Why are they almost bankrupt and their stock prices lowering?

Because with such high labor cost, their products are overly expensive.Imported vehicles have better gas mileage, are much cheaper, and tend to last much longer.
Basically the same can be said for the other big American manufacturers.

Where to start.

1) Unskilled union labor that (including benefits) makes roughly $50 an hour, unwilling to re-negotiate their contracts for lower wages. Labor is the #1 expense of nearly all businesses.

Southern states have more foreign-car factories, & with ''right-to-work'' laws can treat their employees more like dirt, that is why they're weathering the crisis better. With a ''right to work'' law, an employee is not forced to join a union in order to work at the plant. This lets management pay whatever it wants for cheap, unskilled labor.

2) Decades of retirees & their (very expensive) medical benefits.

3) The incompetentcy of GM management not able to get out of those contracts because they had no foresight to see this coming. Therefore there is no ''going out of business'' clause in their union contracts which lets them lower their salaries & benefits.

4) People flocking to other dealers simply because GM is getting so much bad media lately. After all, why bother buying a car if (according to what the media is saying) the company is not gonna be around in a month or two to uphold things like warranty repairs, recalls, etc.

There r many reasons that GM is not doing so well. The economy is in bad shape( u do not say) people do not have money to spend. Their cars have improved a great deal, but the imports r a little better quality, & the unions have gotten to powerful which has driven the prices of automobiles up, some of the vehicles r not very fuel efficient which people r watching their budgets & do not have money to spend. They will probably be in business for a few more years but wo not be as strong as Toyota or Honda.

Greedy executives - greedy unions - slipshod business practises - mediocre warranties - gas guzzling models - overpriced service departments - more savvy competition - customer backlash .......... the list goes on and on and on and on and on; add nauseum.

There r quite a number of reasons why General Motors is doing so poorly, some of which are:

1. General Motors dominated Consumer Reports' 2008 list of the Least Reliable Vehicles, accounting for 30% of the entries on the list. See:

http://AutoOnInfo.net/NAEd200710BestandWorstCarsbyCR.htm .

2. General Motors dominated Consumer Reports' 2008 list of the Worst of the Worst, accounting for 58% of the the entries on the list. See:

April 2008 issue of Consumer Reports, p. 85
http://AutoOnInfo.net/NAEd200803MuchWorse2008List.htm .

3. General Motors dominated Consumer Reports' 2008 list of Used Cars to Avoid, accounting for 41% of the entries on the list. See:

April 2008 issue of Consumer Reports, p. 85
http://AutoOnInfo.net/NAEd200803CRs2008UsedCarsToAvoidList.htm

4. General Motors dominated AutoOnInfo.net is list of the Worst Automobiles of 2008, accounting for 30% of the entries on the list. See:

http://AutoOnInfo.net/NAEd200711BestAndWorstOf2008.htm .

5. General Motors dominated AutoOnInfo.net 2008 list of the Automobiles with Worst Engine Reliability, accounting for 43% of the entries on the list. See:

http://AutoOnInfo.net/NAEd200804BestAndWorstEngines.htm .

6. General Motors dominated AutoOnInfo.net 2008 list of the Automobiles with Worst Transmission Reliability, accounting for 32% of the entries on the list. See:

http://AutoOnInfo.net/NAEd200804BestAndWorstTransmissions.htm .

7. General Motors dominates Consumer Reports' 2009 list of the Least Reliable Vehicles, accounting for 33% of the entries on the list. See:

December 2008 issue of Consumer Reports, p. 65
http://AutoOnInfo.net/NAEd200811BestandWorstCarsbyCR.htm .

8. General Motors dominates AutoOnInfo.net is list of the Worst Automobiles of 2009, accounting for 32% of the entries on the list. See:

http://AutoOnInfo.net/NAEd200811BestAndWorstOf2009.htm .

9. All of General Motors' lines have a 2009 Composite Reliability Average much lower than Hyundai is & even lower than Kia's. See:

http://AutoOnInfo.net/NAEd200812TheCompositeReliabilityLineAverages.htm .

10. General Motors' 5-year Reliability Percentrank average is .31. For reference, Ford is is .50, Nissan is is .70, Honda is is .84, & Toyota is is .89. See:

http://AutoOnInfo.net/ReliabilityPercentranksMotorVehicle.htm .

11. AutoOnInfo.net is detailed reliability & durability studies suggest that a typical 3-year-old General Motors vehicle will be about as troublesome to own as a typical 19-year-old Toyota vehicle & a typical 26-year-old Honda vehicle, & a typical 5-year-old General Motors vehicle will be about as troublesome to own as a typical 25-year-old Toyota vehicle & a typical 35-year-old Honda vehicle. See the following pages on the AutoOnInfo.net website (both have the suffix .htm ):

DurabilityInformationPage11
DurabilityInformationPage12 .

12. The reliability gap between 6-to-8-year-old Toyota vehicles & 6-to-8-year-old GM vehicles has increased from a spread of .54, on a scale 2 units wide, at the end of the 1980s to a spread of .84 at the end of the 1990s. See the following page on the AutoOnInfo.net website (without the space & with the .htm suffix):

AutoonInfo/ TheBottomLineonReliability .

Here r some additional reasons:

13. GM is U.S. auto market share has been declining about 1 percentage point per year for the past 15 years, as U.S. consumers shift toward higher quality products. See the following page on the AutoOnInfo.net website (with the suffix .htm ):

NAEd200812NovUSAutoSales .

14. The shift has left GM in a weakened financial state. See the following page on the AutoOnInfo.net website (without the space & with the suffix .htm ):

AutoManufacturer FinancialStature .

15. The shift has also left GM with too many brands, plants, & dealerships, as state laws & unions made downsizing to meet demand difficult-to-impossible & prohibitively expensive. See the following page on the AutoOnInfo.net website (with the suffix .htm ):

NAEd200811GMBankruptcyBenefits .

because they have admitted to being dishonest with consumers

Poor management. They paid too much attention and money to cater ALL the bitchin' needs of the UAW. Basically, the end consumer is not their most important priority, their workers are.

Because Toyoooota doing soo goood

simple really.

bad business decisions
stop making big block engines that families cant afford to fill up!!
their not in touch with the majority of the public

They paid unreal high advertising for tv ads,over paid CEOs,over priced cars,took advantage on finance schemes,and didn`t know you after the sale.Thanks GM you really taught us a lesson.