GM at the Mercy of Its Retirees

Does the UAW ever take the darned hit? Now the bondholders are going to get this miserable diluted common while the UAW doesn't get hit at all, and the older, retired General Motors (GM - commentary - Cramer's Take) workers are just living large without any concessions at all. GM remains a giant HMO that builds cars.

This is revolting. Chrysler-Fiat will be a competitive company. Ford (F - commentary - Cramer's Take) is obviously already a competitive company and will probably get to be the No. 1 U.S. auto company, and GM can't even do the restructuring right. GM's CEO, Fritz Henderson, whines on about this morning about how it can make money at 10,000,000 cars sold; we are looking at an 8 million to 9 million build this year. They will simply be unprofitable the moment they start with this new plan.

I read endless articles about GM, and I never ever see the UAW have to take serious concessions. It is almost as if the company were run by labor. I have never seen, in my lifetime, a more Trotskyite company, in the sense that Trotsky always wrote that the workers should own the means of production.

That's fine in a Socialist Workers regime, but we are a capitalist regime, and this is all totally ludicrous. Totally.

I think there is no hope for GM or the GM common. If I owned GM bonds, I would not tender. And I would buy any Ford security.

Random musings: Thain go home. I know that Bank of America's (BAC - commentary - Cramer's Take) Ken Lewis should never have paid the price he did for Merrill. He didn't have to do anything, but he was just deal-happy. What he ran into is the classic case of a company with zero disclosure, none at all. That was Merrill Lynch. ...Verizon's (VZ - commentary - Cramer's Take) quarter is good, but I imagine, as always, that the bears will hit it first thing. ... Oil is down big on swine flu; opportunity for all the oils and oil-related: Occidental Petroleum (OXY - commentary - Cramer's Take), Chevron (CVX - commentary - Cramer's Take), BP (BP - commentary - Cramer's Take), ConocoPhillips (COP - commentary - Cramer's Take), Schlumberger (SLB - commentary - Cramer's Take). I remain bearish on nat gas, which is now going to go through $3, What a bargain! I would lock in this price for years and years if possible if I were a user.

At the time of publication, Cramer was long COP.

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