Flutterby™! : Negative values 2006-04-04 16:03:44.956349+00

Negative values

2006-04-04 16:03:44.956349+00 by Dan Lyke 1 comments

It was on a hike a year or three ago when someone pointed out that SGI's market cap was lower than the value of their real estate holdings. Coyote Blog points out that GM's manufacturing has a market value of $-16 billion (via Dave's Picks.

I assume you've all seen that GM is having trouble finding bands who will let their music be used in Hummer commercials, but beyond the obvious cheap shots at the overpaid bigwigs this speaks to some potential pain for the regions that their manufacturing plants are in: Why wouldn't some other automaker just do a hostile takeover so that they could repurpose GM's assets? I mean, a plant is a plant, right? Except that you build a plant somewhere to take advantage of local labor...

I wonder if the reason Toyota doesn't try to buy out GM is that along with the plant they may get stuck with the workers. Even if they fire everybody and hire anew, if they restart the plant in Flint they will be stuck with the truclulent workers that are part (only part) of the problems that have beset GM. Of course, if GM made cars that more people would like to buy, truculent workers wouldn't be a problem, but Toyota has built their plants in places like Kentucky, far from the UAW, for a reason.

Full disclosure: I drive a Chevy Impala, and while it's a pretty boring vehicle it's hard to find Japanese-branded cars that fit my peculiar shape. My wife loves her Camry, but she's far shorter (and slimmer) than I.