GM Fires Marketing Chief but Adds Jobs in Brazil

In separate announcements this week General Motors (NYSE: GM) has announced the sudden resignation of the Chief of Marketing Joel Ewanick and that it has increased its number of employees at its Brazilian operations.

The official word according to GM, is that Ewanick “failed to meet the expectations the company has for its employees”.

GM’s U.S. market share has fallen sharply, to just 18.1% in the first half of 2012 — down from almost 20% a year ago. Combined with the company’s ongoing troubles in Europe, that has taken a lot of the wind out of GM’s turnaround sails and has hit the automaker’s stock price hard.

GM stock is trading at $19.71 today up slightly after flirting with the 52 week low of $18.72. The break even point for the people of the United States to recover the money allocated by the Obama Administration is $53 per share. Considering that the US government owns over 500 Million shares if the shares were sold at today’s price the taxpayer’s would be asked to absorb a loss of nearly $17 Billion.

Adding that to the previous $15 Billion permanent loss on the bankruptcy of the mortgage unit of Ally Bank the losses to the taxpayers of the United States now stand at $32 Billion on the Obama Administration’s $82 Billion bailout of GM.

Losses to private investors and pension funds are not included in these calculations.