38 days left for Holden - RIP

[greenacc]

Aussies are too dum to do that these days, not to mention too much utter incompetence in our government who are happy to sell out any potential of that ever happening. And no I'm not talking about Hockey and Abott but the arse holes who sold Holden off thirty years ago leaving GM in control.

 

[VS 5.0]

I've just seen a photo on FB of a completed but unpainted Commodore Shell coming down the line today with a sign saying Last Holden.

Any chance of posting a copy of that pic on here Cal ?

I also don't do FB.

 

[Calaber]

Any chance of posting a copy of that pic on here Cal ?

I also don't do FB.

Sorry Mate but my knowledge if how to attach pics is non existent since this forum updated a couple of years ago. I'll try but no promises.

Edit. Bugger me. It worked.

 

[Nitro_X]

Aussies are too dum to do that these days, not to mention too much utter incompetence in our government who are happy to sell out any potential of that ever happening. And no I'm not talking about Hockey and Abott but the arse holes who sold Holden off thirty years ago leaving GM in control.

The incompetence of all our political leaders is mind numbing..and they are all very well remunerated..

Not forgetting GM required a bail out by their government during the GFC.
I've read about the potential for significant fraud and 'sub prime' auto loans in the US and apparently the bankers have also been bundling up 'student loans' and selling them off in some kind of 'investment vehicle' like they did with the sub prime mortgages that triggered the GFC.


May 10, 2017
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...s-soaring-in-a-parallel-to-the-housing-bubble

Trouble is growing in auto loans. The total amount of the debt outstanding has risen more than 50 percent since the end of 2010, a rapid increase. Delinquencies among subprime auto loan borrowers are jumping, and in the fourth quarter of 2016, there was over $1.1 billion of consumer car debt that lenders could not collect, Point Predictive said. In a Federal Reserve survey released Monday, banks said they had tightened their underwriting standards for car loans.

But that won’t necessarily translate into a repeat of the mortgage crisis, because the auto financing market is so much smaller. There was around $1.1 trillion of car loans outstanding at the end of last year (2016) - (oh, is that all), compared with around $10.3 trillion of residential mortgages.



DEC. 19, 2014
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/20/...f-bailouts-of-automakers-and-wall-street.html

WASHINGTON — Six years after President George W. Bush began the auto bailout, the Obama administration on Friday declared a profitable end to the sweeping federal interventions in Wall Street and Detroit, saying a final sale of stock from General Motors’ former finance arm had closed a turbulent chapter of the financial crisis.

The programs “that helped restart the flow of credit to meet the critical needs of small businesses and consumers are now closed,” declared Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew. “And while the goal was always to stabilize the economy, and not to make a profit, it is important to recognize the return we have earned for taxpayers.”

The government actions, initially seen as necessary in Washington and on Wall Street to prevent a collapse of the economy on the order of the Great Depression, agitated the political world, helping give rise to the Tea Party movement on the right and the Occupy Wall Street movement on the left. And even as the nation climbed out of recession and slowly recovered, many Americans were left with little trust in the nation’s government and financial institutions.

Tea Party, to many of its foot soldiers, stood for Taxed Enough Already, and the bailouts were assumed to be enormous drains on the federal Treasury. Yet in the end, the Troubled Asset Relief Program and the Detroit bailout yielded $15.35 billion in profit, Treasury officials said Friday.


“Effectively, today, our rescue of the auto industry is officially over,” President Obama said Friday, opening his end-of-the-year news conference. “We’ve now repaid taxpayers every dime and more of what my administration committed.”


In all, through TARP and other efforts, taxpayers injected $426.35 billion into banks and auto companies. The sale of stock and interest payments brought in $441.7 billion.

To critics on the left and the right, however, the numbers were almost beside the point. The impact of the government’s actions — the good, the bad and the ugly — has deeply resonated economically, politically and socially.

The financial crisis and its bailouts were the defining political moment of the last decade. First they put President Obama in office. But they swept into power a new, populist right in 2010, not only in Congress but in state legislatures that redrew political boundaries to lock those gains in place for years.

While both the Tea Party and Occupy movements in many ways appeared to embody the political fringe on both sides of the political spectrum, they gave voice to millions of Americans who felt singed, cast aside and marginalized through the sins of corporate America. Conservatives and liberals were left feeling that Washington was willing to do whatever it took to save mega-banks and corporations, while letting the vast majority struggle with unemployment, declining wages, disappearing savings and houses worth less than their mortgages.

