GM closed Friday at a little more than $3 a share. They have 610.5 million shares outstanding, therefore a market value of only about $1.8 billion. That's a really cheap price for a company with sales of over $200 billion a year. In contrast, both Toyota and Volkswagen are worth about $200 billion, Honda about $40 billion, Daimler-Benz about $30 billion, even Nissan is worth about $16 billion. Ford, with all its troubles is worth more than twice as much as GM.

Some market experts say that GM's stock will be close to worthless by the end of the first quarter of 2009. If anyone, including the employees, wanted a company that could generate $200 billion in sales cheap, now's the time to buy. Heck, if GM earned only 1/2% on sales, the buyer could pay for the company in only one year.

If the employees think the company is so great, they can buy it right now for a song. Heck, at Friday's price the employees could buy the whole company for only $6,000 apiece! By keeping their hands in their pockets, they seem to be telling us all something.

Unfortunately, this bow-wow of a company employs more than 300,000 employees directly and probably three or four times that number among raw material producers, parts suppliers, dealers, etc. Altogether more than 1 million people rely on GM for their livliehood. That's how many would hit the unemployment lines should GM go belly-up. And I'm not even counting the municipal employees, police and firemen, school teachers, etc. who will lose their jobs as the tax payments from GM and other supplier compnaies dry up.

We need to support GM financially. I only hope that our elected representatives just don't hand the GM management a check with no strings attached like they did with the huge amount of money they kicked into the banks, Fannie, Frddie, AIG, etc. All that would do is to prolong the ultimate failure of GM. No, this time everyone should be required to pay a stiff price for a taxpayer bailout--the management, the unions, everyone involved. Otherwise it will just be wasted money.