Germans Angry with US Role in Opel Negotiations

I'm angry also. The US government now owns close to 72% of GM. No one wants to buy the vehicles because one only knows when the government will change the rules and leave me and others holding the proverbial bag/car. The germans are upset for other reasons of course but it all comes down to the same thing....government has no business in the auto industry.

Angela Merkel's Chancellery, there is still no plan in place to save Opel from following GM into bankruptcy. The problem, say Berlin politicians, is a lack of transparency -- and a surprise 300 million euro demand -- from the Americans.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...627380,00.html

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by CastleBravo

I'm angry also. The US government now owns close to 72% of GM. No one wants to buy the vehicles because one only knows when the government will change the rules and leave me and others holding the proverbial bag/car.

Or

No wants to buy the vehicles because they are a piece of crap?

or

Something somewhere in between?

There are probably many reasons people may choose not to buy a GM product.

The question should be why are there not many reasons to buy a GM product?

[GoldenRivet]

my family has repeatedly purchased the suburban and yukon series (even a couple of vettes) over the past 15-20 years.

i will never own another GM product because of this bailout BS. we are DONE with GM and everyone they are associated with

they are like a little kid who has lost a child's game... and they whine and pout and cry and pitch a fit so badly about losing that the mommy and daddy try to make them feel better and talk all of the other kids into letting him play some more - even though he knew the rules and clearly lost out of the game.

its bullschitt. period.

Die General Motors and go to hell... your business model has failed failed... your management vs. worker rivalry has been one for the books and ultimately the inability of either party to reach a compromise has caused this problem IMHO

your turn has ended - your session has F-ing expired... your are the weakest link-good bye!... you cease to be!... you are no more!... GTFO... dont let the door hit you on the ass... do not pass go, do not collect $200

how many ways can i put it?

if your business failures are so vast and run so deep that you have to steal close to a trillion F-ing dollars just to break even - you might be Government Motors.

[Skybird]

To say that the German government was outraged, would be closer to the truth. During the crisis summit two days/nights ago, where everybody concerned and everybody of name and rank was present, it was expected that somebody with the legitimation to negotiate would show up, but instead GM and the US Treasury only sent third and fourth row delegates that were not allowed to negotiate anything, and time and again needed to interrupt the talks for conferencing with Washington and Detroit. they could as well have sent two receptionists only. Then, practically hours before the summit, there were new demands for even more money by the Americans. And finally, the Germans obviously are expected to invest several billion dollars - without having any legally binding guarantee that the money, if given to Opel, would not be transferred to GM and into the US - but that money is German worker's tax-billions, that surely is not meant to subsidise GM-America.

As the German finance minster put it: the very minium that can be expected is that if the government gives some money to Opel, the government knows in advance where that bank account is located, at what bank, in what country, who holds it and who has access to it, and what the money will be used for. All this the Americans deny. It is very obvious for almost everybody in Germany that the US government and GM, as well as FIAT and Magna (Fiat being said to have left it'S bidding this morning) do not have any interest at all in Opel surviving (especially not Fiat, since it's models are directly competing with the Opel cars over the same market segments), but try to rip of the German tax payer, sack some German tax-billions, and then leave Opel behind even more crippled in two years or so.

Additionally one must see that in the past 25 years and longer, all wins that Opel once made, were practically not taxed and were transferred to GM - but all losses were helped and compensated with German tax money. It has been calculated and shown by economists, that we already have invested and transferred several billion tax-Euros to GM that way in the past 10 years alone.

Nobody should complain that we are totally pissed by GM. Even more so since Opel, first time since quite some longer time, is said to have a palette of very good, competitive cars that find their customers. Their recent models, pushed onto ther market with the crisis already broken out, have sold relatively well. One Opel model has been voted in Germany as cars of the year in it'S segment. So they have become healthy in product developement again, they successfully left behind their Spiesser-image of the past, and they renewed that way despite having lost tremendous ammounts of money to GM, and German taxes needed to compensate for that as well as the ill going business of past years, and after plenty of their developement being taken by GM and then being patented for GM - and after having become better, now GM is puling them down with them nevertheless. That is tragic, and somewhat mean. No wonder that especially the Opel-workers themselves hate their mother-company GM so much.

