Free Republic

Mitt Romney is in favor of the $700 billion TARP corporate-welfare bailout.

<p>Ally Financial Inc.'s troubled mortgage subsidiary filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy early Monday, potentially paving the way for Ally to sever itself from substantial litigation that has been a drag on its other operations and prevented it from repaying the remainder of its government bailout.</p>

If you invested more than $100 in a company, would you be happy if your shares were worth only $36? By anyone’s definition that investment would have been a terrible failure. Yet, that is how the federal government’s investment in General Motors looks. The federal government has put in well over $100 billion into shoring up General Motors, but the entire company, not just what the government owns, was worth only $36 billion on Tuesday. GM sales have bounced around, rising in March and then falling in April, but investors’ best guesses for what future sales will be are already...

Obama's former "car czar" and Willett Advisors chairman Steven Rattner said now is not the time for the U.S. government to sell its stake in General Motors. Any sale should wait until 2013 or even 2014, said Rattner, who led the Obama administration's restructuring of General Motors (GM, Fortune 500) and Chrysler from 2008 through 2009.. "I personally believe there's a lot of value in GM stock that's been badly treated by Wall Street," he told CNNMoney at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles. Shares of GM have dropped roughly 30% since the automaker went public in November...

After 6 terms in the United States senate, long time RINO Orrin Hatch will face his first primary battle after failing to attain the necessary 60% of delegate votes at Saturday’s Utah Republican convention. After falling 32 votes short of the required total on the final ballot, Hatch will take on conservative Republican Dan Liljenquist on June 26th. In 2010 Hatch watched nervously as Utah colleague Robert Bennett was removed from the Senate in his own primary contest, a victim of having too often sold-out the conservative Republican base. Concerned with mounting criticism of his own predilection for confirming Marxists...

We are busy in Washington with a corrupt government, with a government that I said perhaps because of the money, the amount of TARP and stimulus funds, was going to be the most corrupt government history and it is proving to be just exactly that. This money going though the hands of political leaders is corrupting the process, whether it is Solyndra, GSA, or a number of other scandals. Our mandate is to go after the wrongful acts of government or to review for reorganization laws already passed."

Yesterday on Laura IngrahamÂ’s radio show, she asked Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell about a recent Roll Call article that framed me as one of the loud leaders of conservatives opposed to Mitch McConnell. The Senator from Kentucky responded that he had never heard of me and I did not have an audience. That sounds a bit like the child, when asked if he ate the cookie, replying that he had not and besides it did not taste good. If heÂ’d never heard of me, how can he comment on my audience? If he states plainly I have no audience,...

I am not one to begrudge Mitt Romney for his wealth and how he got it, but I do begrudge him for stipulating and perpetuating a lie that he is not a banker. Mitt Romney is worth a staggering $250 Million and is a banker in every sense of the term. Most of this wealth was earned as the CEO of a Private Equity shop where he and his team flipped companies for profit by making them more lean, i.e. firing people and selling assets. Take a look at the top campaign contributors for Mitt Romney and Ron Paul and...

GM announced plans to build the new 2013 Cadillac XTS luxury sedan [in China].

Notice: Free Republic has been in full rebellion mode since 2008 and will remain in full rebellion mode for the duration! No more Doles!! No more McCains!! No more RINOS!! NO ROMNEY!! Those who cannot stomach rebellion might as well start looking for a new home on the net!! Those who have ignored my hundreds of posts on this crucial issue or who have doubted me these last three or four years might as well get used to it. FR will never support the abortionist, homosexualist, socialist, mandate loving, constitution trampling liar Mitt Romney. In case you haven't noticed, a...

Governor Romney’s campaign is catching some flak because a top aide implied that many of the candidate’s positions have been insincere and that Romney will erase those views (like an Etch-a-Sketch) and return to his statist roots as the general election begins. I’m surprised that anyone’s surprised. Hasn’t anybody been paying attention to his comments and track record on issues such as the value-added tax, healthcare, Social Security reform, budget savings, ethanol subsidies, Keynesian economics, and the minimum wage? In any event, people should be more agitated by his recent defense of the corrupt TARP bailouts. [...] This is going...

