Noggi - maybe if we had affordable health care, had a more balanced trade deficit, and people were not so greedy that the retirees would be just fine. Chew on this and tell me who needs the money worse:
In the United States, wealth is highly concentrated in a relatively few hands. As of 2001, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 33.4% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 51%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 84%, leaving only 16% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers). In terms of financial wealth, the top 1% of households had an even greater share: 39.7%. Table 1 and Figure 1 present further details drawn from the careful work of economist Edward N. Wolff at New York University (2004).

916WI - That's right. You can't make money selling by quantity! Heck, GM needs to lower wages to pre-WWII times, makin' us rich stockholders more money. After all, those workers can still afford to eat spam. Us Rich folk need to make some money back, as the even Richer folk didn't let us in on the Wall Street or banking scams. We just need two classes in this country, US and THEM, ha ha. And dump all those retirees while were at it. That will clear out some of the vacation spots I like to go to.
(gosh, sarcasm is fun, but too close to the truth!)

Think bankruptcy. In this case a probable reduction in benefits for retirees. A policy which will create hardships for a comparative few (a million or two versus a US population of 300 000 000 souls) to benefit future generations.

No vehicles are selling, all manufacturers will cut production as GM has. They already have. Doesn`t make any sense to fill up car lots when nobody is buying.

Pharm.....You're not making any sense. Who cares who sells the most cars? Whether or not a company is viable has nothing to do with the quantity of product sold--it has everything to do with the margins made on their products. With the rebates and incentives that GM is offering, the margins on their vehicles are almost non-existent. They're basically selling themselves right out of business........Way to go GM!!!!!

This really doesn't relate directly to Janesville. Whether there is a glimmer of possible return to production here depends largely on whether the credit markets recover and that is not likely to happen until 2010. It's probably best to just think of this as being in limbo.

Late Breaking News: GM's nine week layoff forecast for Janesville's assembly plant has been extended indefinitely.

Does this mean that GM is not coming back to Janesville?

bigbear, if you mean more, as in SUB, they pay into that fund for layoffs like this, it`s their money. And, it will be interesting to see if there is enough left in the fund to pay it this time.

If GM is doing this the other makers won`t be far behind as GM is outselling even Toyota.

Another nail in GM's coffin. It seems that there are plenty already. "Hope" has left the building.

Workers just get a longer summer vacation. With their unemployment they are ahead as they don't have to pay gas money out since they get more than the "other people layed off"....Hope Fagen Chevrolet gave them all good eats. Didn't other people who are now layed off from other jobs ever buy cars there??? Seems kinda one sided