Ex-CEO of GM...Ask me a Question

[HerefordSire]

They are still paying me $500K per year for the next 20 years. I play golf every other day with famous people like OJ. I go to church every Sunday and I donate 10% of my income to charities. Ask me a question.

 

[TexasBred]

Sounds like Al Capone...do you go to confession before or after a hit?? :mrgreen: Actually I'm glad you're getting something for your efforts. Is your arm well yet from all the twisting they did to it to get you to resisgn.

 

[HerefordSire]

Sounds like Al Capone...do you go to confession before or after a hit?? :mrgreen: Actually I'm glad you're getting something for your efforts. Is your arm well yet from all the twisting they did to it to get you to resisgn.

Bless me father for I have sinned, it has been two days since my last slice. :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

They caught me doing something I shouldn't be doing. At least they are paying the green fees for my membership. :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

 

[TexasBred]

Sounds like Al Capone...do you go to confession before or after a hit?? :mrgreen: Actually I'm glad you're getting something for your efforts. Is your arm well yet from all the twisting they did to it to get you to resisgn.

Bless me father for I have sinned, it has been two days since my last slice. :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

They caught me doing something I shouldn't be doing. At least they are paying the green fees for my membership. :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

yeah you were trying to run a company without gov't intervention. Don't go to Ford for a job...they're next. :cry2:

 

[HerefordSire]

I was being forced to go on the "Intervention" TV show on AE network with CEOs of the other big three, except for money addiction not drugs or alcohol. Then they were going to make me attend "shop anonymous" for 24 months. I got a little crazy there for a little while. Good thing they secured our pensions.

 

[greatgerts]

Sounds like Al Capone...do you go to confession before or after a hit?? :mrgreen: Actually I'm glad you're getting something for your efforts. Is your arm well yet from all the twisting they did to it to get you to resisgn.

Bless me father for I have sinned, it has been two days since my last slice. :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

They caught me doing something I shouldn't be doing. At least they are paying the green fees for my membership. :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

yeah you were trying to run a company without gov't intervention. Don't go to Ford for a job...they're next. :cry2:

The only reason Ford would be next, is because that is all that is left.
I do have a question kind of on this subject Mr. ex CEO: Will this now put to rest that Ford makes a better product since they have not fallen out yet?

 

[HerefordSire]

The only reason Ford would be next, is because that is all that is left.
I do have a question kind of on this subject Mr. ex CEO: Will this now put to rest that Ford makes a better product since they have not fallen out yet?

I am glad you asked me greatgerts!

Ever since I was a young lad, all my relatives drove Fords. Deep down inside, I knew Ford made a better product. I even tried to get a job with them, but they didn't like something on my resume. It could have been one of my references who was the teamster's CEO that later turned up missing in the 60s by the name of Hoffa. Anyway, I used to mow his yard when I was going to prep school. It was a huge estate and I made plenty of cash to pay for several advanced college degrees.

Anyway, I got hired by the company I was eventually forced out of and worked my way up the ladder. When driving to work, I used to park my Ford Mustang, with the high output engine, at a local Target store and drive my vette the rest of the way to the office. Nonone ever found out I loved Fords until someone caught me on camera recently.

 

[Jogeephus]

Exactly who was it that came up with planned obsolescence? Was it the same person who came up with the idea to put those 50 cent cables to hold the tailgate up and then sell replacement cables for $25? Who was it that came up with the idea that you should take the tailgate off a pickup truck if you are going to haul stuff?

 

[HerefordSire]

Exactly who was it that came up with planned obsolescence? Was it the same person who came up with the idea to put those 50 cent cables to hold the tailgate up and then sell replacement cables for $25? Who was it that came up with the idea that you should take the tailgate off a pickup truck if you are going to haul stuff?

Strategic questions Jogeephus! I am glad I can get this off my conscience.