Mitt Romney decided to give a great big hug to… George W. Bush and the bank bailouts: “I keep hearing the president say he’s responsible for keeping the country out of a Great Depression,” Romney said at a town hall in Arbutus, Maryland. “No, no, no, that was President George W. Bush and [then-Treasury Secretary] Hank Paulson.”

<p>The Government Accountability Office says in a new report that banks that have repaid the Treasury Department's TARP bailout program did so with funds they received from other federal rescue programs.</p> <p>The GAO’s finding undercuts the Treasury’s prior statements that effectively assert the Troubled Asset Relief Program has earned a profit for taxpayers. Specifically, the GAO says that, according to its new review, “as of January 31, 2012, 341 institutions had exited,” TARP, almost half by repaying...with funds from other federal programs.”</p>

General Motors reached another Obama milestone when they announced late on a Friday afternoon that they were suspending production of the Obama-inspired Chevy Volt for five weeks due to lack of demand. Presumably the Volt was an attempt by GM to help Obama with his pledge to put 1 million electric cars on the road in return for the tens of billions of dollars in forgivable “loans” that the company got from the Obama administration from the TARP bailout. The hybrid gas-electric vehicle gets 25 miles on a full, overnight charge and costs around $40,000. To date, GM has sold...

Does the Tea Party now support politicians who favored bailouts and the ObamaCare individual mandate? Such a statement sounds like an oxymoronic joke, about as likely as a pacifist who backs war or an atheist for Jesus. But the answer, according to exit polls from New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Florida primaries, is an emphatic “yes.” According to each of these exit polls, the vast majority of self-identified Tea Party supporters have backed either former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (left) or former House Speaker Newt Gingrich over anti-bailout candidates such as Texas Congressman Ron Paul, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum,...

Instead of appealing to voters to vote for him based upon x,y and z, he panders for votes by trying to increase his opponents negatives (as in FL) above his own by massively outspending them on negative ads. This approach has led to his negatives skyrocketing and his positives declining among independents and moderates. Fivethirtyeight and others have been monitoring this, and it isn't pretty. With each battle won (temporarily in Iowa and now Florida), he is headed to surpassing Obama's negatives or having lower positives (some show he already has) and he will ultimately lose against Obama if he...

WASHINGTON (AP) - A government watchdog says U.S. taxpayers are still owed $132.9 billion that companies haven't repaid from the financial bailout, and some of that will never be recovered. The bailout launched at the height of the financial crisis in September 2008 will continue to exist for years, says a report issued Thursday by Christy Romero, the acting special inspector general for the $700 billion bailout. Some bailout programs, such as the effort to help homeowners avoid foreclosure by reducing mortgage payments, will last as late as 2017, costing the government an additional $51 billion or so. The gyrating...

Mitt Romney has been quick to justify his record of laying-off workers and closing plants as CEO of Bain Capital by wrapping himself in the “creative destruction” of free market capitalism But Romney’s idea of capitalism is that you can fire workers and strip companies on the way up, and then if you are big and influential enough, demand taxpaying workers bail you out on the way down. While Romney’s supporters are putting up a heavy smoke screen, Tea partiers should understand that, as a supporter of the TARP Wall Street bailout, Romney’s “creative destruction” only applies to Main Street,...

The Treasury Department has been disclosing financial information about bailout programs in press releases only if the initiatives are expected to bring money in to the government, a new federal audit has found. The Government Accountability Office found that financial information for Troubled Asset Relief Program initiatives that are projected to cost the government money long-term – like the injection of capital into the American International Group – were not included in Treasury releases. “Although press releases for programs expected to result in a cost to Treasury provide useful transaction information, they exclude lifetime, program-specific cost estimates,” G.A.O., Congress’ investigative...

General Motors Co. (GM) has hired management consultant Hackett Group (HCKT) to help identify areas to cut an undetermined number of white-collar jobs, said two people familiar with the matter. Hackett Group, based in Miami, will help identify opportunities for cuts and efficiency improvements at headquarters and elsewhere in North America, said the people, who asked not to be identified revealing private plans. GM has been trimming engineers and other white-collar staff, said Jay Cooney, a spokesman, who declined to comment on whether the Detroit-based automaker had hired Hackett Group.