This is the german perspective. The american perspective is that American negotiations often are not about acchieving results, but to collect more small en passant-gains and information without giving away anything by their own. It is trading time for increasing the pressure. That is a tough way to negotiate, and in a way is no negotiating at all. However, it represents a difference between German reasonability and good will (or German softness, if you want), and anglosaxon profit-orientation that cares little about such "altruism", but is more rooted in hardcore capitalism than european and especially German ideas of "social market economies". the Germans would be well-asdvised to jump-start to learn to wage negotiations in the same brutal way themselves, and to forget German elections this year, else they will be pulled over the table. the bill will be needed to pay by the german tax-payers.

Also, in America the looming end of GM threatens, so they say, over one million of jobs. compared to that, some 50.000 jobs in europe are no big deal for the Americans. So I conclude that the lacking american interest yesterday was both a result of their different focus that is more locked on internal american economy, as well as a well-dosed provocation that serves for increasing the pressure on Berlin in future negotiations and trying to get a big bite of the German tax cake nevertheless - the americans of course know that there are several elections in Germany this year, especially national elections, and that parties over here for that reason will think twice before loosing voters by the tens of thousands when allowing Opel to collapse. Other companies in germany use the elections as well to try to blackmail german politics, namely Arcandor. everybody is yelling for government intervention when the business is in trouble currently, and if politicians say No, they are being countered by threatenin to not vote for them.

Another point is that Obama has demanded the Germans to spend like crazy, increase government intervention in the economy,a nd do boost national debts, since he took over, in other words he wanted the Germans to act like he acts himself. By making Berlin to heavily pump money into highly risky, unsafe constellations at GM/Opel, he hopes to create the precedence that makes the Germans willing to do like that more often in the future - once the door is open a bit, it is easier to push it wide open.

And finally, with the american demands for such immense investements into GM/Opel, and GM still holding 35% of shares in Opel if the outlined deal regarding Opel's sovereignity would become reality, there is a chance to milk even more money from the Germans in the future -for then they will say that they already have pumped so much money into it that they cannot afford to now loose it, but must safe it at all cost, and pumping even more money into it. In nother words, Obama tries to get some regular national income from Germany for his own deeply troubled state finances.

A mental asylum it all is.

[TDK1044]

Most Americans have little confidence in American made cars. Why? Easy. The average American auto worker earns a lot more than his or her equivalent Japanese worker, and produces a car with a 3 year or 36,000 mile warranty. The Japanese worker is paid well, but much less than the American worker, and produces a car with a 5 year or 60,000 mile warranty.

You don't need to be a German rocket scientist to figure out which cars the Americans will purchase.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by TDK1044

Most Americans have little confidence in American made cars. Why? Easy. The average American auto worker earns a lot more than his or her equivalent Japanese worker, and produces a car with a 3 year or 36,000 mile warranty. The Japanese worker is paid well, but much less than the American worker, and produces a car with a 5 year or 60,000 mile warranty.

You don't need to be a German rocket scientist to figure out which cars the Americans will purchase.

Plus different gas consumption, which slowly crawls even into american society's mind.

Anyway, latest headline is that FIAT confirms to have left the bidding over anger due to the american style of negotiation. And the second headline of this morning is that Magna also is close to withdrawing completely - they also make the Americans responsible for their decision. A Magna representative is quoted with having said that they are not even sure that GM really wants to sell Opel at all.

the British investment group already has ejected in the past (consider us to be lucky), and the chinese offer was so late and so amateur-like (and limited to two years in scope only) that the government has refused to take them into account any further.

After having set up already two ultimatums, there is talk about the Germans again shifting it a third time. That is what ultimatums are about: to not care for them. Politics do not know ultimatums.

I hope that Magna jumps off, becasue the most honest and cleanest solution would be to open insolvence proceedings, which seem to be inevitable if the fourth and last bidder leaves, too. I did not like the idea of the government intervening at Opel from the beginning - Opel is no so-called system-relevant construct.

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by GoldenRivet

Die General Motors and go to hell... your business model has failed failed... your management vs. worker rivalry has been one for the books and ultimately the inability of either party to reach a compromise has caused this problem IMHO

your turn has ended - your session has F-ing expired... your are the weakest link-good bye!... you cease to be!... you are no more!... GTFO... dont let the door hit you on the ass... do not pass go, do not collect $200

how many ways can i put it?

if your business failures are so vast and run so deep that you have to steal close to a trillion F-ing dollars just to break even - you might be Government Motors.

But how do you really feel about GM? Don't sugarcoat it. Getting mixed signals here