You see, the entire plan was to create a whole bunch of vehicles every year as the middle class increased in size due to the baby boom after WWII. This worked until the market became saturated in the mid 50s. Heck, GM engineers were thinking of all kind of fancy gadgets to get gullible people to buy high dollar depreciating products. As these gullible people drove the car off the dealers lot, they were losing 25% of their car's original value. What we came up with to combat this instant depreciation, is strategic peer pressure tactics initiative. After all, if your next door neighbor drove home a new geniune GM car, and your older car was in the driveway at the same time side by side, we wanted you to feel like you were less of a person. We even wanted you to feel bad even though you could be driving our product. We were playing with your mind but hardly anyone knew what we were up to because our meetings were secret.

Back to the question. Eventually, our cars started lasting longer and the people that did want to trade, finally realized they couldn't trade in their cars every two years because of negative equity unless they had a large down payment. We had to figure out how to force our engineers to develop weaker components without the media catching on. So our initiative changed to the quality component metallic elasticity intiative. This worked for years until the Honda came out with cars in the late 70s. Then came Toyota and Nissan. That screwed everything up as we began to lose market share in the 80s, 90s, and this century. We gulped big time. They were making their cars with more quality built by employees making a tenth of our employees. I just start crying and called for my Momma. I said Momma, that is not fair.

 

[Jogeephus]

In another secret meeting, didn't you discuss the futility of the bailout money and how it would not change the outcome of your company? So, then why did you decide to go ahead and take the bailout money? What was the difference? Why was it so important to take the money when you knew your days were numbered? Or was John Q. Public correct in his analogy that your hunger for money and power was equivalent to that of a b!tch wolf with seven pups that had been run hard by dogs for 14 days?

 

[HerefordSire]

You are asking scary questions.

In another secret meeting, didn't you discuss the futility of the bailout money and how it would not change the outcome of your company?

Yes, we had secret meetings. The odds were stacked against us. Forget everything you read in the papers. When Lehman Brothers started getting in derivatives trouble, cash was sucked out of the entire system. Normally, we would have just floated commercial paper each day we needed the cash flow and tacked it on to our liabilities. We couldn't do that any more. So we figured out who was on the other side of Lehman's trades to arrange 30 day financing on our receivables. Then all of the sudden Washington Mutual went belly up. Two trillion dollars was sucked out of the system in less than 30 days and the writing was on the wall.

I was passing one of janitors in one of our foreign plants and started asking him what I should do. I said, what should I do, what should I do? He said, to contact Treasury Secretary Paulson because he had contacts with Goldman and they could probably float a short term bond underwriting against China's dealer network receivables because the US dollar was expected to continue to react negatively in the markets and the Yuan was going to be temporarily un-pegged. To make a long story short, the meetings progressed, but the janitor quit and I had no way of finding where he lived to continue asking him questions of whether we should take the bailout money or not, so I just said, yes, we will take the bailout money. I negotiated a great rate though. I knew they didn't want to lay off all our employees at the same time.

So, then why did you decide to go ahead and take the bailout money?

It was a lost cause from the start. The election was around the corner and since our union vote was so important, I figured we could slide by like we always did. After all, when you are the largest industrial company is the USA, what could anyone do?

What was the difference?

We were forced to take the money. They even made fun of us on national TV for flying one of our fleet of private jets to Washington. I ended up riding on the back of a motorcycle. It took me two days of riding on the back of a Harley from Detroit to Washington, course we stopped at a couple of bars on the way.

Why was it so important to take the money when you knew your days were numbered?

The unions are more powerful than you realize. I better leave it at that.

It was all decided defore anyone knew about our troubles. We were just following instructions. I was told I would be made an example of. I asked them why me? They said it was psychology to get more money, kind of like good cop bad cop.

Or was John Q. Public correct in his analogy that your hunger for money and power was equivalent to that of a b!tch wolf with seven pups that had been run hard by dogs for 14 days?

LMAO!

