The only winner of the GM bailout was Obama 2012: GM Should Have Been Allowed to go Bankrupt

American Thinker ^ | 11/30/2018 | Silvio Canto Jr.

[SeekAndFind]

Back in 2012, the Obama reelection team reminded us that they got Osama bin Laden an

d saved GM.  It probably gave Obama Ohio at less than 200,000 votes out of 5 plus million cast.  It did not hurt in Michigan.  It certainly energized the unions to cast ballots for the man who "saved" their jobs.

Yes, they got Osama bin Laden.  But they didn't really save GM or do the workers any favor on a long-term basis.

Looking back, the GM bailout was a partisan band aid.  I like what Kevin D. Williamson wrote about this:     

What did U.S. taxpayers get for their $11.2 billion bailout of GM? About ten years of business-as-usual, and one very expensive lesson.

Bailouts don’t work...

GM’s sedan business is weak because GM’s sedans are weak: Virtually all of the best-selling sedans in the United States are made by Toyota, Honda, and Nissan. 

The lower and middle sections of the market are dominated by Asia, and the high end of the market by Europe: Mercedes, Audi, BMW. GM can’t compete with the Honda Civic at its price point or with the Audi A7 at its price point. 

Consumers like what they like, and they aren’t buying what GM is selling. It isn’t winning in the dino-juice-powered market, in the electric-car market, or in the hybrid market, either: GM is not exactly what you would call a nimble corporation.

So, things are grim for GM.

On the car front, anyway. GM has a much healthier business selling trucks and SUVs, a business that it now will focus its resources on -- as it should have done long ago. 

Why didn’t it do that?

[Howie66]

I believe that many of us thought so at the time.

[Doogle]

POS...*spit*

[Buckeye McFrog]

and one very expensive lesson. Bailouts don’t work...

Unfortunately that is not the lesson that Americans have internalized from the 2008-09 time frame.

Instead they have concluded "well, hell, there's no reason the Federal Government can't bail ME out too!"

[Pelham]

I like what Kevin D. Williamson wrote

The National Review writer who thinks that Rust Belt whites should just go die?

Well of course he wouldn't care if GM went out of business. It would only affect the serfs who work on those production lines.

[Texan]

And the bond holders got the shaft in that bail out. First time that’s ever happened if I’m not mistaken.

[circlecity]

Uh, I believe GM DID go bankrupt. They filed a chapter 13 Bankruptcy and were allowed to restructure in a very unconventional fashion screwing millions of bondholders. The Unions came out like a rose though.

[Manly Warrior]

I stated this position loudly when it was occurring- let the market and the “invisible hand” decide what company the auto industry should belong to. I was ridiculed and vilified for being s uncompassionate for the 100 of Ks of workers who would lose their jobs. (????)

Kinda funny how that works in reality- Company A runs their organization into the ground, goes belly up, Company B buys it and its assets and gets to work in short order, ( so where did all the “new” companies workers come from?). Life goes on.

All the Congress did ( and yes, it was congress’ fault-all monies come from the House) is prop up the CEOs and pension funds and unions, but mortgage the taxpayer all the more.

I like Trump’s take on it- put pressure on GM to make something that will sell, the green car crap doesn’t cut it, even if it was the corporate price to be paid for doing business with the politicians- who are so well known for making wise fiscal decisions.....

So who cares if Ford or Toyota or whomever becomes the de facto owners of the GM lines and pays its former workers?

Same thing happens to small companies too. Bob’s Plumbing goes TU, Ralph his competitor buys his assets and expands a bit, hires Bob as his branch manager (maybe not)....

The Upper echelon management are the ones who lose their jobs and cushy arrangements, and they are the ones who have the congress critters attention via political donations etc. Did I mention that? Oh Noes!

[SeekAndFind]

In the first place, going Chapter 11 does not mean the company will never do business again. They make a lot of cars that people still want and THOSE will still be kept in production by whoever acquires their business.

It simply means that the markets get to sort out which of their products are good and which are bad and with that, they learn to be more competitive and build better cars that PEOPLE REALLY WANT ( instead of the money-losing Chevy Volt for instance ).

[Clutch Martin]

“Bailouts don’t work...”

The remnants of GM would have been acquired by some other automobile Manufacturing conglomerate and they would have continued the GM brand. It happens all the time. Look how many companies Ford had acquired over the years over time, I think they were producing Jaguar, Volvo, Saab... It’s common practice for businesses to fail and other businesses to band together or perhaps even monopolies to band together and not bail them out, but buy them out. That’s what happens.

