OT: Saab filed for bankruptcy, Sign of the times. Options

[Mark Henry]

Swedish carmaker's Chinese investors fail to take over former GM company.
Too bad, nice car at one time (Saab 99), but they couldn't compete.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/12...bankruptcy.html

[rick 918-S]

Just another Saab story. Same old thing. Save me, save me! How about the innocent stock holders. The investors that put money up in good faith. Who's honoring their right to collect before the union? Who's paying them back? GM? We have laws in this country. Were not Greece, Italy or France.

GM could very easily filed, kept the doors open, reorganized and either moved on or swollowed the bitter pill. That's business. Look what happens when government gets involved where they have no business. AM Trak, the post office to name a few.

Oh, and the new electric nightmare that catches fire when the batteries go dead. There's a product improvement. I hear GM is calling back all those cars. That was a government mandated profit center and green jobs galore.

I still say if you dug into Saabs troubles you would find ugly GM debt that was hidden in the sale through unprofitable contracts with suppliers and dealers. Saab has always had a decent car. Now their just a pawn in a big game of hide the weinee.

IBTB

[DBCooper]

How about the innocent stock holders. The investors that put money up in good faith.

No one puts up money in "good faith". They put up money to make money, and since risk is involved they attach as many strings as they can, to reduce those risks. Even so it's understood by everyone that it's impossible to eliminate all risk, so the more risk the larger the return, reflected in interest rates or stock values.

But at the end of the day aren't those exactly the people who were responsible? Every year they voted for directors, then the Board they elected hired and overpaid the CEO and management and supervised the work they did. No one made anyone buy GM stock, or made management sign a loan agreement, a union contract, cut corners in research, engineering, design, or whatever. The market's liquid so investors could have walked at any time if they didn't agree with management. And since they hired those idiots aren't they also responsible for the job they did? No one else could have changed the course GM took, so if anyone's responsible it has to be them. Who else?