Saturday, March 03, 2012

Chevy Volt put on hiatus

WashPost: "GM to suspend production of Chevy Volt"

Never a good sign:


Extra - From the Truth About Cars.  Looks like 1,300 GM workers will be watching soap operas for the next five weeks.

12 comments:

Roger Bournival said...

I think the L.A. Times calls that 'funemployment'...

Anonymous said...

Why do you folks seem to have so much GLEE in this news ?

I can understand you prompting more drilling ; but I can understand your apparent happiness in the growing pains of this new technology....

It just doesn't make any sense to me..

Why are you making it a Gasoline or Bust argument ? Why ?

dfwmtx said...

"Why do you folks seem to have so much GLEE in this news?"

Probably because the electric car is currently being touted as a panacea for our transport and enviromental problems. Probably because the enviromentalists keep saying "everyone should drive electric cars/hybrids!" when the fact is electric cars/hybrids currently on the market do not fill most of the needs drivers today have for a price they're willing to pay. And seeing the failrue of such touted panacea's causes an intense feeling of schadenfreude.
But that's just me, YMMV.

Bram said...

The technology might be new, but its useless. The original Honda Insight got over twice the gas mileage - as does the VW Polo diesel.

Once that exploding battery is drained, it doesn't get the gas mileage of a regular Civic or Mazda 3.

Z.X. Cvbnm said...

Anonymous is right: no solar panel, not even one whose funding was approved by a Democrat, ever strengthened an Arab terrorist.

It's amazing how some people possess such farsighted, longterm vision when it comes to some things (e.g. the ultimate reputation of GW Bush, or the aftereffects of certain Supreme Court decisions, or the national debt), yet are eager to slam down the curtain while shouting "Volt!" or "Solyndra!" and then write another taxpayer check to ExxonMobil.

Bram said...

Please take a look at the ExxonMobil financial statements and point out the part where they got a big government check.

Anonymous said...

GM draining the taxpayers some more. Those laid off workers will be collecting unemployment until they restart the plant.

Anonymous said...

Please take a look at the ExxonMobil financial statements and point out the part where they got a big government check.

I typically get a $157 million tax rebate, and I assume Bram receives a $158 million check. So ExxonMobil's $156 million isn't that large after all.

The 0% tax bracket is killing job creators!

Bram said...

Let's check, shall we?

Here is where you can find Exxon's annual report:
http://thomson.mobular.net/thomson/7/3184/4448/

Net income before taxes* = $53 billion

Income taxes = $21.5 Bil

Income tax rate = 41%

They are paying the highest corporate income tax rate in the world. So where are those breaks I hear about?

* They also expensed $64.7 Bil in tariffs, sales taxes, and other taxes.

The Artful Tax Dodger said...

Let's check things other than ExxonMobil's own P.R., shall we?

First off, Exxon's United States tax bill was $1.3 billion, not $21.5 Bil. You've counted their entire worldwide liability (before deductions). The top 40 oil and gas companies, combined, owed $5.7 billion to the U.S. in 2010, or approximately one-fourth of what you claim ExxonMobil paid all by its lonesome.

That's owed, not paid. The $5.7 billion is independent of the industry's annual $4.4 billion in special tax breaks designed to "promote domestic drilling"... because otherwise, they wouldn't be the tiniest bit interested. Three items above this thread on Viking Pundit is a link to yet another failed Obama stimulus program that reputedly cost the taxpayers at least $27,000 per job... I wonder why the same calculations never get applied to the "promotional" oil subsidies? Some of which date back nearly a hundred years; now THAT'S longterm job creation.

The bottom line: ExxonMobil paid less than 4% in federal income taxes in 2008, 1.5% in 2009, and 2.3% in 2010. Again, that's before many of their tax breaks kick in, which is what can take their actual tax rate under 0%.

But what of the chilling $21.5 billion figure cited by ExxonMobil? The Economist explains:
"Companies have two versions of the truth: the theoretical tax bill, calculated using accounting profits..and the actual cash tax they pay...If a company is systematically avoiding tax, the cash payments are often much lower than the theoretical ones."

Forbes adds:
“Exxon tries to limit the tax pain with the help of 20 wholly owned subsidiaries domiciled in the Bahamas, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands that (legally) shelter the cash flow from operations in the likes of Angola, Azerbaijan and Abu Dhabi. No wonder that of $15 billion in income taxes last year, Exxon paid none of it to Uncle Sam, and has tens of billions in earnings permanently reinvested overseas."

Amazing, the things you can learn outside the echo chamber.

Bram said...

Those are what we call "audited financial statements". I know because at the end of those "theoretical" financial statements, PWC attests to their accuracy. So one of the largest and most prestigious accounting firms in the world put their reputation and their partners' money on the line for BS?

There is often a lag between cash and financial statements. But if they stated 41%, they payed close to it.

As for tax sheltered oil companies, nobody has ever come close the dodge the Kennedy's pulled when they moved to Fiji.

The Artful Tax Dodger said...

Bla bla bla it's totally not true and anyway Kennedys do it too.

(KENNEDYS! Always the last refuge of a conservative on the ropes.)

Exxon didn't pay close to 41% on this planet or any other. Unless it's the Economist and Forbes printing false BS (and the Wall Street Journal, and Reuters, and Crain's, and Harvard Business Review, and Bloomberg, and Business Week, and...) because they don't care about their money or reputations.