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Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said Monday that no specific action by any one government can make the global economic crisis disappear but that Canada will continue to do its part.

Flaherty, who spoke to reporters after an event in Toronto, said Canada's government will continue to fulfill its obligations to stimulate its economy under an agreement by the Group of Seven most industrialized nations to try to reinvigorate the world economy.

He also said he has received input from the opposition Bloc Québécois about the budget he is preparing, but has not received proposals from the Liberals or the New Democratic Party, the two other opposition parties fast pay day loans. During a political crisis last week that threatened to bring down the Conservative government, the government asked the opposition for ideas on stimulating the economy.

The three opposition parties recently signed a coalition agreement that has the potential to topple the Conservatives from power.

But the government managed to win a rare suspension of Parliament last week and avoided being ousted by the coalition, which said the government's economic plan is inadequate.

Flaherty is scheduled to deliver a budget on Jan. 27.

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European services shrank at a record pace in November, increasing pressure on the European Central Bank to cut interest rates further this week.

Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc’s services index dropped to 42.5 from 45.8 in October, remaining below the expansion- threshold of 50 for a sixth straight month. The final reading is the lowest in the survey’s 10-year history and falls short of an initial estimate of 43.3 published Nov. 21. Economists forecast a decline to 43.3, according to the median of 31 estimates in a Bloomberg survey. The index is based on a survey of purchasing managers by Markit Economics in London.

Europe’s economy fell into its first recession in 15 years in the third quarter after the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression pushed up borrowing costs, eroded confidence and hurt demand for exports. Slowing inflation is giving the ECB room to cut rates further as policy makers across the globe seek to limit the economic damage from the financial turmoil online payday loans.

“The extremely weak November service-sector purchasing managers’ survey exerts significant extra late pressure on the ECB to deliver a deep interest-rate cut on Thursday,” said Howard Archer, chief European economist at IHS Global Insight in London.

The ECB has cut its benchmark rate by 100 basis points, or a full percentage point, to 3.25 percent since early October and signaled more reductions are ahead. The central bank will probably cut its key rate by half a percentage point this week, a survey of economists shows. That would be the third reduction since early October.

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TD Bank Financial Group has reported fourth-quarter net income of $1.01 billion, down from $1.09 billion a year ago, but stressed Thursday it is still providing ample credit to Canadians.

TD said revenue was $3.64 billion in the three months ended Oct. 31, up from $3.55 billion a year earlier but down from $4.04 billion in the third quarter of this year.

Adjusted earnings fell to $665 million, compared with $1.02 billion a year ago.

Earnings per share were $1.22, down by 19 per cent from $1.50 a year ago, and EPS adjusted for one-time items slumped 44 per cent to 79 cents.

The quarterly results "reflected solid earnings contributions from TDBFG’s retail businesses in both Canada and the United States, while illiquid and volatile markets affected the performance of wholesale banking," the bank stated.

TD benefited from non-recurring items during the quarter, including a positive adjustment of $323 million after tax as the bank reversed much of reserves previously set aside for Enron litigation, a gain of $118 million on changes in fair values of hedging derivatives, and a $59-million gain on credit default swaps. These were partly offset by $126 million in amortization of intangibles and $25 million in restructuring and integration items.

Provision for credit losses more than doubled to $288 million from $139 million fast cash advance.

Full-year revenue was $14.67 billion, up from $14.28 billion, with reported net income of $3.83 billion, down from just under $4 billion.

Return on equity for the year fell to 14.4 per cent from 19.3 per cent.

"On the whole, we’re proud of what we’ve accomplished in 2008," stated TD chief executive Ed Clark.

"Our retail businesses are performing very well and, even though TD Securities had a tough year and a particularly tough fourth quarter, we’re pleased that its strategic positioning has protected our investors from the worst of the current turmoil."

Clark added: "As the economy slows, understandably there’s concern from governments and the public that banks may restrict credit. What’s clear from our reporting today is that TD continues to supply credit to its customers and clients."

He said TD’s personal and commercial lending in Canada has continued to grow at an accelerating rate through 2008, despite a general slowdown in credit expansion.

"While the lack of visibility on the economic environment calls for caution, we have a strategy and competitive position that will help us weather the storm," he added.

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Call them resigned or defeatist, but two leading risk managers are already sure of one lesson from the crisis ravaging the global financial system: in one way or another, it’s happened before and it’ll happen again.

