Posted on 03/30/2009 10:10:10 AM PDT by beacon street bandit
The forced departure of GM CEO Rick Wagoner represents the new corporate reality in the bailout era. It's hard to argue against government intrusion of any kind when corporations become the recipients of massive sums from the Federal Treasury.
The argument of those who assert that the federal government has no right or no business intervening in the operation of the company is unavailing and unpersuasive. When you go to the public trough, not once, but twice, you risk foregoing your corporate independence. Do those who will be outraged at Obama's action maintain that GM should have been allowed to continue with its failed business plan indefinitely while on the public dole?
For Obama, Wagoner was an easy target. While at the helm of GM, Wagoner rode the SUV and truck crest for too long. When gas prices spiked this past year, many of those vehicles sat on dealers lots unsold. For Obama, this was a particularly egregious sin and one for which current political conditions made it auspicious…
(Excerpt) Read more at examiner.com ...
Time to move your corporate HQ to Switzerland. If your company sells or manufactures more than 50% of it product overseas..you should leave the US. Save money on taxes and avoid government control.
It’s time for the people to call for impeachment.
Notice how he has not fined or fired any wall street or banking execs.
Amen to that but then again the AIG people are still on the Welfare roles and worse taking part in developing bailouts!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2218046/posts
http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message759613/pg1
Sure did and I may not agree with this totally but here is a good point!
United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard likes to say that Washington policymakers “treat the people who take a shower after work much differently than they treat the people who shower before they go to work.” In the 21st century Gilded Age, the blue-collar shower-after-work crowd is given the tough, while the white-collar shower-before-work gang gets the love, and never before this week was that doctrine made so clear.
Following news that government-owned American International Group (AIG) devoted $165 million of its $170 billion taxpayer bailout to employee bonuses, the White House insisted nothing could be done to halt the robbery. On ABC’s Sunday chat show, Obama adviser Larry Summers couched his passive-aggressive defense of AIG’s thieves in the saccharine argot of jurisprudence. “We are a country of law — there are contracts (and) the government cannot just abrogate contracts,” he said.
The rhetoric echoed John Adams’ two-century-old fairy tale about an impartial “government of laws, and not of men.” Only now, the reassuring platitudes can’t hide the uncomfortable truth.
Last month, the same government that says it “cannot just abrogate” executives’ bonus contracts used its leverage to cancel unions’ wage contracts. As the Wall Street Journal reported, federal loans to GM and Chrysler were made contingent on those manufacturers shredding their existing labor pacts and “extract(ing) financial concessions from workers.” In other words, our government asks us to believe that it possesses total authority to adjust contracts at car companies it lends to, and yet has zero power to modify contracts at financial firms it owns. This, even though the latter set of covenants might be easily abolished.
According to New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, these allegedly inviolate AIG agreements promised bonus money the company didn’t have and were crafted by executives who knew the firm was collapsing, meaning there is a decent chance these pacts could be invalidated under “fraudulent conveyance” statutes.
They also might be cancelled via “force majeure” clauses allowing one party to rescind a pact in the event of extraordinary circumstances — like, perhaps, the collapse of the world economy. (Note: BusinessWeek reports that corporations are already citing the recession as reason to invoke such clauses and nix their business-to-business contracts.)
But, then, those legal cases require a government that treats AIG’s shower-before-work employees with the same firmness that it treats the auto industry’s shower-after-work employees, not the government we currently have — the one that believes “the supreme sanctity of employment contracts applies only to some types of employees but not others,”
With Wags 20 million payout....it does not seem like much of a “firing”.
Wagoner should not have went and begged for a taxpayer bailout. Except for the “class warfare” crowd...few will defend the removal of Wagoner...too much sympathy for those who have failed
GM is being run by a community organizer ... good Lord! (... and No I wouldn’t buy a car from a company run by a community organizer).
I noticed that none of the Wall Street losers have been canned...in fact we give them more bonuses to stay (AIG)...
Furthermore the auto-makers, unlike Wall Street....actually can create real wealth by taking raw materials and manufacturing them into valuable products....Wall Street just redistributes (and pockets) wealth
I will not be buying a government vehicle.
Remember when the government took over the financial industry? That's right, a bunch of politicians were suddenly employed as executives and placed on the boards. That worked out great.
Now the government is in the Insurance business and the Auto industry. They will be in the construction industry soon. As it is, all of the government money is locked into Davis Bacon wages and has certain demands that disqualifies most of qualified bidders.
If your company does not have an affirmative action plan in place (i.e. tracks the race and sex of the company staff by percentage and sets certain criteria), your company is not a qualified bidder.
