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The day's second big economic story came from the automobile industry. General Motors announced 2007 losses of almost $39bn, although much of that was "a onetime tax write off," ABC's Barbara Pinto (embargoed link) reassured us. The firm's new contract with the United Autoworkers allows it to pay new hires at half the hourly rate of the workers they replaced--so GM offered each of its 74,000 current employees an incentive to leave. Phil LeBeau, of NBC's financial news sibling cable channel CNBC, estimated the value of creating each vacancy at between $45,000 and $140,000. CBS' Kelly Wallace pointed out the General Motors is hardly a business failure, raking in profits in Latin America, the Middle East and Africa: "The real challenge is getting Americans to love American again." CNBC's LeBeau agreed: in China, Buick is "red hot."
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