“For at least 10 to 15 years, people will remember this very painful experience, take it to heart and balance risk versus return more realistically,” said John Rowe, London-based executive vice president for SunGard, a financial software maker.

“But I say to my younger colleagues: don’t assume this is the last one. If you’re young enough you’ll see the next one,” said Rowe, who used to oversee market risk at Bank of America.

Leaders of the Group of 20 developed and emerging economies have ordered financial supervisors to conduct a root-and-branch review of the shortcomings in regulation and oversight that spawned the credit crisis and still-deepening global slump.

Speaking on a recent visit to Beijing, Rowe saw no need for supervisors to become heavy-handed. But, he said, they should require banks to demonstrate they have the capacity to process their trades from start to finish and value them daily.

“And they should say ‘if you can’t show us, we’ll get real tough’,” he said. “It would slow the pace of innovation to some significant extent, but it wouldn’t completely handcuff the process.”

Even then, Rowe said the best pricing and risk management tools struggle to capture “tail risk” — statistically improbable confluences of events that have materialized with alarming frequency during the crisis, bringing many banks to their knees free credit report.

“People have been too inclined to put complete faith in the scientific certainty of the numbers that come out of all these complicated systems and abandon a certain amount of common sense.

“Part of the problem is not derivatives or risk systems. It’s human psychology at fault here. We’ve met the enemy and it’s us.”

BE HUMBLE

Nikolaus von Bomhard, the chief executive of Munich Re (MUVGn.DE: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), the world’s largest reinsurer, thinks he may have already spotted the next market land mine: before long, the availability of too much cheap cash will once more cause risk to be underpriced.

The appetite for risk may have faded for now, but von Bomhard said he suspected this was just a fad.

“Excess liquidity will sooner or later become an issue again,” he said in an interview at the weekend.

“One or two years out, it will take a lot of discipline to take the liquidity out and not fall into the trap again of chasing yield and disregarding risk.”

As for the claims side of Munich Re’s business, von Bomhard agreed with Rowe that managing risk is as much about trying to understand human nature and technological change as it is about analyzing actuarial tables. 

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Oil prices fell over 6 per cent Monday, to below US$51 a barrel, after OPEC decided not to cut production at an informal meeting in Cairo on Saturday and on more evidence the global economic slowdown will hurt demand for crude.

By midday in Europe, light, sweet crude for January delivery was down $3.62 to $50.81 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract had settled down a penny at $54.43 on Friday.

In London, January Brent crude fell $3.31 to $50.18 on the ICE Futures exchange.

On Saturday, Saudi Oil Minister Ali Naimi said that OPEC will "do what needs to be done" to shore up falling oil prices when the group meets Dec. 17 in Algeria, but for now it was "too early" to make another output cut.

Prices continued to slide despite a separate report by Iranian state TV in which OPEC Secretary-General Abdullah El-Badri said that a daily oil production cut of between 1 million and 1.5 million barrels was likely in December.

OPEC had already made an output cut of 1.5 million barrels a day in October, although analysts said the organization may want to observe the impact of that cut before committing to the another one.

El-Badri was quoted Monday on the station's website saying that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries is facing a very difficult situation and plans to "restore oil prices to $90 per barrel."

But disheartening news from some of the world's largest economies pushed aside speculation about any future OPEC cuts.

Surveys of activity in the manufacturing sector in the euro zone and Britain were particularly poor on Monday. Both pointed to a sharper-than-expected contraction in output.

In China, an equivalent survey of its manufacturing sector also made for grim reading, generating fears that one of the main engines of global growth over the last few years is slowing sharply same day payday loans.

Sucden Research in London cited data from the United Nations, which now expects the global economy to grow by just 1 per cent in 2009, compared to an earlier forecast expecting growth of 2.5 per cent.

Meanwhile, Saudi King Abdullah told the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Seyassah in an interview published Saturday that oil should be priced at $75 a barrel.

"They need to cut a lot to get the price to $75," said Victor Shum, an energy analyst with consultancy Purvin & Gertz in Singapore. "Demand is disappearing underneath them fast."

Iranian Oil Minister Gholam Hossein Nozari was quoted as saying Sunday that the market was oversupplied by around 2 million barrels per day and that production should be cut by that amount.

OPEC, which accounts for about 40 per cent of global supply, reduced output quotas in October by 1.5 million barrels a day.

"It will be difficult to get everyone to comply to a drastic cut," Shum said. "The market has assumed there will be a substantial OPEC cut so if they don't, there will be significant downward pressure on prices.''

