Here is part of the Obama Administration's review of the future viability of General Motors released today by the White House.

General Motors is in the early stages of an operational turnaround in which the Company has made material progress in a number of areas, including purchasing, product design, manufacturing, brand rationalization and its dealer network.

Despite these steps, a great deal more progress needs to be made, and GM's plan contemplates initiatives that will take many years to complete. In the end, GM's plan is based on a number of assumptions that will be very challenging to meet without a more dramatic restructuring in which many of its planned changes are accelerated. A few highlights:

• Market Share: GM has been losing market share to its competitors for decades, yet its plan assumes only a very moderate decline, despite reducing fleet sales and shuttering brands that represent 1.8% of its current market share.
• Price: The plan assumes improvement in net price realization despite a severely distressed market, lingering consumer quality perceptions, and an increase in smaller vehicles (where the Company has previously struggled to maintain pricing power).
• Brands/Dealers: The Company is currently burdened with underperforming brands, nameplates and an excess of dealers. The plan does not act aggressively enough to curb these problems.
• Product mix: GM earns a large share of its profits from high-margin trucks and SUVs, which are vulnerable to a continuing shift in consumer preference to smaller vehicles. Additionally, while the Chevy Volt holds promise, it will likely be too expensive to be commercially successful in the short-term.
• Legacy liabilities: In GM's plan, its cash needs associated with legacy liabilities grow to unsustainable levels, reaching approximately $6 billion per year in 2013 and 2014.

Moreover, even under the Company's optimistic assumptions, the Company continues to experience negative free cash flow (before financing but after legacy obligations) through the projection period, failing a fundamental test of viability.

In short, while the Company has made meaningful progress in its turnaround plan over the last few years, the progress has been far too slow, allowing the Company to continue to lag the best-in-class competitors. As a result, the President's Designee has found that General Motors' plan is not viable as it is currently structured. However, because of GM's scale, franchise and progress to date, we believe that there could be a viable business within GM if the Company and its stakeholders engage in a substantially more aggressive restructuring plan.