We need cash...stat!

G.M. Loses $9.6 Billion as Its Struggles Continue

The automaker General Motors said Thursday that its cash reserves were down to $14 billion at the end of 2008, a year when the industry’s worst sales slump in decades nearly forced the company into bankruptcy before the federal government gave it a lifeline.

G.M. lost $30.9 billion, or $53.32 a share, in 2008 and spent $19.2 billion of its cash reserves.

For the fourth quarter, it lost $9.6 billion, or $15.71 a share, as its global sales fell 26 percent. It spent $6.2 billion of its reserves — $2 billion a month — in the fourth quarter alone. The company has said in the past that it needed a minimum of $11 billion to $14 billion in reserves to finance operations, but the estimates were made before the recent drop in auto sales and cuts by G.M. in response.

Wait, people still aren't buying GM cars? Rick Wagoner drove in a hybrid for you ingrates! From Detroit to Washington! He pretended to know what an electric car was! He said hydrogen! Fuel cell! You still have the nerve not to buy his cars? Fine, now he's going to have to reduce himself to begging from Barry even harder. Are you happy now? Has he debased himself enough now?

Luckily he gets to grovel in private this time as today he meets with his new overlords Barry, Timmy Geithner (tax-cheat), and Law-Dog Summers. Rick has already promised to garrote Saturn, Hummer, and Saab, and has commenced pleading with the greedy unions, whose workers make upwards of $700 a second to grab ass with the robots building the cars and organize beer league softball teams, to stop holding them to the deals they signed. Hopefully Barry will deign to have pity on this pitiable CEO, who by the fickle combination of an economic crisis and decades of poor management has been left with only billions in cash reserves and hunks of useless metal cluttering the eyelines of a disinterested buying populace. Let's hope Barry has a couple billions worth of mercy for this poor man.