They won’t get nothing. They’ll get first dibs on what’s liquidated in Chapter 7. This is Chapter 11. Gov’t wants to hand the company to the union for free. The union is ‘owed’ $20B in payments to a trust. The bondholders actually hold secured debt.
Why should the bondholders back off again?
Everybody thinks bankruptcy means the company ceases to exist. That’s not what bankruptcy is. Bankruptcy is when the company goes to the creditors.
The bondholders are the creditors. If the bondholders end up with the company, they’ll break the union, who by the way should be broken, since they put them in the mess they’re in right now. The union is a supplier, just like any other supplier. They aren’t owners, and they don’t hold secured debt.
Because they own nothing without the treasury paying the company $8 billion.
"Oh no, see, we own the whole company". Which is worth *zero*. Without Fiat, without the UAW, with the entire supplier network screwed, with the bankers all paid nothing, it will not be "the union" that is broken. There will be *nothing*.
Then the workers, and bankers, and Fiat, and US treasury, and suppliers, can make their own new company and call it Dysler. And the bondholders can pound sand.
Or, we could pretend we can all see this, and they can have 29 cents on the dollar to shut up and go away. Or 32, to make their jackass lawyers feel important for another fifteen minutes.
If the old JP Morgan were doing this deal, these bondholders would be told by the banks they'd never borrow a dime again, or they could take 29 cents and like it.
This isn't capitalism and its isn't ownership and it isn't class anything, its just a stickup of the US treasury. There is no reason whatever to give them the time of day.