General Motors has announced it will remove the GM "Mark of Excellence" logo from its vehicles. The individual brands-Chevrolet, Cadillac, etc.-have been faring better than the corporate name in market testing. "What we're seeing is the GM brand gets dinged big time in terms of considering a GM vehicle," said Mike DiGiovanni, GM's PR marketing brand global honcho for talking. "But when you look at Chevrolet, Cadillac and our other brands, they haven't changed." Except when they have, obviously. "Also," DiGiovanni said "none of the cars are really that 'excellent,'" adding that the company is considering replacing the logo with a new one that says "BMW." (That last part: not really.)

There's a ton of actual news today, which is particularly unusual for a summer Friday. For instance, the New York State Senate is back in business, GM is out of bankruptcy, the other GM has returned to a pageview bonus system, and over in Iran-WAIT, BREAKING! ABC News has cleared Barack Obama of ass-gazing! They've got video and everything! READ MORE

When the Washington Times isn't busy denouncing Barack Obama as Adolf Hitler, Neville Chamberlain, or a cunning Muslim propagandist, it's supplying heart-rending accounts of the small-investor's plight. The Unification Church-financed organ of Right-thinking opinion-affectionately known as "The Afternoon Moon" when it first began thumping its way onto Beltway doorsteps in the 1980s-this week debuts an ambitious multipart package: "The Bondholders," a pioneering effort to depict the true victims of GM's government-managed bankruptcy as the holders of the automaker's corporate debt, muscled rudely aside by claims of the United Auto Workers in the company's sweeping reorganization. READ MORE

Welcome to the unthinkable: General Motors, which used to be the metric of what was good for America, is now a liability on the taxpayers' books. As long predicted, the flailing auto giant filed for bankruptcy yesterday, amid the sort of regimented pundit hand-wringing about the sinister Meaning of It All that you could set your odometer to. READ MORE

Citigroup and General Motors were removed from the Dow Jones Industrial Average today.(Historical note: "By replacing GM with Cisco, Dow Jones & Co. has removed automakers from the best-known benchmark for U.S. stocks, saying in an e-mailed statement that computers are as central to the economy as cars were in the previous century.") Markets being what they are, though, you can totally spin this as good news: "when stocks are deleted from the Dow Jones Industrial Average, they often outperform the ones that replace them." So fuck Cisco and Travelers; savvy investors should go deep on the world's largest bankrupt automobile company-look how quickly things turned around for Chrysler!-and what used to be the world's largest financial firm (currently $3.70 a share, which is much better than back in March, when it was trading below a buck). The market as a whole is currently way up, because, you know, everything's better now!

Holy mackerel. GM is closing 1100 dealerships and closing or selling-off Saab, Hummer, Saturn and Pontiac. Oh no, not the Hummers! They are so life-sustaining and wonderful. I love to see the people driving their idiot-tanks. Update: Much, much more here.

GM and Chrysler will sever ties with up to 3600 dealerships nationwide. "The closings," notes the LA Times, "will dump thousands of large, oddly configured parcels into an already reeling commercial real estate market. Many are likely to remain empty for a long time, monuments to the decline of the U.S. auto industry and the intensity of this recession." Maybe we can convert them into new housing for the wave of recently unemployed autoworkers.

GM is going to lay off 21,000 people. I mean, they are saying that is how many they will lay off, so it is a start, because earlier they said they were only cutting 14,000, and now suddenly it is 21,000. Question! Why would any sane government loan and/or give billions of dollars to a company that is destroying the infrastructure of our country, which is to say, the state of people being homeful and employed and able to shop at the D & W Fresh Market? What failed company is worth saving if it is taking society down with it?

Guess what, no one wants to buy your busted-ass cars! "General Motors Corp. is planning to temporarily close most of its U.S. factories for up to nine weeks this summer." So here is the deal. Companies like GM are almost of no interest to us snooty folks who live in places like New York. Except: they have to be, because the repercussions-not only for the enormous amount of employees for the company but also for their suppliers and their vendors and then their overseas employees-are enormous. This is why we have to pay attention to these boring dull things: because when a couple of cities get burned down this summer, you will totally want to be prepared for that.

"Numerous studies have shown that companies that keep spending on acquisition, advertising, and R. & D. during recessions do significantly better than those which make big cuts." -Jim Surowiecki, New Yorker. Related: Stocks Open Lower as Investors Await Earnings, Brace for GM Bankruptcy.