Ever wonder about the value of information?

I do all the time. The problem is that I have a lot of time. I read the two articles below and was surprised that certain information was omitted in one. Give them both a read and I will explain after:

GM Posts Loss on North America; Overseas Profit Rises (Update7)
By Jeff Green and Greg Bensinger Feb. 12 (Bloomberg) --
General Motors Corp., the world's largest automaker, posted a fourth-quarter loss on shrinking sales in North America while revenue overseas rose.
The shares gained as much as 2.6 percent in New York trading as the Detroit-based company recorded a profit after excluding one-time costs. GM's net loss of $722 million followed year- earlier net income of $950 million.
The results indicate Chief Executive Officer Rick Wagoner is delivering on his pledge to rely more on overseas sales while cutting expenses at home. Wagoner said he will offer buyouts to speed the hiring of lower-paid new workers in the U.S., where industrywide sales are projected to fall to a 10-year low this year.
``Wagoner is doing the right things; he's just doing them at a time when the economy might be masking some of the favorable benefits from his actions,'' said Pete Hastings, a fixed-income analyst at Morgan Keegan & Co. in Memphis, Tennessee. Buyouts for 74,000 United Auto Workers members would be ``money well spent,'' he said.
The quarterly per-share loss was $1.28, versus the year- earlier profit of $1.68. Automotive revenue rose 7 percent to $46.7 billion, GM said in a statement today.
Not counting costs and gains the company considers one-time, GM reported an adjusted profit of $64 million, or 8 cents a share. On that basis, analysts estimated a loss of 64 cents. In North America, GM lost $1.1 billion, excluding some costs. By that measure, analysts predicted a loss of $400 million.
Shares Rise
GM rose 46 cents to $27.58 at 11:34 a.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading after reaching $27.83 earlier. Through yesterday, the shares had advanced 9 percent this year, the most in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
The adjusted profit stemmed mostly from a $1.6 billion tax benefit, Chief Financial Officer Fritz Henderson said. The tax gain stems from the sale of the Allison transmission unit and a $7.7 billion reduction in GM's overall pension and retiree health-care liabilities, he said.
``It was a tough quarter in North America,'' Henderson told reporters today in Detroit. ``Volumes were down, and there was tougher pricing because we had a full incentive load for our pickups.''
2007 Loss
The full-year deficit was a record $38.7 billion and included a $39 billion expense in the third quarter related to a tax-accounting change. In 2006, GM lost $1.98 billion, or $3.50 a share.
The third quarter included the $1.6 billion tax benefit and $768 million in one-time expenses.
GM had $27.3 billion in cash, readily available assets and funds from a retirement fund at the end of December, a decline from $30 billion at the end of September. The automaker ended 2007 with a negative adjusted automotive cash flow of $2.4 billion, a $2 billion improvement from 2006.
Outside the U.S., GM had a $424 million profit in the Latin America/Africa/Middle East region and a $72 million Asia-Pacific profit. Europe reported a fourth-quarter deficit of $445 million.
The automaker today also announced details of a buyout plan for its remaining 74,000 UAW employees in the U.S. The offers would provide payments of as much as $62,500 for the most-skilled workers with at least 30 years service.
Enhanced Buyouts
The program enhances a $35,000 payout offered to workers in 2006 and can be taken as a lump sum, annuity, contribution to a 401(k) or individual retirement account, or a combination of cash and retirement contribution.
Workers who are at least 50 years old and have 10 years' experience would also be allowed to take an early retirement, and workers with at least 26 years' service will be allowed to quit and accept pro-rated payments until they are eligible for the regular 30-year pension.
UAW members with 10 or more years service can also opt for a one-time payment of $140,000 to leave the company and forgo future benefits. Workers will less than 10 years can take a $70,000 buyout.
GMAC LLC, the auto and home lending company that's 49 percent owned by GM, posted a $724 million fourth-quarter loss last week as more than one of every 10 homeowners fell behind on their mortgage payments. GM reported a $394 million pretax loss related to GMAC in the fourth quarter and an $872 million deficit for the full year.
GM lost $10.4 billion in 2005 and the $1.98 billion in 2006 as it ceded U.S. market share to Toyota Motor Corp. and health care-costs rose. Wagoner, who cut $9 billion from expenses from 2005 through 2007, last year won a cost-saving contract with the UAW that will trim another $5 billion annually by 2011.
Risk Ahead
Henderson told reporters on Jan. 29 that the automaker sees more ``risk'' than ``upside'' for the next year to 18 months. He declined to discuss fourth-quarter results at the time. GM cut North American production 6 percent in the quarter, and automakers book revenue when a vehicle is built, not when it's sold.
``It's going to be difficult for GM to make a profit in 2008 in spite of all the restructuring they've already done,'' said Bradley Rubin, an analyst at BNP Paribas in New York. ``The silver lining here is that they've already gone to the capital markets and raised all the capital they need.''
Analysts project U.S. auto sales may fall to 15.5 million this year, around 8 percent below the annual average this decade. GM hasn't posted an annual sales increase in the U.S. since 1999, while Toyota has advanced each year.
Toyota Battle
The U.S. automaker fended off a surging Toyota last year and kept its 77-year reign as the world's largest automaker by a margin of about 3,000 cars and trucks. Toyota had passed GM in the first half before GM regained the lead in the third quarter, aided by sales in markets such as Russia and China where GM leads Toyota.
GM's 8.375 percent note due July 2033 was unchanged today at 80.5 cents on the dollar, yielding 10.6 percent, according to Trace, the NASD's bond-price reporting service.
Credit-default swaps on GM debt rose 33 basis points today to 924 basis points, according to CMA Datavision in New York. That's the widest since June 2006. The contracts are designed to protect bondholders against default. A rise in the price indicates a decrease in the perception of a company's credit quality.
To contact the reporters on this story: Jeff Green in Southfield, Michigan at jgreen16@bloomberg.net ; Greg Bensinger in New York at gbensinger1@bloomberg.net .
Last Updated: February 12, 2008 11:39 EST