“What we learned from TARP, the stimulus and the Detroit bailout is when big government, big business and big labor join forces at the taxpayers’ expense, it’s the average citizen who is left out,” said Jenny Beth Martin, a co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots.

The capital markets have recovered. Gas prices have plummeted and job growth is on a steady rise. But the political scars remain indelible, reflected in a politically polarized nation and the dysfunctional Congress it has elected.

“Democrats are becoming more liberal; Republicans are becoming a lot more conservative and ideological,” said John Spratt, a longtime moderate Democratic House Budget Committee chairman swept aside in the Tea Party wave of 2010. “Instead of converging into a workable relationship, we are diverging, and Lord knows how we will come to a resolution.”

Given the scale of the broader economic losses and the risk the government took to protect Wall Street and Detroit, a $15 billion profit on a $426 billion investment is nothing to celebrate, said Simon Johnson, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management.


“That’s an unfortunate and inappropriate message, given the insane costs inflicted on the American people by the actions of some very big banks,” Mr. Johnson said. “Unfortunately, it’s representative of the broader Treasury attitude around finance: We’ve fixed it. Don’t worry. Don’t bother us anymore.”

Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, took to the Senate floor in the closing minutes of the 113th Congress to blast the power of Wall Street — particularly Citigroup — which she said remained undiminished since the bailout.

“Enough is enough,” she said. “Washington already works really well for the billionaires and the big corporations and the lawyers and the lobbyists, but what about the families who lost their homes or their jobs or their retirement savings?”

Less than $1 billion in taxpayer funds remain scattered in about 35 community banks around the country, but with the sale on Thursday of the government’s last 54.9 million shares of Ally Financial, previously known as GMAC, the Treasury declared the bailouts done.

Thanks in part to the recent surge in stock prices, the Ally sale alone recouped $1.3 billion.

The final sale might have been dictated by market forces, but the date was resonant. On Dec. 19, 2008, President Bush announced, “Government has a responsibility to safeguard the broader health and stability of our economy,” and he used executive action to begin the auto bailout. Americans for Limited Government, an early Tea Party group, called that “Bush’s original sin” on Friday.

The bailout of GMAC started Dec. 29, 2008, with a $5 billion infusion in the last days of the Bush administration, but that grew to $17.2 billion as the Obama White House moved to save Detroit. By keeping auto finance arm alive, the administration sought to keep car and truck sales moving and auto dealerships open.

With this week’s sale, the GMAC investment yielded $2.4 billion in profit. The government no longer owns any part of the auto industry, Treasury officials announced.

Although the overall bailout efforts turned a profit, the auto rescue did not. With Friday’s announcement, taxpayers were left with a $9.5 billion loss. Most of that came from General Motors, which paid back about $39 billion of the $49.5 billion invested.

But with auto sales booming and the Big Three Detroit automakers recovered, the Obama administration now points to the Detroit rescue as one of its biggest triumphs.


“The American auto industry is on track for its strongest year since 2005,” Mr. Obama said. “And we’ve created about half a million new jobs in the auto industry alone.”

.

 

[Nitro_X]

Sorry Mate but my knowledge if how to attach pics is non existent since this forum updated a couple of years ago. I'll try but no promises.

I wonder which dealer will get this one.
Do you think it would sell for a premium, if it comes with a certificate?

.

 

[VS 5.0]

Sorry Mate but my knowledge if how to attach pics is non existent since this forum updated a couple of years ago. I'll try but no promises.

Nice work...thanks Cal.

 

[VS 5.0]

I wonder which dealer will get this one.
Do you think it would sell for a premium, if it comes with a certificate?

.

Museum piece ?

 

[Nitro_X]

Museum piece ?

*chuckle*
May as well throw the rest of Australia's manufacturing industry into the display

.

 

[Calaber]

I wonder which dealer will get this one.
Do you think it would sell for a premium, if it comes with a certificate?

.

I reckon the company will keep it. No. 1, the Hurricane, the GTR X, Marilyn and Efigy are held and I reckon this one will join them. Still think it will be a Calais.

 

[greenacc]

Put some of our old school business founders in there who managed to do a proper job without selling out their grandkids! Dick Smith for PM.