Unprecedented – In My Experience
Government run heath care, federal bailouts, stimulus packages, increased government debt; all of these topics are in the news today 24/7, 365. We hear about our government spending trillions and trillions of dollars in an attempt to correct problems that plague our country. Have you seen any of that money? How are you doing? Have you seen any benefit from government programs like cash for clunkers, home loan restructuring, or COBRA assistance?
What about us? What about, as Bill O’Reilly says, “the folks?”
It seems quite amazing that such a simple scheme launched a single, small scale, five and dime store into a worldwide, multi billion dollar company. As of July 2009, the number of stores in the United States alone consisted of:
• 2,630 Wal-Mart Supercenters
• 883 Wal-Mart Discount Stores
• 591 Sam’s Club Warehouses (as of January 2008)
• 150 Wal-Mart Neighborhood Markets
The above does not even take into account the somewhat 2,980 international stores in 14 countries, and of course these figures are subject to change at anytime.
The “little” guy held the top spot for the largest company in the world for four years. Talk about the little engine that could! I believe this was the only time that a company that actually manufactured nothing was “numero uno,” especially four years in a row. In more recent years, Wal-Mart has still managed to top the lists as the biggest corporation in the world more than once.
Sure, many people hiss at the mere mention of the Wal-Mart name. It has become synonymous with low-price and cut-throat tactics to make them the “low price leader.” The top dog is always perceived by the masses to be unfeeling and less than human. That’s the normal reaction of our society. Many of the ones who hiss and complain still shop there. They want the lowest price!
For most of us, what we have experienced is something that we have never been through in our lifetime. The events we went through in 2009 are like the floods that Georgia experienced a week ago. Interstate highways closed, 2,000 or more homes destroyed, school cancelled, bridges out and 10 people lost their lives. The people who track these types of flood events say that the level of the water far exceeded any 100 year flood maps that existed for this area of Georgia. Unprecedented is how they put it.
Unprecedented!
There were additional problems GM faced and GM Fritz Henderson, Wagoner, and other executives were simply ineffectual in terms of their ability to handle these problems. The company was losing money from collapsing sales. Losses started to rise into the double digit billions. The company was quickly heading to insolvency.
These problems were compounded by various poor managerial decisions. Namely, a joint venture with Nissan and Renault proved disastrous. General Motors also poorly negotiated union contracts it was not able to afford. These problems further drained the company making a turnaround far too difficult.
How did GM Fritz Henderson, Wagoner, and others handle the problems? The answer to this is shrouded in mystery. A clear plan to reverse the problems with General Motors was never truly instituted. Attempts to sell the European wing of the company proved fruitless and further losses piled up. Eventually, the strategy arrived at was to accept a bailout loan from the federal government to avoid heading into bankruptcy court. The plan didn’t work and GM could not avoid bankruptcy filing. This essentially ended General Motors as far as it had previously existed and, ironically, it was also the start of GM Fritz Henderson as CEO.
The end of General Motors proved bittersweet. The GM bankruptcy allows the company to exist albeit in a radically different form. It has now been dubbed Government Motors and the name change truly is an end of an era
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