When the government tries to intervene what happens is they disrupt the laissez-faire values that really started capitalism in this country, without government restrictions.

Government function in a country of business is to ensure that Commerce can flow in and out of the ports and harbors and down the waterways on impeded so that business May flourish.

[Celerity]

“instead of the money-losing Chevy Volt for instance “

The car that Obama said he would buy when he was done stinking up the white house.

And he never did, of course.

[Liz]

Looking back, Obama's bailout of GM was a partisan band aid.
Kevin D. Williamson wrote: What did U.S. taxpayers get for their $11.2 billion bailout?
About ten years of business-as-usual, and one very expensive lesson.

Anybody who has studied the Halfrican KNOWS...he did nothing until he knew what was in it FOR HIM.

===========================================

Here's another bailout gem, the Halfrican's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), Obama’s disastrous initiative to rescue the nation’s ailing financial institutions.

EXCERPT---FOURTEEN TRILLION DOLLARS Behind The Real Size of the Bailout; A guide to the abbreviations, acronyms, and obscure programs that make up the $14 trillion federal bailout of Wall Street
SOURCE motherjones.com --- Mon Dec. 21, 2009 12:23 PM PST

The price tag for the Wall Street bailout is popularly put at $787 billion—---the actual size of TARP--the Troubled Assets Relief Program. But TARP is just the best known program in an array of more than 30 overseen by Treasury Department and Federal Reserve that have paid out or put aside untraceable money to bail out financial firms and inject money into the markets.

To get a sense of the size of the real $14 trillion bailout, see MJ chart at web site. A guide to the pieces of the puzzle includes massive untraceable Treasury Department bailout programs.

Money Market Mutual Fund: In September 2008, the Treasury controlled by Obama/Emanuel announced that it would insure the holdings of publicly offered money market mutual funds. According to the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP), these guarantees could have potentially cost the federal government more than $3 trillion [PDF].

Public-Private Investment Fund: This joint Treasury-Federal Reserve program bought toxic assets from banks and brokerages—as much as $5 billion of assets per firm. According to SIGTARP, the government's potential exposure from the PPIF is between $500 million and $1 trillion [PDF].

TARP: As part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the Treasury controlled by Obama/Emanuel made loans to or investments more than 750 banks and financial institutions. $650 billion has been paid out (not including HAMP; see below). As of December 21, 2009, $117.5 billion of that has been repaid.

Government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) stock purchase: The Treasury controlled by Obama/Emanuel bought $200 million in preferred stock from Fannie Mae and another $200 million from Freddie Mac [PDF] to show that they "will remain viable entities critical to the functioning of the housing and mortgage markets."

GSE mortgage-backed securities purchase: Under the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, the Treasury controlled by Obama/Emanuel may buy mortgage-backed securities from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. According to SIGTARP, these purchases could cost as much as $314 billion ---SNIP---.

LONG READ---go to web site to read more and checkout the shocking financial charts.

SOURCE http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/12/behind-real-size-bailout

[Alberta's Child]

That's a valid point, but let's remember that the auto industry in this country has long been a textbook case of fascism at work. It's a simple three-way relationship where everyone benefits except the customer/taxpayer:

1. The UAW delivers the votes to their favored politicians.

2. The corporate management finances the political campaigns of those elected officials, and pays their UAW workers far more than the market would ever support without their political influence.

3. The politicians vote to appropriate taxpayer funds to support the company with direct subsidies and/or unnecessary purchases of the products the company makes.

This fascist scheme worked fine in the post-WW2 decades when the U.S. was the only major country to emerge from the war with its industrial capacity intact. It's been a disaster ever since the rest of the world caught up to us. That's why you're reading a story like this about GM even as Asian and German auto manufacturers are opening new plants all over the Sun Belt.

[bigbob]

The inevitable result of BK is a smaller, leaner company. What should have happened then is happening now.

[nikos1121]

Bush and Obama were a tandem team of incompetents. I think Reagan said, what’s wrong with bankruptcy?

[central_va]

Except half the cars are built by non-union workers. Overall, the union bogey man is a joke. Only 10% of the US manufacturing workforce is in a union.

[butlerweave]

Did the Obamas get Free Cars for life ?

[Liz]

Here's another Halfrican scam......of course, left-wingers repaid Obama with hefty campaign donations.

House Judiciary Committee Chair Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), revealed that the Obama Justice Dept (aided and abetted by Congressional Democrats and then-AG Eric Holder) apparently violated US laws by demanding settlements from businesses in the form of "mandatory donations” to left liberal activist groups.