I would not buy a GM vehicle now.. with this government warranty guarantee is enuff to scare me off..I cannot get an answer back from a congressman.. imagine getting an okay to fix a car..from Obamas car tech . weeks, days, months, where would it end...
Better hurry! Socialist countries impose killer taxes to punish this.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2218187/posts
Wagoner walks off with $20 MILLION not too bad of a TAKE!
I believe they should have filed for bankruptcy in lieu of the bailouts.
Would wagoner still walk away then with the $20 mil?
Excellant and thanks
It depends on what his contract says and what the law allows. Either way, it would not be an issue for the government to settle and tax paying citizens would not have to worry about it, unless you worked for the company in bankruptcy.
Now the government is trying to save thousands at the expense of millions. Sounds like socialism to me.
Sell Michigan to Canada. QUICK!!!!!!!
That and he has been handsomely paid by them!
EXCLUSIVE:
President Obama continued collecting money for his 2010 Senate re-election campaign even after he resigned his seat from Illinois, including a maximum $2,300 donation the day after Christmas from a top executive of a Wall Street firm that had received a government bailout.
Four contributions - $4,800 in all - were donated to the Obama 2010 fund on Dec. 26, according to Federal Election Commission reports.
The money came from some of Mr. Obama’s top presidential fundraisers: Bruce A. Heyman, managing director at Goldman Sachs, which received a $10 billion bailout last year; Steven Koch, vice chairman at Credit Suisse First Boston; and John Levi, a lawyer at the law and lobbying firm of Sidley Austin LLP.
The donations are legal, but the timing is unusual because Mr. Obama formally left the Senate on Nov. 16 and already had a surplus in his Senate campaign treasury.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/mar/27/obama-raised-cash-even-after-leaving-senate/
From No Quarters...
Let’s start with the numbers. Why is a first term Senator pulling down almost $300,000 a year from Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, Countrywide Financial, and Washington Mutual? He has not even completed his fourth year in the Senate and received a total of $1,093,329.00 from these eight companies and their employees. (all data from OpenSecrets.org). John McCain’s numbers, according to OpenSecrets.org for the period 1990-2008 (i.e., 18 years worth of data) only collected $549,584.00. In other words, Barack is receiving $273,582.25 (and 2008 is not over) per year while McCain raised a paltry $30,532.44.
Want another shocker? Barack Obama has received more from one source–Goldman Sachs $542,252.00–than McCain has from all of the companies combined. Who the hell is more beholden to lobbyists? And why does a junior Senator from Illinois rate this kind of dough?
http://www.noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/09/21/baracks-wall-street-problem-is-now-americas/
CITI-FRAUD, PURPOSELY or incompetently The Resident cut a real bad deal for US!
While sucking us dry to the tune of $45 Billion!
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE52F3MP20090316
Movin on Up to the Treasury
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123732747181462245.html
US of Citi-fraud, Coincidence??
http://www.americablog.com/2009/02/united-states-of-citibank.htmlh
Top Donor to the Resident’s Inaugeration.
http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/citibank_obama_donors/2009/01/15/171703.html
AIG Kickback
http://www.redstate.com/california_yankee/2009/03/17/obama-received-a-101332-bonus-from-aig/
Freddie/Fannie Payoffs
Government Sachs
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/03/government_sachs_tarp_funds_just_the_tip
_of_th_ic.php
From Op Ed
While not on the Center for Responsive Politics list of the top 20 contributors to the Obama presidential campaign, Mayer-Brown’s partners and employees are in rarefied company, giving a total of $92,817 through December 31, 2007, to the Obama campaign. Seven of the Obama campaign’s top 14 donors consist of officers and employees of the same Wall Street firms These seven Wall Street firms are (in order of money given): Goldman Sachs, UBS AG, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse. There is also a large hedge fund, Citadel Investment Group, which is a major source of fee income to Wall Street. There are five large corporate law firms that are also registered lobbyists; and one is a corporate law firm that is no longer a registered lobbyist but does legal work for Wall Street. The cumula tive total of these 14 contributors through February 1, 2008, was $2,872,128
Obama’s Money Cartel
http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/genera_pam_mart_080226
_obama_s_money_cartel.htm
Also see
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?id=N00009638&cycle=2008
And how SWEET it is to be on his list of Bribers! Citi-FRAUD who was broke remember?
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE52F3MP20090316
Still broke not long ago and YET!
Now Movin Back On Up!
Citi plans fund to buy undervalued bank debt
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.