Investors will be looking this week for signs of how bad the global economic slowdown may be, particularly U.S. retail sales at the start of the holiday shopping season.

In other Nymex trading, gasoline futures fell 5.16 cents to $1.1580 a gallon. Heating oil dropped 5.66 cents to $1.6705 a gallon while natural gas for January delivery shed 12.8 cents to $6.382 per 1,000 cubic feet.

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With the clock ticking toward a Dec. 11 closing deadline, the $52 billion buyout of BCE Inc. appeared to dodge yet another bullet this week after Washington moved to bail out Citigroup Inc., the deal’s biggest financial backer.

Shares of BCE soared nearly 10 per cent, or $3.39, to $37.94 yesterday on the Toronto Stock Exchange after the U.S. government said a day earlier that it would shield Citigroup from hundreds of billions in losses from toxic assets by injecting $20 billion (U.S.) of capital into the bank.

Investors in the Canadian phone giant had become concerned about the deal’s chances last week as the spectre of bankruptcy was raised at Citigroup.

Such an outcome could put in jeopardy the bank’s commitment to funding the $42.75 per share (Canadian) takeover of BCE by the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.

Citibank is estimated to be contributing between $11 billion and $13 billion of the deal’s $32 billion in financing, while Royal Bank of Scotland Group and Deutsche Bank are believed to be on the hook for between $8 billion and $9 billion each. Canada’s Toronto Dominion Bank has pledged $3 billion in loans.

Greg MacDonald, an analyst at National Bank Financial, said in a note to clients yesterday that bank insolvencies now pose the biggest risk to the deal’s completion, but noted that governments around the world have so far shown a willingness to provide bailouts for the financial sector.

"With recent international stability efforts for the global financial system, we believe the probability of deal close is growing," MacDonald said.

Signed at the height of the market in June 2007, the deal to privatize BCE was quickly thrown into doubt after the crisis in the U business card design.S. subprime mortgage market spawned a corporate credit crunch and, ultimately, a market meltdown.

As a result, investors have been concerned for months that the transaction would be scrapped as the banks backing the deal faced steep losses on the loans they pledged to fund the transaction.

More recently, questions arose about the solvency of the institutions themselves.

The U.S. government’s bailout of Citigroup, which last week revealed a plan to cut 52,000 jobs globally, represents Washington’s biggest effort yet to prevent a major bank from failing.

The bailout would give the U.S. government a 7.8 per cent stake in Citigroup and marks the latest effort to contain a widening financial crisis that has already brought down storied Wall Street investment firms, including Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

The move is designed to protect Citigroup from losses on $306 billion (U.S.) of troubled U.S. home loans, commercial mortgages, subprime bonds and corporate loans when the firms tumbling share price sparked concern that depositors might pull their money and destabilize the company. Citigroup has $2 trillion of assets and operations in more than 100 countries.

The $20 billion of new cash comes on top of a $25 billion infusion the bank received last month under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, passed by U.S. Congress to shore up the financial industry.

Shares of Citigroup surged 57 per cent to close yesterday at $5.95 on the New York Stock Exchange.

With files from the Star’s wire services

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In a sign that the global credit crisis is seeping across Canada’s borders, Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney warned yesterday that the country "has been importantly affected by global events" and hinted that another interest rate cut may be in the offing.

Pointing to "a tightening in credit conditions," Carney said in a speech to the Canada-United Kingdom Chamber of Commerce in London that "the risks to growth and inflation in Canada identified (in October) appear to have shifted to the downside."

Carney emphasized that Canada is weathering the storm better than most major economies.

But around the world, some economists and policy makers are now anxiously considering another worrisome prospect: A deflationary spiral that could make recovery even more difficult.

Those concerns were heightened yesterday by a report that showed U.S. consumer prices plummeted by 1 per cent in October (month-over-month), the biggest one-month decline since record-keeping started.

The drop was driven by a precipitous fall in oil prices, which have lost more than 60 per cent of their value since peaking in mid-July. But core consumer prices, which exclude food and energy, also fell by 0.1 per cent last month, showing broader price declines.

U.S. Federal Reserve vice-chairman Donald Kohn said yesterday that the risk of deflation "is still small in my mind … But it is also the case that whatever I thought that risk was, four or five months ago, I think it is bigger now even if it is still small."

For consumers, the prospect of deflation – an ongoing fall in the general level of prices – might seem appealing.

