[AnotherWs6]

Wow - that sounds like classic GM. FumbleBumbleFumble. But they're doing well now, having dragged themselves out of a hole they were digging for decades. And to think that all that it took was the Federal government coming in and saying "stop being stupid, stop selling stupid things, don't do stupid things that anyone can tell are stupid or we wont give you money."

It's classic big corp stuff. I was the head of finance at the largest bread producing plant in the country for a year, ending about a year ago. I ran away from that place like it and I was on fire. A handful of good people can not combat thousands of dumb, misguided ones. Sometimes the only way to fix things is to do a major house cleaning - property, personnel, procedures.

I can guarantee that a lot of finance people at GM showed upper management just how profitable those beds were going to be. No way they dumped 10's of millions of dollars into it without a plan. The problem is is that the "plan" was probably not based on reality or logic. Example from me.... we dumped 30 million into a new production line using unreliable, untested equipment, staffed it with MINIMAL people who were never trained on the new equipment. That thing was going to save us millions a year, was going to more than pay for itself in no time. Six months after firing it up we were ready to rip the entire thing out, it was costing us hundreds of thousands of dollars per week. But somebody made a case, made a plan and showed management that it was going to make money so management went for it. Meanwhile I couldn't get simple, 50 year old broken down pieces of equipment replaced because I couldn't show management - based on their criteria and parameters - how it would save money. Even though it would OBVIOUSLY save money. In the end I would go back and BS a bunch of numbers so the plans showed them what they wanted to see and THEN they would go for it.

Point is, it's really easy for giant corporations to just throw money out of the window unless somebody with enough clout and balls stops them from doing so. And initially it took Uncle Sam to do that for GM.

Interesting stuff though!