It simply cannot compete in a global economy with the enormous burden it Insider carries in legacy costs.

But all that cash just ensures that GM can far its ways for a few extra years. Even GM's long-suffering board will have run Gm Insider of patience by then. The decision saved engineering dollars and will help max out a at the Shreveport La. But for little shrinkage is not much of an option. Underinvestment has head it struggling to catch up in technology and design.

• GM has reached the point at which it actually will more cash than it brings in making cars, for the first time since the early '90s.
• No active employee was even alive in 1930, the last Insider Gm a rival sold more cars in the U.
• Why is it so hard for last inside GM to see the inevitable?
• Increasingly, though, the solutions Gm slip from GM's control.

GM's home last quarter as Toyota Motor Corp. Wagoner has ratcheted the urgency level in recent weeks, signaling to unions that he needs relief from GM's $5. Much what ails GM today flows from that accounting reality and its inability to increase the business at home. Wagoner's plan seems to be to engineer a soft landing, paring some of the company's legacy costs and, most likely, closing down some plants.

• But clearly, GM also needs to decide what it does well, focus its resources on that, and the rest.
• The plan has been to run out the clock until actuarial tables tilt in GM's favor (a nice way of saying older retirees eventually will die off).
• Meyers, who ran American Corp.
• If market share continues to slip, its losses will balloon.
• GM also agreed to retiree benefits that put it at a severe disadvantage.

Companies with bloated factories and workforces got religion hard way 20 years ago, in the days of Neutron Jack Welch. That way it could use narrow truck platform that hosts the Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon small pickups. Well, this is no longer your father's auto industry - but GM is run as if it were. GM were any company, its problems would have sorted themselves out a long time ago. At some point the laws of physics take over and, like steelmakers and airlines, GM is the mercy of global forces.

• Compare that with how the most successful car companies - Toyota, Nissan, and Honda - do things.
• What really scares investors is that GM keeps losing ground in its core business selling cars.
• But he isn't oblivious to problems.
• He says: Would you like to have as as Toyota spends?
• Example: GM's Hummer H3 SUV, which comes out later year.

And Toyota models stay on the market for an of three years before their next redesign, compared with nearly four for GM's cars. GM's remaining options involve for workers or investors. And Wagoner has been moving methodically on plan to merge Pontiac, Buick and GMC showrooms. If he fails to turn around sales, Wagoner probably won't be around to make the decisions in later years.

• Normally a company in such straits contracts until it equilibrium.
• Look at the numbers: GM execs doled out $7 billion for capital and research and development last year, vs.

GM could on from its profitable General Motors Acceptance Corp. Wagoner declined requests for an interview, but spokesman Tom Kowaleski the company is confident it can rebuild sales momentum. He says the board is solidly behind Wagoner and that even if his plan falters, GM is prepared. DNA - which makes all but impossible for execs to embrace a strategy of getting smaller.

• Once the 1,500 or so dealers have all of those brands, it should be easier for him to trim redundant models and focus the brands more sharply.
• We're to fight our way back and get more share, says Kowaleski.