Under normal circumstances, lower prices are "supposed to signal to people (that) now might be a good time to buy, and that brings about an adjustment," said Gregor Smith, an economics professor at Queen’s University.

"It encourages people to spend, and that helps sales for those companies."

But a period of deflation carries the risk of "a deflation mentality, where people, if they can, postpone purchases because they expect that prices will fall," said Michael Gregory, a senior economist at BMO Capital Markets cash in one hour.

Businesses may follow suit by postponing building plants or buying new equipment in anticipation of lower prices, creating a pernicious cycle of decreasing demand, production cuts and layoffs that can cause demand to dip even further.

Such a spiral is "very hard to break," said Gregory, pointing to the Great Depression of the 1930s, and Japan’s 10-year spiral of falling prices and economic stagnation.

While rare, he added, "it’s a low probability of something really, really bad happening, which weighs in on your policy thinking."

Some officials have publicly mused about the possibility.

"Deflation is probably the worst case for the financial sector because it is very difficult to overcome. Therefore, all central banks are going to do everything to avoid it," European Central Bank policy maker Ewald Nowotny said earlier this month.

But Smith warned not to read too much into yesterday’s U.S. consumer price figures.

"Certainly, the credit crisis … is one of the causes of a fall in demand in the economy. And that in turn can show up in some falling prices," he said.

"Whether it will really show up in deflation is still an open question. I think it’s a bit early to say based on one month’s CPI numbers."

Canada’s consumer price index for October is scheduled to be released tomorrow .

In September, annual inflation stood at 3.4 per cent, just off August’s five-year high.

Minutes from the Federal Reserve’s October meeting, released yesterday, show that officials slashed economic growth forecasts for 2009, and some believed more interest rate cuts might become necessary.

At that session, the central bank cut its key interest rate by a half a percentage point to 1 per cent.

Its next scheduled interest-rate setting meeting is Dec. 16.

The Bank of Canada is to consider its overnight rate, which sits at 2.25 per cent, on Dec. 9.

With files from the Star’s wire services

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For the world’s largest brewery, the sale of Labatt USA represents a small ripple in an ocean of beer.

But for brewery workers in Canada, it could mean the loss of up to 15 per cent of production in Canada within three years.

And for border-town beer drinkers, it means the future of two favourite brands, Labatt Blue and Blue Light, is in doubt.

Belgium-based InBev announced yesterday it had agreed to divest Labatt USA as part of a $52 billion (U.S.) deal to buy America’s largest brewer, Anheuser-Busch Cos.

The U.S. Department of Justice required the divestiture as a condition for approval of the larger deal.

"At this time, it’s too early to tell what the impact will be to our Canadian operations," Charlie Angelakos, a spokesperson for Labatt Brewing Company Ltd., said yesterday.

However, he confirmed the sale of Labatt USA to an unidentified third party would mean the end of production of U.S.-bound beer at Labatt’s Canadian breweries within three years.

The London, Ont.-based company said it brews all the Labatt beer sold in the U.S., which accounts for "just under" 15 per cent of Labatt’s total production in Canada.

The company declined to reveal which of Labatt’s seven breweries ships to the U.S. market, citing competitive reasons.

The breweries are in London, Ont., Edmonton, St freecreditscore. John’s, Nfld., Montreal, Halifax, Creston, B.C. and the recently acquired Lakeport Brewery in Hamilton.

Considered the best-selling Canadian brand south of the border, Labatt USA accounted for 1.7 million hectolitres of production last year.

InBev said yesterday the sale of Labatt USA would have no material impact on its earnings.

The brewer also said it has identified "a number of interested potential purchasers" but has not yet determined a fair market value for the asset.

InBev has owned Labatt since 1995.

Labatt Blue and Blue Light have less than 1 per cent of the broader U.S. market, but upstate New York accounts for 60 per cent of those sales, said Eric Shepard, executive editor of trade publication Beer Marketer’s Insights, based in Nanuet, N.Y.

In Syracuse, Buffalo and Rochester, Labatt competes head-to-head with Anheuser-Busch brands such as Bud and Bud Light. Regulators feared the merger could lead to price increases.

"This divestiture will ensure that consumers will continue to benefit from the significant competition between the merging companies in upstate New York," deputy assistant Attorney-General Deborah Garza said in a statement.

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Thomson Reuters Corp (TRIL.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) (TRI.TO: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) reported stronger-than-expected quarterly results as gains in its professional division more than offset slowing growth in the business that serves financial institutions, sending its shares up as much as 5.5 percent.

