GM News re-cap

Let's have a look at the events surrounding General Motors this past week. The biggest news is that the company petitioned the FAA to prevent public tracking of a corporate jet it leases. This is a strange request, don't you think? A GM spokesman, Greg Martin, had this to say, "We availed ourselves of the same option as others have", meaning the ability to ask the FAA for tracking exclusion. He went on to decline giving a reason for the request. Instead, we get to guess at the reason and all I can come up with is that tricky Rick Wagoner wants to jet-set without us knowing. You have any ideas?

In other news, GM is looking to raise one quarter of a billion dollars from the sale and leaseback of some of its European offices and other property assets. Normally, this would seem like a large sum of cash, but these are not normal times for the auto giant. When we last checked, General Motors was burning though 2.5 billion dollars in cash per month and nearing bankruptcy. This 270 million dollars it is trying to raise is apparently part of a push to raise 4 billion in asset sales and capital market transactions. I wish them well and hope they secure these funds to help them through these hard times.

I promise to keep you posted this week as the Big Three make their final pitch (at least the final pitch in 2008) for emergency government assistance. It should be fun to watch!