Around 4,000 more salaried workers at General Motors Corp. will lose their jobs by the end of the year as the automaker continues to downsize.  Michigan is in trouble.  Things aren't getting any better.  Can you tell me one company that is hiring?  Anywhere?

GM notified its more than 27,000 U.S. white-collar workers by e-mail Tuesday that that it will offer standard severance packages, and employees near retirement age will have the opportunity to retire early.  How nice of you GM... you might as well have Tweeted it to everyone.  You're officially the worst run business of all time.

Some involuntary cuts will be necessary as well... GM is trying to shrink its U.S. salaried work force to around 23,500 by the end of the year.  Only 23,500 salaried workers at General Motors!  Now that's insane.

The automaker is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and has received about $20 billion in loans from the U.S. government. The Treasury Department's auto task force is overseeing its plans to restructure and emerge from bankruptcy as a leaner, more competitive company.  Good luck... and I guess GM is the worst run business... but our government is much worse with money!  We're in debt, what should we do?  Get into more debt.  Real smart.

Ford Motor Co. (F) has a very creative story about how debt will be restructured and breakeven or profibility is coming in 2011.  If you believe this then tell the Easter Bunny "Hi" for me.  Ford is still operating without government aid, but they aren't selling any cars and won't be for the foreseeable future.  Even Toyota is struggling and losing money... You know what that means for Ford... Take a ride in your F-150 all the way to zero.  There's a better four-letter word that starts with F to describe the situation.

Read more here.

Toyota Motor Corp. lost 765.8 billion yen (that's $7.7 billion) in the first quarter... its worst fiscal year since the Japanese automaker was founded in 1937.  They even lost more than General Motors.  Not a small feat.

Toyota warned today that because of the global auto slump its net loss would deepen throughout the rest of 2009 and into 2010.  If the companies making quality cars are struggling then how is GM supposed to survive?  More trouble ahead for the automakers.

Read more here.

I'm currently reading What They Don't Teach You At Harvard Business School by Mark H. McCormack.  I'm not reading it to learn what you don't learn in business school, but more to find out how a human can start an empire like International Management Group (IMG) on his own.  Anway, check out this paragraph from the book which was published in 1984... about 25 years ago.

"Ben Bidwell, now the executive vice-president of Chrysler and the former head of North American sales for the Ford Motor Company, once described to me Ford's structure - and the systems created to support it - as a "wall of molasses.  You can't get anything in.  You can't get anything out.  You can't move up.  You can't move sideways.  It takes two years even to move down." 

And we're sitting here trying to figure out why these auto companies are going bankrupt?  They don't have profitable business models.  They're too big, too slow, and too stupid.

The book then looks at how public companies are destined to fail because they are trying to impress the wrong people.  This is very true.  Check out the paragraph from the book below.

"American business decisions are often based on winning a popularity contest, on impressing certain people.  And the peope everyone is trying to impress work on Wall Street.  Impressing Wall Street has become the Great American Corporate Pastime.  Long-term gains are sacrificed for short-term benefits.  Bad corporate decisions are made because a company would rather look good than be good.  Real profit is thrown away in order to pep up the next quarter artificially.  We would all be a lot better off if more companies tried to impress themselves rather than the people who work at the lower tip of Manhattan."

I couldn't have said it better myself.  Well...actually I probably could have, but I need to give Mr. McCormack some credit here.  When all these quarters of artificial profits add up over time they create a huge problem.  If companies weren't so worried about impressing the stockholders every three months there would be a lot more companies that had long term success.  Over the long haul public companies are destined to fail because of their constant short term goals.  Greed on Wall Street will kill even the best of companies.

It was more a matter of when, not if, for Chrysler.  The lenders and Treasury Department couldn't come up with an agreement to reduce the automakers $6.9 Billion in secured debt... so flip the pages to the next Chapter... that would be 11.

Read the details here.

Everyone must like the sunny weather because there isn't much else to be confident about.  A few companies beat their extremely low expectations and apparently the worst is over?  Try not to forget about commercial real estate and the State and Local Governments that are soon going to need a bailout.  California and Michigan... how's your balance sheet looking?  A lot like GM and Chryslers... throw another money band-aid on it.

Read more on Consumer Confidence here.

The Treasury is preparing for a Chrysler Chapter 11 Bankruptcy as early as next week.  So much for all that bailout money... Remember how much it's costing every American Taxpayer?  Refresh your memory here.  I love throwing money into a black hole... or burning it.  Same thing.

Read more on story here.

GM is still struggling to survive on the $13.4 billion loan it received from the government... and there's a June 1 deadline to cut its debt, reduce labor costs and take other restructuring steps.  It took decades to create this mess, there's no way it's getting fixed in a matter of months.  If General Motors was reading material, it wouldn't be a book... it would be a single chapter...Chapter 11.

Read more here.

Out of the original $700 billion, only $109.6 billion is left in the government's financial bailout fund.

The Treasury Dept. expects the fund tol be boosted over the next year by about $25 billion as institutions like Goldman Sachs pay back the fund.  That would bump the total up to $134.6 billion, still relatively small when looking at the situation. 

The details behind the numbers of the bailout were made available in a letter from Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to Elizabeth Warren, the head of the Congressional Oversight Panel.  A letter...who writes letters these days?  At least use some email, no wonder the government is so inefficient.

The Treasury has already given over $115 billion to AIG, Citigroup, Bank of America and the automakers.  Now it's looking like they will need more.  The $109.6 billion is what's left to provide additional funds to the auto companies and deal with any of the nation's largest banks found to need more cash after the "stress tests" are completed at the end of this month.  That's ALL that's left at this point, unless an emergency bailout bill gets sent to congress and somehow passes...

The Obama administration already tried to get more money in a bill sent to congress requesting $750 billion, but lawmakers said there's no way they'll approve boosting the fund.  Thank goodness... We're in huge amounts of debt and trying fix it by spending more money...this seems a little backwards to me.  I agree that you need to help out the banks to ensure there isn't massive failure, but how is the US government going to pay all this money back when there's additional money needed for social security, pensions and actually running a government. 

Here comes summer, the days are getting longer and people are in a better mood for no reason at all (in regards to the economic situation).  Oil was down to $30 something a barrel only 2 months ago and has slowly crept up over $50.  Has anyone else noticed this?  It's the start of the next oil bubble... only this time it's not a bubble.  Gas should be around $4.00/gallon.  This is the only way that makes Americans actually think about whether or not they are driving the 3 blocks to the ice cream stores.  The short-term thinking in this country is evident by the fact that SUVs that are back in demand only a few short months after the "gas crisis".  This isn't the first time it's happened either... remember the crisis in the early 70s?  A lot of the same issues cam up back then and what did we do?  Made a lot of suburbans.  Well done. 

There is a limited supply of gas and demand will keep rising so please give me a valid reason that prices will not head back towards $100 a barrel.  It doesn't matter if we've hit peak oil production or not, oil is a limited resource and we need to use it wisely.  Green energy needs to be a priority whether gas is an arm and a leg or only a thumb or even pinky.  That being said, no matter how you slice it, oil companies are going to profit... BIG.  Start stocking up on oil stocks and watch your investment increase just like gas prices will this summer!  Don't be afraid to check out BP, COP, STO, and XOM.