The misinformation and disinformation from the the Evil Empire minions controlling Washington is truly terrifying. As Glenn said today, they have become so brazen they don't even try to hide it anymore.
Leni
Reporters need to go after Obama on this - it is a blatant lie and he should be called on the carpet. Don’t bet on it.
According to CNN.com’s bailout tracker, the federal government has poured $49.9 billion into GM:
http://money.cnn.com/news/storysupplement/economy/bailouttracker/index.html
So how could the recent “repayment”, or shuffling of dollars, have possibly repaid all the bailout money? It couldn’t have repaid it all and GM could be using semantic gimmickry along with money shuffling: perhaps in technical financial terms the other bailout money wasn’t a “loan” but some other kind of investment in GM. So maybe they did pay back their federal “loans” even though they’ve only paid back less than 20% of the total bailout funding (and that’s if this is not just shuffling money from one TARP account to another.)
I’m a professional investor and trader, and when GM eventually goes public I wouldn’t invest a dime in that company at any stock price. The UAW is way too militant, socialist, and unreasonable about total hourly pay and benefits and will not allow the owners of GM to make any kind of reasonable return on investment. GM’s management certainly made a lot of mistakes. Buying Saab instead of investing that cash in product research and development was probably their biggest mistake. What really killed GM in the end was management’s refusal to reduce costs and headcount in 2007 and 2008, the soaring cost of the UAW’s retiree health care benefits, and the UAW’s reluctance to make serious concessions to reduce that massive health care cost to GM.