The Swedish government has said it won’t step in to save Saab cars if GM allows it to go under as part of their own death-throws.
“Voters picked me because they wanted nursery schools, police and nurses, and not to buy loss-making car factories,” Enterprise and Energy Minister Maud Olofsson told Swedish public radio.
Cold comfort to the thousands who will lose their jobs, maybe they could all become policemen?
I would much rather see money going into this kind of project than into covering the banks gambling losses just so that they can do the same thing to us again in 10 years. At least by putting the money into Saab, we would know what we were getting. Some cars.
However…
Actually, I agree in many ways with not buying Saab. The Swedish government sold last year a golden goose in Vin&Sprit which was making massive profits and it’s probably not a good strategy to sell the good ones and to start buying up companies that couldn’t make a profit even when the times were good.
Countries like Sweden shouldn’t be focusing on building last centuries technologies, they will never be able to compete with the massive car builders in Germany or the cheap production in the Far East. Instead that money would be far better spent developing new boom industries (a big wind-turbine making factory perhaps or my own favourite… a way to make bio fuels out of mushrooms).
I was at a seminar the other week where somebody mentioned that we shouldn’t think of it “as the car industry leaving Sweden, but as Sweden moving on from the car industry.” He suggested that the future lay in the dissemination of information over the Internet.
Great if you have a Phd from KTH, but I can’t really see too many factories full of information providers.
Also, you have to be careful if you start sharing information over the Internet.
Nice to see that you’re not sitting on the fence there Gary
Its good to see that the Swedish Government are at least taking a stance on the issue. My name sake would probably just say “ok throw some more money at it and we’ll hope for the best”.
GM is in such a mess that its difficult to see them surviving even with incredible cut backs they are making.
Yeah, can you see a British politician saying ““Voters picked me because they wanted nursery schools, police and nurses, and not to buy loss-making banks.”
Difficult one,
Who pays for all these nursery schools, police and nurses.
These jobs don’t make money for any country.
Exactly, and paying thousands of people unemployment benefit also drains resources (not to mention the social effect).
There are about 4000 employed by Saab in Sweden and depending on who you believe, up to 15000 people dependent on the company. That many people losing their jobs could have a big knock on effect.
Problem is that putting money into Saab might not be the best way to create long term jobs.
The government said today that they were not “venture capitalists”.