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140 comments on An Open Thread theme for a Saturday

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Jack Greene on May 13, 2006 - 6:43pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Jim Burke,

On Ford or GM, they do rely in part on foreign sales which are better than at home for the most part. It may be, as some writer recently wrote, ToyotaGM in 2010.

The 6 May Economist has a chart in the back and for industrial nations, for trade (not debt), but points out that Spain, Greece, and Portugal are worse than the USA for % of GDP as a deficit. Northern Europe is the best.

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BrianT on May 13, 2006 - 7:02pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Some countries (Canada for example) are running a consistent budget surplus. Toyota would never hook up with GM. General Motors has been insolvent for quite some time. Its debt to equity is roughly 30 to 1 which is ridiculous for a company which has no real growth prospects. Toyota could buy up GM tomorrow for the market worth (14 bill) but would never do this as the company has a huge negative net worth (is worthless). Real liabilities exceed real (marketable) assets by hundreds of billions of dollars.    
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Jack Greene on May 14, 2006 - 12:30am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
One of the ironic aspect of allies is that Australia has retired their national debt and of course, our govt. has accepted the Reagan idea that deficits do not matter!

I read Harley-Davidson stock had more value than Ford!

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Silk1970 on May 14, 2006 - 2:10am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

The Australian government has a very large amount of unfunded superannuation liabilities do despite its claim of having no public debt, we actually do have quite a bit. The state governments are largely debt free, however.
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