WTF?

They're beyond helping. Take care of yourself. Get food, water, and ammo for the coming storm.