GM Using Bailout Money To Invest in BRAZIL

There are so many things wrong with the Detroit Auto industry, weak product offerings, oppressive Union Contracts, to many dealers just to name a few. Yet our Congress insisted on bailing them out. With the excuse that if we let the Detroit Automakers fail, it would kill US manufacturing.

So what is GM doing to help the US save manufacturing? Well, they took some of the money they borrowed from the US Tax Payers and Gave it to Brazil. Does that count as "re-gifting?" Either way instead of complaining about bank executives making more than $500,000/year, just maybe the president should stop companies using our bailout money to invest in other countries:

General Motors to Invest $1 Billion in Brazil Operations -- Money to Come from U.S. Rescue Program

By Russ Dallen
Latin American Herald Tribune staff

SAO PAULO -- General Motors plans to invest $1 billion in Brazil to avoid the kind of problems the U.S. automaker is facing in its home market, said the beleaguered car maker.

According to the president of GM Brazil-Mercosur, Jaime Ardila, the funding will come from the package of financial aid that the manufacturer will receive from the U.S. government and will be used to "complete the renovation of the line of products up to 2012."

"It wouldn't be logical to withdraw the investment from where we're growing, and our goal is to protect investments in emerging markets," he said in a statement published by the business daily Gazeta Mercantil.

Meanwhile, he cut the company's revenue forecast for this year by 14% to $9.5 billion from $11 billion, as the economic crisis began to cause rapid slowdowns in sales.

GM already announced three programs of paid leave, and Ardila added that GM Brazil "is going to wait and see how the market behaves in order to know what decision to take" with regard to possible layoffs.

For Ardila, the injection in Brazil's automobile sector of 8 billion reais ($3.51 billion) recently announced by the federal and state governments of Sao Paulo "has already begun to revive sales," which fell by 12% in October.

The executive said that the company will operate a "conservative" scenario in 2009 with an estimated production of 2.6 million units, and another more "optimistic" that contemplates sales of 2.9 million.

This year sales will reach 2.85 million vehicles, which represents a growth of 15% over last year.