The news and information publisher, which was formed by Thomson Corp’s purchase of Reuters Group Plc in April, did not provide financial forecasts for 2009, but affirmed its 2008 outlook for revenue and operating profit margin.

“If you look at our average monthly net sales, they’re positive again through October and positive in the third quarter,” Chief Executive Thomas Glocer said in a phone interview. “If you want to start thinking about growth for next year, that’s a good thing.”

The company’s London shares were up 3.72 percent at 1,117 pence in late trading after trading as high as 1,135 pence.

The London shares are down nearly 30 percent since the stock began trading in April.

Third-quarter net income was $380 million, or 46 cents a share, compared with $2.97 billion or $4.61 per share a year ago. Excluding nonrecurring items, discontinued operations and other items, profit was 48 cents a share, beating the average analyst forecast of 34 cents, according to Reuters Estimates.

Pro forma revenue rose 8 percent to $3.33 billion, topping Wall Street forecasts of $3 short-term cash loans.24 billion. Pro forma figures assume the Thomson Reuters deal had closed on January 1, 2007.

“The numbers look slightly ahead,” said Alex DeGroote, a media analyst at Panmure Gordon in London, adding that Thomson Reuters was “not too bearish on ‘09 markets growth potential.”

Thomson Reuters stood by its forecast for 2008 revenue growth of 6 to 8 percent excluding currency effects, and affirmed its forecast for an underlying operating profit margin of between 19 and 21 percent.

“NOT DISCRETIONARY GOODS”

The company raised its forecast for 2008 free cashflow margin to between 13 percent and 15 percent of revenue, excluding synergy and integration costs.

“We went out in February and said, in a company where there were a million moving pieces moving into an awful market, we would do 6-8 percent growth,” Glocer said.

“The fact that we don’t have to change that is a very good thing. Ditto the margin,” he said.

“Our products are not discretionary goods,” he added on a conference call, reiterating that the markets division, which serves financial institutions, could see positive growth in 2009.

Organic revenue growth at the markets division was 5 percent in the third quarter, slowing from 7 percent in the second quarter. 

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General Motors shook an already embattled auto industry Friday as it reported a huge quarterly loss that was much worse than expected and warned it is in danger of running out of cash in the coming months.

The nation’s largest automaker reported that it lost $4.2 billion, or $7.35 a share, excluding special items. That’s up from the loss $1.6 billion or $2.86 a share it reported a year earlier and was far worse than the forecast of analysts surveyed by earnings tracker Thomson Reuters, which had forecast a loss of $3.70 a share.

But the most shocking news came in its statements about its cash position. GM said it had burned through $6.9 billion during the quarter and warned that it "will approach the minimum amount necessary to operate its business" during the current quarter.

In addition, the company said that in the first half of next year its "estimated liquidity will fall significantly short" of what it needs to continue operating. It said the only thing that would save it would be a significant improvement in economic and automotive industry conditions, help from the federal government, better access to capital markets or some combination of those options.

The report was by far the most grim assessment by a company that has insisted it is not considering filing for bankruptcy court protection. While the release did not mention the threat of bankruptcy, the outlook appeared to raise the possibility of such a dramatic step.

In response to questions on a conference call after the report, CEO Rick Wagoner said he would not speculate on whether GM would need to file for bankruptcy protections.

"We’re convinced the consequences of bankruptcy would be dire and extend far beyond General Motors," Wagoner said. "We need to find a way to get through this and that’s our focus."

Shares of GM (GM, Fortune 500) fell 9% Friday to $4.36, a nearly 60-year low.

Industry experts said the incredibly weak October U.S. auto sales that GM and the rest of the industry reported Monday, coupled with Friday’s report, mean that bankruptcy for GM is a very real risk.

"I think we should be worried [about a bankruptcy] right now," said Robert Schulz, Standard & Poor’s senior auto credit analyst. "We were worried before and the relative level of worry is now heightened."

S&P cut GM’s credit rating deeper into junk bond status to a rating of CCC+ Friday afternoon, not far above the D rating that indicates default by a company.

Shelly Lombard, senior high yield analyst at Gimme Credit, an independent research firm, estimates that GM will need to get between $10 billion and $15 billion in federal assistance in order to avoid bankruptcy by 2010 and that the chance of bankruptcy without help is probably 80% to 90%.

