GM’s new lease on life

Last week’s successful rollout of General Motors’ public stock offering heralds a new and promising chapter in the retooled automaker’s drive toward corporate independence and economic prosperity.

It also proves dead wrong many of the naysayers who two years ago vociferously assailed the U.S. government’s $50 billion lifesaver to the company whose impact on the nation and the Mahoning Valley is monumental.

On Thursday, a slew of GM cars — including the Mahoning Valley-produced Chevrolet Cruze — graced Wall Street for the sale opening. The stock is holding its value at just above $34.

None of these positive developments would have had the slightest chance of kicking into gear had the Obama administration listened to the doomsday prophets who 18 months ago said government intervention would do nothing to stave off the collapse of GM and the American auto industry.

GM took an aggressive role in refuting those arguments through many painful but necessary actions. GM reduced its debt load, slashed its executive payroll, negotiated a less costly labor contract, closed inefficient factories, shuttered many dealerships and eliminated some of its brand, including Pontiac and Saturn.

Today the automaker has moved from billions of dollars of losses to a modest profit.

CHALLENGES REMAIN

Despite the optimism of the moment, however, GM has not steered itself completely out of the woods just yet.

It still owes a hefty amount to taxpayers, and that obligation must be given top priority. It must also prove to the lingering skeptics that it truly has reinvented itself for the long haul. There can be no turning back for GM to the good old days of overstuffed payrolls, union largesse and satisfaction with mediocre products.

Should the automaker fail — and we’re banking that it will not fail — GM will have no one to blame but itself.

Officials of the new GM seem to know that.