GM lowers its sales forecasts

When I said last month that GM was too screwed up to be helped by a temporary cash infusion, I was called an anti-union hack who just wanted to see good union jobs destroyed so that all the workers would have to become footmen in the houses of my rich patrons.

This did not make me any less right about GM being too screwed up to be helped by a temporary cash infusion, apparently:

In a presentation to analysts Thursday, GM executives said it is now planning on total vehicle sales of 10.5 million cars and trucks in the U.S. this year. That's down from an earlier forecast of 12 million vehicles that GM gave to Congress in early December when it first sought federal assistance to keep it out of bankruptcy.

GM President Fritz Henderson said that volatility makes any forecast for sales very difficult, and it is for that reason the company is now using more conservative estimates for sales.

The lowered outlook is important because it could be a sign that GM believes it will need more money in order to make it through this downturn. When GM submitted its turnaround plan to Congress last month, the company said that sales of 10.5 million vehicles in 2009 was a "downside scenario."

The CNN article goes on to speculate that the fine folks at GM may be lowballing their expectations in order to a) get more money from Congress and b) hand analysts a nice surprise at the end of the year.  But it seems to me that if they ask for any more money, they should get a long, hard grilling by Congress about why their forecasts changed so drastically in a month.

They won't get such a grilling, of course; more like Harry Reid will roll over on his back so Rick Wagoner can scratch his belly.  But they should.