"They didn’t want to speak the B word. It doesn’t sound like they have a lot of options if the government doesn’t step forward," she said, adding that aid for the auto industry that has already been approved by Congress amounted to "bringing a Band-Aid to a train wreck."

Both Schulz and Lombard also said that not even a federal bailout may be able to save either GM or Ford in the long-term considering the problems facing the industry.

"To the extent that they do receive some assistance, it’s more buying time rather than a fundamental solution," said Schulz.

Still, experts agreed Congress will need to take swift action to make any difference for the embattled industry.

"This is not something that can go on and be dealt with in the next year, it needs to be dealt with in the next few weeks," said Dave Cole, chairman of Michigan think-tank the Center for Automotive Research. "When your cash is gone, you’re gone."

One possible endgame scenario reported recently involved a corporate tie-up between GM and Chrysler. Wagoner, without mentioning Chrysler by name, said that GM had ended talks about a possible merger with a Detroit rival to concentrate on the cash crisis it now faces.

"While it’s fair to say we conclude this acquisition could have provided significant benefits, we’ve concluded at this particular time that it’s important we put 100% of our efforts on the immediate liquidity challenges," said Wagoner.

Chrysler issued a statement of its own after GM’s report. CEO Robert Nardelli didn’t comment about the merger talks but said Chrysler would keep looking at various options to end its ongoing losses cash advance loans.

"As an independent company, we will continue to explore multiple strategic alliances or partnerships as we investigate growth opportunities around the world that would aid in our return to profitability," he said.

GM announced a series of steps Friday designed to help it improve its cash reserves by $5 billion. Those steps included cutting another 10% of salaried employment costs, on top of the 20% cut in those costs already planned. In addition to expected staffing reductions, those white collar workers will not get their typical incentive pay next year.

The company will also cut capital spending plans by $2.4 billion in 2009, pushing back development plans for some new models. But it warned that even those steps would not be enough unless conditions improve. It did not announce any plans for additional plant closings or hourly staff cuts in its statement, however.

The company is clearly pinning much of its hopes of weathering the current downturn on an industry bailout from Washington.

"The company has engaged in discussions with various U.S. federal government agencies and congressional leaders about the … the need for immediate government funding support given the economic and credit crisis and its impact on the industry, including consumers, dealers, suppliers and manufacturers," according to a company announcement.

Wagoner joined the chief executives of Ford Motor (F, Fortune 500), privately-held Chrysler LLC, as well as the president of the United Auto Workers union Thursday afternoon in meetings with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to seek support for a wide-ranging bailout package. Both congressional leaders voiced support for additional help for the sector following their meetings.

Among the topics discussed were a $25 billion loan to fund union-controlled trust funds that would be set up in the coming year to cover the health care costs of retirees and their family members. Shifting about $100 billion of those costs from the automakers’ balance sheet to the trust funds was a key concession the companies won from the UAW in the 2007 labor deals.

The discussions also touched on whether the government would allow the automakers to tap the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street firms and banks that was enacted last month. Treasury has so far rejected auto industry inquiries about accessing that pool of money.

The automakers also renewed their pre-election request to double the $25 billion low-interest loan program approved by Congress to help automakers convert operations to make more fuel-efficient vehicles and meet the demands of car buyers and new federal rules.

But Wagoner said just doubling the money available under that program won’t solve the immediate cash crisis facing the industry. And for the first time, he put a dollar amount on the cash that automakers are looking for from the federal government right now.

"In the meeting yesterday we talked near-term liquidity support for the industry in the range of $25 billion," he said. "No one said yes or no to that number."

The company’s problems have been building for many years. It has not made money on its core North American auto operations since 2004, and since that time it has run up $72 billion in net losses, including this latest period.

The company did see a one-time $1.7 billion gain from a change in accounting for its obligation to pay for health care for retirees and their family. That allowed it to post a net loss of $2.5 billion, or $4.45 a share, an improvement from the net loss of $42.5 billion, or $75.12 a share a year ago when it was hit by huge special charges.

Much of the net losses in recent years have been due to non-cash charges, such as the ones a year ago. But even excluding those kinds of special charges, GM’s core auto operations in North America have lost nearly $18 billion over the course of the last 15 quarters.

GM’s announcement came on the same day that Ford Motor reported a $3 billion loss in the period, excluding special items. Even Japanese rival Toyota Motor (TM), which has a much better cash position coming into this crisis, announced Thursday that its third quarter earnings had plunged nearly 70%, as it slashed its full fiscal-year outlook by 50%. 

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