General Motors Corp. (GM) CEO Rick Wagoner announced Tuesday that the struggling automaker is taking steps to cut costs, including a 20 percent reduction in salaried employment costs, suspending its dividend, and boost its liquidity by $15 billion into 2009.

The automaker has been hit hard by $4 per gallon gasoline, as the rising fuel prices turned the trickle of Americans seeking fuel efficient vehicles into a deluge, and GM drowning in their decision to market gas-guzzling SUVs and trucks.

Complicating things further is a weak U.S. , shifts in consumer vehicle preferences, and the lowest U.S. industry sales volumes in a decade. GM stock has been trading at 50 year lows, closing down 54 cents Monday to $9.38 per share.

"Since the first of this year, our progress has been threatened as U.S. economic challenges become (more) difficult," Wagoner said. "In the past six weeks, U.S. market and economic conditions have continued to decline. These require us to take further actions."

GM said that the actions announced today, including the sale of up to $4 billion in assets and borrowing $2 billion in capital, would have a cumulative impact of approximately $15 billion on its cash through 2009. The company forecasts sales of 14.7 million vehicles in 2008.

Through a number of internal operating changes and other actions, GM expects to generate approximately $10 billion of cumulative cash improvements by the end of 2009, versus original plans.

GM plans further salaried headcount reductions in the U.S. and Canada in the 2008 calendar year. In addition, care coverage for U.S. salaried retirees over 65 will be eliminated.

These benefit changes, salaried headcount reductions and other related savings will result in an estimated reduction in cash costs of more than 20%, or $1.5 billion in 2009.

Further, truck capacity is expected to be reduced by 300,000 units by the end of 2009, half of which is from acceleration of prior announced actions, and half from new capacity actions.

In addition, GM will reduce and consolidate sales and marketing budgets, with a focus on protecting launch products and brand advertising. These operating actions, combined with the benefits of the 2007 GM-UAW labor agreement, are targeted to reduce North American structural cost from $33.2 billion in 2007 to approximately $26-27 billion in 2010, a reduction of $6-7 billion.

In addition, the GM Board of Directors has decided to suspend future dividends on common stock, effective immediately, which is expected to improve liquidity by approximately $800 million through 2009.

GM is undertaking a broad global assessment of its assets for possible sale or monetization, which is expected to generate approximately $2-4 billion of additional liquidity.

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