February 12, 2008
G.M. Reports Quarterly Loss of $722 Million
By NICK BUNKLEY, New York Times
DETROIT — General Motors reported a $722 million fourth-quarter loss on Tuesday and offered more buyouts to all 74,000 of its unionized employees in another bid to keep its turnaround from stalling.
The loss translated into $1.28 a share, compared with a profit of $950 million, or $1.68 a share, in the period a year earlier. The swing was attributed to a drastically slowing vehicle market and big losses at its finance arm, the General Motors Acceptance Corporation.
Fourth-quarter revenue was $47.1 billion, down from $50.8 billion in 2006, because the company has since sold 51 percent of G.M.A.C. and now only counts revenue from its remaining stake. Automotive revenue was $46.7 billion in the quarter, up $3 billion from a year ago.
Excluding what G.M. said were one-time items, profit was $46 million, or 8 cents a share, compared with an adjusted profit of $180 million, or 32 cents a share, in the period a year earlier.
“Clearly, G.M. isn’t standing idle,” Peter Nesvold, an analyst with Bear Stearns, wrote to clients Tuesday. “However, we believe something’s happening that continues to erode G.M.’s earnings power faster than the restructurings can offset.”
For all of 2007, G.M. lost $38.7 billion, the biggest loss ever for an automaker. The loss, equal to $68.45 a share, is about the same amount as a noncash charge of $38.3 billion that the company took in the third quarter to write down deferred tax assets, meaning that G.M. almost broke even otherwise after losing $2 billion in 2006. Excluding special items, the company lost $23 million, or 4 cents a share.
Shares of the company were up 37 cents, to $27.49, in morning trading Tuesday on the New York Stock Exchange.
“We’re pleased with the positive improvement trend in our automotive results, especially given the challenging conditions in important markets like the U.S. and Germany, but we have more work to do to achieve acceptable profitability and positive cash flow,” G.M.’s chief executive, Rick Wagoner, said in a statement.
Worldwide, G.M.’s automotive operations lost $1.6 billion in 2007, including $1.3 billion in the fourth quarter, down from $6.1 billion a year earlier. Sales grew 3 percent in 2007, to almost 9.4 million, barely enough to retain its title as the world’s largest automaker over its surging Japanese rival Toyota.
In North America, the company cut its losses by more than half, to $3.3 billion from $7.5 billion in 2006. But the worsening economy in the United States led to higher fourth-quarter losses in the region: $1.1 billion, compared to $30 million in 2006.
“Despite progress and buoyant markets outside the U.S., falling volumes and competitive pressures in the U.S. will continue to pressure G.M. North America and hence overall G.M. operational results,” Brian A. Johnson, an analyst with Lehman Brothers, wrote in a note to clients Tuesday.
Still, G.M. executives maintained that the company’s North American turnaround plan, which calls for reducing annual expenses by another $4 billion to $5 billion by 2010, remains on track. The company has refused to say when it expects to earn a profit in North America.
“In order to get North America sustainably profitable and generating cash,” said G.M.’s chief financial officer, Frederick A. Henderson, “we must get the job done on both sides — revenue as well as cost.”
To cut costs further in the United States, G.M. said employees represented by the United Automobile Workers union can elect to take buyouts of up to $140,000.
Those eligible to retire can do so with full benefits and a payout of $45,000 for production workers or $62,500 for skilled tradespeople. Those amounts are $10,000 and $27,500 higher than what the company offered in 2006, when 30,000 U.A.W. workers agreed to leave their jobs.
Other options include an early retirement program for workers with slightly less than 30 years of seniority or a cash buyout of either $70,000 or $140,000 in exchange for giving up health care and other post-retirement benefits.
Some of the amounts are less than similar offers recently made available to workers at the Ford Motor Company and Chrysler, although G.M. is giving its workers the option to roll their buyout into a retirement account to reduce taxes.
The Detroit automakers are each hoping to persuade more workers to leave so that they can replace some with new hires earning half as much money, as permitted by two-tier wage provisions in the four-year contracts that they signed with the union last fall. None of the three has said how many workers it wants to leave under the new program.

Now it looks so innocent but the devil is in the details. Notice that the New York Times article omits the fact that GM received a $1.6 billion tax rebate! $1.6 billion dollars in one quarter!!!! Why??? Because "Joe SixPack" reads the Times and Joe is worried about his job , his house, his kids education, and everything else. He does not want to hear that GM, the company that is laying off people every damn day also gets $1.6 billion in tax rebates in one three month period.

Meanwhile, in the Bloomberg article this is a celebration of good business procedures. The bankers and businessmen that read Bloomberg want to know that GM is practicing great business strategies, layig off people and ruining lives, etc., and maximizing shareholders' wealth.

This is a pathetic example of wealth re-distribution in America. It is also a great example of media mis-information to insure that the masses are kept dumb and uninformed... Let me know what you think...