Planes? What planes?

GM, you smoove bastid:

BusinessWeek:

“General Motors today said it reduced its fleet of corporate jets from five to three. The struggling automaker drew fire this week from Congress when the CEOs of all three U.S. automakers flew in private jets to Washington DC to ask for tax-payer funded loans to help them avoid bankruptcy.

…

GM spokesman Tom Wilkinson said the reduction in the fleet was planned before this week’s Congressional hearings. Several members of Congress chided the CEOs for not sacrificing fat-cat perqs at a time when their companies are losing big money and are asking the public to help bail them out.”

Did you know “perk” is actually short for “perquisite“?  Anyways…

Talk about too little, too late.  These hapless retards had it planned ahead of time (so they say) and still managed to lose a $25 billion handout largely because they couldn’t leave the planes in the hangar for one day?

Though, to be honest, flying a commercial flight for Wagoner, Mulally, or Nardelli might be pretty unsafe at the moment.  Considering that one in ten (or so I’ve heard) Americans are employed directly or indirectly by the automotive industry, any passenger plane could easily have about 25 people who want to kill them.

[For more bailout-blowing stupidity, see my previous post here and Naked Capitalism's pessimistic assessment of the CEOs here.  The issue of debtor-in-possession financing is a very interest twist that I've been following at NC for a couple of weeks now.  Would a DIP loan straight from the Federal government be construed any differently than a bailout?  I imagine the dollar values would be fairly similar, considering the quotes that GM needs about $14 billion or so to continue normal operations]

… and the cow goes moo