Over the past two years those coerced "donations" amounted to a billion dollars.

In an apparent looting and shakedown scheme akin to an organized crime MO, left-wing interest groups (a) the radical La Raza, (b) the Urban League, (c) the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, (d) Neighborhood America (formerly ACORN) that stood to gain from mandatory donation provisions were they, themselves, involved in placing self-serving provisions in the Obama govt's shakedown scheme.

Committee Chairman Goodlatte and House Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling have questioned why this money was sent to the ACORN clone and the blood-thirsty LaRaza----rather than to the alleged victims of the bank’s crime.

The administration of course declined to answer.

Here's part of the Congressmen's letter to Holder: “It seems that the alleged victims are not the primary beneficiaries of these multi-billion dollar settlements. Instead, the terms in the Justice Department’s two latest settlements look less like consumer relief and more like a scheme to funnel money to politically favored special interest groups.” “This makes 'donations' to activist groups far more attractive to banks than providing direct relief to injured consumers. As a result, the settlements appear to serve as a vehicle for funding activist groups rather than as a means of securing relief for consumers actually harmed.”

[Brilliant]

They DID go bankrupt.

[Liz]

GOV'T FRAUD AT ITS FINEST and Democratic votes to boot. He exposed the Clinton Foundation frauds in "Clinton Cash," but in his earlier book, "Extortion," author Peter Schweitzer writes about Obama and Eric Holder, using the Justice Dept and assorted govt agencies to extort Big Money ....threatening jail-time unless the targets fork over billions. Read on.

The Largest, Best Funded Voter Fraud Operation in US History Happening Before Your Eyes
Red Statements ^ | 3/12/2015 | Steven Ahle / FR Posted by HomerBohn

So you say you want a permanent democratic majority? But what about the massive amount of money that's needed? Obama, and congressional democrats, along with a huge assist from Eric Holder add the shady ACORN into the mix by changing ACORN to "NeighborWorks America." Both NeighborWorks America....and La Raza....provide the manpower.....and now have a huge funding source.

The DOJ has sued several banks and made settlements in which the banks have paid 24 billion in fines. One of the banks, CitiCorp was also ordered to pay $50 million to La Raza and NeighborWorks America as part of the settlement. But wait, it doesn’t stop there. Another clause in the agreement makes it possible for La Raza and NeighborWorks America to rake in even larger amounts of money. Of the remaining money the banks needed to pay in settlements, the banks were able to contribute additional money to La Raza and NeighborWorks America. For every dollar they contribute, it reduces their debt to the government by 2 dollars. That’s some mighty powerful incentive to give generously.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and House Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling have questioned why this money was sent to the two organizations rather than to the alleged victims of the bank’s crime. The administration of course declined to answer.

--SNIP--

=====================================

So now, with Social Security cards, manpower and tons of money to go along with the two years before the next presidential election, the largest and most successful voter fraud campaign may alter the course of the elections not to mention the future of the United States.

GET THIS--Within the first couple of months of Obama’s illegal immigration executive memos he signed on AF One, at least ninety thousand Social Security cards were issued to illegal aliens. Now Senators Ben Sasse and Jeff Sessions want answers on how many additional social security cards were issued. The answer is important because it will allow citizens to know just how much money taxpayers are spending on illegal aliens. Social Security cards are keys of the kingdom to illegal aliens. With them, they are able to access a number of all sorts of benefits, including the Earned Income Tax Credit, Social Security disability payments or Social Security’s supplemental income program.

The Republican senators wanted to know how much in benefits these illegals have collected. The senators have yet to connect the dots in Obama’s real scheme. Let me help them out.

Social Security cards besides making illegals eligible for benefits, can have a more profound problem for the United States. The cards make it very easy for illegals to register to vote, even in states with voter ID laws. One of the documents accepted for registering to vote is…………(drum roll please).....Social Security cards. But administration officials don’t dare instruct the illegals on how to vote and many might not trust them. The Washington Times explains how easy it would be to add millions of new voters through the democrat’s illegal amnesty.

THE SCAM IS EXECUTED So how do you get around this? Simple. You have the latino-centric America hating La Raza do it. Yes, La Raza actually teaches illegal immigrants where and how to register and vote. With the advent of so many illegals being able to vote and limited resources, La Raza couldn’t possibly handle the volume or afford to spend the kind of money necessary to facilitate such a huge undertaking.