Just a couple of notes:

GM announced today that it was issuing 16 million shares of stock in exchange for debt, therein lowering their interest rate. A good move for a company with some liquidity problems. A company with it’s credentials has some leeway in how it manages its assets. In this case it sold part of its own stake to lower its interest rates and gain liquidity. I’m told that GM owns a rather large stake in their company, but I haven’t been able to track down the percentages from a trusted source. I’ll post it when I do. Also, GM has stated it is open to other such deals with creditors as well.

With this move they are banking on their future success, and truth be told, it looks fairly decent. I’ve noticed a few Malibus on the streets this past weekend. The car’s have been getting good reviews, and should build up some steam competing against the Accord and Camry in the next year or so; if it weren’t for the recession they would be doing a lot better. The Cruz debuts next year in Europe and 2010 in America as a 2011 model; the Volt goes into full production in 2011, so they are starting to look pretty good on paper.

A lot of their money is being put into the foreign market right now. With the current strength of the dollar on the rise, it looks good for overseas investment, and a lot of production facilities are going up overseas. Percentage wise, GM is expected to shift a majority of it’s business to foreign markets, which probably makes some amount of sense, at least in the short term. However, it’s another one of those stats that I wouldn’t mind checking my sources on.

Also, GM on Tuesday is set to relaunch it’s GMNext site, which should answer quite a few questions about it’s operations going forward. They’ve been fairly forward thinking in their communications with the media…honestly it’s a little desperate, but they need the transparency in order to maintain trust with creditors and the public alike. Thus far I’ve liked how there management has handled the situation. Check out GMNext.com