I hope you did not buy stock in General Motors last summer when it was trading around $20 a share.

Hey, maybe you fell for the big story in Barron's in early June that was promoted on the cover with a blue background and the simple exhortation: Buy GM.

That would have been a big mistake because its share price fell to almost a dollar this week, reportedly its lowest levels since the Great Depression. (Actually, that's bogus because the stock has split a number of times since then.)

Indeed, it was trading at around $40 in October 2007.

But the decline was underscored by the news that a group of GM executives had dumped about $300,000 worth of stock.

They included the retiring vice chairman Bob Lutz who was the point man for GM's much ballyhooed but still to be delivered electric car, the Chevrolet Volt, while stating publicly that he personally does not believe in global warming.

Where's George Orwell when we need him?

Indeed, the failure by the American auto companies to take the lead in developing alternative fuel vehicles was underscored this week by the news that Honda's new gas-electric hybrid, the Insight, was the best selling vehicle in Japan last month, according to The Associated Press.

It was the first time a hybrid has taken the top spot.