I have been wondering what GM is worth

I have been wondering what GM is worth. One measure is book value and that is currently sitting at $27.27.GM is also sitting outright on $33.28 in cash per share as the following chart shows. Aren't companies supposed to be a great buy at book value? Perhaps, but what if book value is exaggerated? Let's dissect GM's latest annual report and see what we can find. Balance SheetRight off the bat we see that assets minus liabilities show GM to be worth approximately $15 billion. With various small adjustments the annual report shows shareholder equity to be $14.597 billion. That is yet another possible answer for what GM is worth. But wait a second. What about all of those footnotes? What do they mean? Please consider Note 15.The above is only a portion of Note 15, but the part that is of the most interest. The actual report has other asset categories and the total of all of them is indeed 58,086 as shown in the first chart. The figure to make note of is pension assets of 37,576.Liabilities Pension assets were hidden in note 15, but liabilities were hidden in note 18. Notice that GM broke this out by type of obligation and country of obligation. If you add all of those liabilities up you see that GM has whopping pension and post retirement liabilities of $69.258 billion. $60.899 billion of that is 'US Other Benefits'.Wait a second. Don't the first two chart show that GM declared those liabilities to be $45.301 billion and the declared assets to be $37.576 billion? That difference is a negative $7.725 billion (45.301-37.576). Note 18 shows otherwise. The stated fair value of those assets is $125.457 billion (95.250+9.925+20.282) while the benefit obligation is $194.715 billion (89.13+20.641+81.181+3.760). The difference between $194.715 billion and $125.457 billion is $69.258 billion, yet the balance sheet only accounts for $7.725 billion of it. If the balance sheet properly reflected the true state of its pension plan you should subtract another $61.533 billion (69.258-7.725) from shareholder equity. That calculation puts shareholder equity at roughly a NEGATIVE $46.936 billion dollars (14.597-61.533).Enquiring minds might be asking 'How much longer can GM get away with this nonsense?'The answer it seems may not be much longer. Please consider Reforms to U. S. Pension Funding and Accounting Rules.

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