Obama Makes GM "Success" Part of His Campaign - 36% of GM Increase Is Tied To Government Fleet Sales

UPDATED AT BOTTOM OF POST

From Blogmocracy:

GM’s sales figures for last month were the best since 2008 , up 16% for the month of June. YIPPEE! Well, wait just a minute. It seems that those rosey sales figures are due primarily to a 79% increase in fleet sales to the U.S.government in June. That’s right. Our tax dollars are being used to pump up GM’s sales figures ahead of next month’s quarterly report so that Dear Leader can point to Government Motors as a huge success. The incestuous relationship between GM, the UAW and the Regime has never been more glaringly apparent. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. GM is unsustainable without government subsidies and will ultimately go bust again, taking billions of taxpayer dollars down with it.

It looks like General Motors will be throwing everything in but the kitchen sink to help fluff its second quarter earnings numbers. Taxpayers continue to help with the cause as President Obama campaigns on the “success” of GM following the manipulated bankruptcy process that cost taxpayers $50 billion and another $45 billion of tax credits gifted to GM to help protect powerful UAW interests. We now learn that government purchases of GM vehicles rose a whopping 79% in June.

The discovery of the pick-up in government fleet purchases at the taxpayers’ expense comes just weeks before GM announces its second quarter earnings. Overall fleet sales (which are typically less profitable than retail sales) at Government Motors rose a full 36% for the month, helping to drive decent sales improvements year over year.

GM is also massaging their sales figures in the way they count their sales of inventory:

The upcoming earnings announcement by GM is, politically, the most important to date. The pressure is on Government Motors to appear financially strong as this may be the last earnings report before November elections and sets the stage for how “successful” GM is. One of GM’s past tricks to help fudge earnings numbers has been to stuff truck inventory channels. Old habits die hard at GM. According to a Bloomberg report, “GM said inventory of its full-size pickups, which will be refreshed next year, climbed to 238,194 at the end of June, a 135 days supply, up from 116 days at the end of May.” 135 days supply is huge, the accepted norm is a 60 day supply. The trick here is that GM records revenue when vehicles go into dealership inventories, not when actually sold to consumers.

Please read the entire article here.

UPDATE - Will adds:

A number of hedge funds and other shareholders filed a Class Action Lawsuit against General Motors.

.......Obama Pushes False GM Success Story: "As part of a credit agreement with Treasury, $16.4 billion in TARP funds were placed in an escrow account that GM could access only with Treasury's permission." As it turns out, GM got Treasury's OK to "repay" more than $6.7 billion "using a portion of the escrow account that had been funded with TARP funds." 


So GM is merely paying the government back with government money .............."Yes We Can?"