 

[Angus Cowman]

The ? I have is why did you and your predecessors sign all of these outrageous contracts with the UAW and agree to paying their pensions and benefits after the workers retire when in all other unions once that employee no longer works for (the company) the companies contributions stop

I am an ex union employee and also an employer who worked union employees and I sure wish I could have got a deal like the UAW workers when I was an employee and glad my workers didn't have contracts like yours when I was an employer
so please ellaborate

 

[HerefordSire]

The ? I have is why did you and your predecessors sign all of these outrageous contracts with the UAW and agree to paying their pensions and benefits after the workers retire when in all other unions once that employee no longer works for (the company) the companies contributions stop

I am an ex union employee and also an employer who worked union employees and I sure wish I could have got a deal like the UAW workers when I was an employee and glad my workers didn't have contracts like yours when I was an employer
so please ellaborate

Very good question AC (360).... :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

...and I am glad you asked me that.

It is all a numbers game. The pension asset numbers are audited once a year. Just because you see a number on a statement doesn't mean the money is actually there. It is only a number, or a liability, in our case. As long as you can continue to receive money on receivables, noone cares about the actual money being there, until auditing time, as long as the retiree gets their check in the mail the day they expect it. When auditing time arrives, money is simply transferred, the numbers are audited, and then the money is transferred back to where it came from. As long as we could continue to sell $30K cars and trucks, and finance about 1/2 of them through our financing arm, we had the capability of accessing large amounts of cash within days and sometimes hours.

When you sell a 8,000,000 units for $30K average per unit and the raw materials only cost $1K per unit, of course the big boys want a piece of the action. They know how the game is played. If we don't cooperate, we end up getting salary and stock options cuts. Every now and then they try to blackmail us. It works on the weaker executives and some board members. Most of the decisions are controlled by the largest bond holders and the largest shareholders. They control the votes. If they lose money, then the union moves in again and it starts another cycle.

 

[Angus Cowman]

so basically you guys just wrote an IOU to the pension fund instead of actually paying into it and in the end it caught up with you so it was kinda like what the teamsters did by loaning money to the mob,by using the members pension fund to bankroll your operations and then all of a sudden you got caught with your hand in the cookie jar, which would of never happened if you and the UAW hadn't been sleeping together to mislead the members and the general public. correct?

 

[grannysoo]

so basically you guys just wrote an IOU to the pension fund instead of actually paying into it and in the end it caught up with you so it was kinda like what the teamsters did by loaning money to the mob,by using the members pension fund to bankroll your operations and then all of a sudden you got caught with your hand in the cookie jar, which would of never happened if you and the UAW hadn't been sleeping together to mislead the members and the general public. correct?

So.... are the GM guys with their hands in the cookie jars the same ones that are running the social security system in the government? Seems that neither one have any money in the system.

 

[HerefordSire]

so basically you guys just wrote an IOU to the pension fund instead of actually paying into it and in the end it caught up with you so it was kinda like what the teamsters did by loaning money to the mob,by using the members pension fund to bankroll your operations and then all of a sudden you got caught with your hand in the cookie jar, which would of never happened if you and the UAW hadn't been sleeping together to mislead the members and the general public. correct?

It a little more complex than that. The funds have assets and investment managers and deal with digital transfers. The mob usually deals in hard cash unless the quantities of cash are large enough where they just weigh the cash on scales after seperating the denominations with machines. Some groups deal with so much cash they launder it through financial institutions to move it around and make it legitimate. Back to the pension fund. The managers could have invested in Bernie Madoff's old fund of funds if they wanted to, as long as it fits the guidelines of the Fed in regards to pension diversification, risk ratings of Moody's, etc. Just like Madoff's fund, noone knows if the money is actually there of not until recessions hit the economy. How are you going to store $10B is cash? What if the warehouse catches on fire?

For example, call your bank and ask them what your balance is. Then go down there and ask for your balance. You think that cash comes from your account? Nope, it is just another digital transfer. The cash never was in your account when you gave it to them in the first place. They borrowed your money (yes, you loaned them them your money) and invested it. What did they invest your cash in? Whatever they can get away with legally. So lets say, the Yen moves against the dollar and they have your money invested in Treasuries. Whoever controls those digits can make the move in the dollar yen spread. So your $100K you think is in your account, I can be playing the Yen Dollar spread and I can use your cash as collateral for a loan. So your $100K may turn into $1M. So I can make $10K per day on your $100K. Thank-you.