Recently by David Bailey

If you can't sleep tonight then have a flick through the massive tome that is the S1 filing lodged by GM with the US Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) ahead of its Initial Public Offering (see here for the full document). It runs to several hundred pages. GM has to get SEC approval before it can start, in effect, being privatised.

In approaching the SEC to seek approval for its IPO, GM has had to lay its card on the table in terms of what risks it faces.

In fact, the section entitled "Risks Relating to Our Business" makes a pretty frank assessment of where GM is now and the challenges it faces in the future. While GM has made a remarkable turn-around thus far, with hefty profits in the first two quarters of this year, the $64 billion question is whether it can succeed longer term.

On that the jury is still out, and the challenges GM faces are spelled out clearly in the S1 filing. Some of the highlights (or lowlights) include the following, which I've selected from the S1 and have grouped under headings for this blog:

R&D and innovation are increasingly recognised as playing a key role in delivering economic prosperity (for example, the EU will shortly be producing an 'innovation union communication' linked to the EU2020 Strategy).

And regional policy looks more and more towards the development of brains and not bridges, linked to an increasing interest in creativity and added value through design.

But what's this got to do with regions? Well, some of the key advantages of the regional dimension to policy development and delivery regarding innovation involve the following...

General Motors will take a huge step towards being privatised later this week when it makes an 'S1 Filing' ahead of a planned Initial Public Offering (IPO) later this year. This will reduce the US government's stake holding in the firm from 61% to under 50% and will pave the way for the Obama administration to get out completely.

What a turn around. So far, that is.

GM emerged blinking in the post Chapter 11 sunlight just over a year ago, having eradicated a big chunk of debt, shifted health costs for retired workers to an independent trust, cut a quarter of its US dealership network, renegotiated hourly wage rates with unions and cut brands like Hummer and Saturn. Unions, by the way, were part of the solution here and not the problem as some 'shock jocks' have made out.

After some 20,000 job cuts and numerous plant closures, GM has been quietly engineering one of the most remarkable turn-arounds in corporate history by returning to profitability this year.

Back in the summer of 2007 BBC Radio rang me to talk about the gathering financial storm. I remember the moment well as I was on the way to a christening south of Dublin and my wife pulled over so I could do a quick interview before finding the party.

Three years on, what has changed? Everything and nothing, it seems.

'Everything' in the sense that we as citizens have had to pay the price in terms of lost jobs, higher taxes, and now cuts in public services. The economy is roughly 10% smaller than what it would have been without the huge downturn.

And hundreds of billions' worth of 'toxic assets' that were once on the banks' books have been shifted over to the state and added onto fiscal deficits which anyway had shot up during that downturn both through lower tax takes and higher government spending.

While local authorities scrabble around looking for partners for the LEP dance, I'm left wondering what real powers any of them will really have when the music really starts.

Sadly, the debate on the role of regions in England at least has been hijacked by the rabidly anti-region Communities Secretary Eric Pickles after a Yes-Minister style turf war that saw Vince (once Britain's favourite politician) Cable lose out yet again even though RDAs were part of his BIS patch. 'Were' being the operative word.

Or perhaps I'm being too harsh on Cable - maybe in reality he is more than happy to go along with scrapping RDAs despite some contradictory signals from him since being elevated to office, as he sees this as a great opportunity for a 'land grab' that scoops up some powers back to an otherwise pretty impotent and cash-strapped BIS.

With RDAs about to be scrapped by the new government, attention is now turning to what local bodies will replace them - even if in much watered down form given the huge repatriation of power and money back to London.

While the North East looks as though it will retain a LEP which matches the old configuration of the RDA One North East, debate here is focusing on what might pan out in the West Midlands.

AWM were quick off the mark to try to influence the debates now taking place by saying - quite rightly - that too much fragmentation would be a bad thing. It suggested a maximum of four to six LEPs across the 'old' West Midlands region, and that an orderly transition to a sensible set-up is key.

Most reports in the media and comments by key players suggest that Coventry and the Shires are looking to break away from Birmingham. This is no surprise - it was something that Coventry had anyway done with the old 'city region' structure which was seen by many as too broad and not focused enough.

As days go by we begin to learn more about what the coalition government, now two months old, has in mind in terms of economic development across England.

Leave aside the fact that London can carry on as usual, along with Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, where there is no change to their development agencies. We're talking of course of the English regions, or rather what replaces them.

What do we know so far?

The Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) that will replace the RDAs will, it seems, have to fund their own running costs, with LEPs bidding into a central pot of some £500 million a year (a quarter of what the RDAs had to work with).

And after Communities Secretary Eric Pickles won out in a Yes-Minister style Whitehall Turf War with Business Secretary Vince Cable, popular RDAs in The North East and West Midlands won't after all be able to continue. They're being scrapped, lock, stock and barrel.

The announcement yesterday that nine English RDAs will indeed be axed came after a long-running spat within the Conservative Party over the future of RDAs.

The announcement also represents something of victory for Tory Communities and Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles over Lib Dem Business Secretary Vince Cable.

The latter had only very recently suggested that RDAs in the West Midlands and North of England could survive in some form.

But, as noted by the Birmingham Post, Cable and Pickles have now written to council and business leaders, inviting them to replace RDAs with Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs).

Make no mistake. This is going to be eye-wateringly painful, and it's a huge gamble.

Labour had anyway penciled in some £73 billion worth of tax increases and spending cuts from 2011 in the toughest public spending round since the second world war. Osborne has just whacked on another £40 billion of tightening.

In so doing he unveiled another $32 billion in public spending cuts, £11 billion in welfare reductions and £8 billion in tax increases. Ouch.

We'll leave aside the fact that the Lib Dems had during the election opposed earlier cuts because the recovery was not yet in place, and had opposed a VAT increase as being regressive. I'll leave my blogging colleague John Clancy to offer an informed take on how he sees the Lib Dems and Vince cable in particular in this context (see here).

It seems increasingly likely that what's left of future resources for regional economic development will be channelled towards those regions that have faced the biggest economic challenges - notably the North-East, North-West, Yorks & Humber and the West Midlands.

That was a key message from Business Secretary Vince Cable last week. He admitted that the new coalition Government was indeed "looking at the future" of the RDAs and that business minister Mark Prisk (whom I rate highly among the new crowd in office) would "bring forward new legislation on that".

Cable had earlier said in questions in the Commons that RDAs would be "refocused and made more effective. There will be parts of the country ... where we will have a substantial cutback in RDAs".