Free Republic

HER silver tongue honed by decades in corporate marketing, Carly Fiorina has used two debates, and a steely determination on the campaign trail, to climb near the top of the polls for the Republican nomination. But Americans should pause on her biggest professional credential for our highest office: a short, disastrous stint atop one of America’s iconic technology companies, Hewlett-Packard. The clearest measure of her performance — and the report card preferred by Wall Street — is H.P.’s stock price, which dropped by 52 percent during her tenure of almost six years. Yes, Mrs. Fiorina served during the worst fall...

President Barack Obama’s former auto industry adviser and two former Treasury Department officials cracked at the last minute before a House oversight committee subcommittee hearing and agreed to stop stonewalling an investigation into alleged union favoritism during the administration’s General Motors bailout. Ron Bloom, Obama’s former auto czar, and former Treasury officials Matt Feldman and Harry Wilson have refused to give interviews to the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) about their roles in topping up pensions for union workers while non-union workers lost nearly their entire pensions. The Treasury Department’s actions during the auto bailout...

VIDEO 5:03 minutes On Friday night, I discussed White House staffer Ron Bloom's statement that the auto bailout was done for the unions, and his subsequent denial of making such a claim, only to now back off his denial. The show was America's Nightly Scorecard on Fox Business Channel. Here's a transcript:David Asman: The auto bailouts infuriating a range of stakeholders who argued all along that the government was orchestrating the bail-outs to give the unions more power, some say all the power, Ron Bloom, the White House's car czar, formerly a leader of the steelworkers union, reportedly admitting as...

WASHINGTON, July 6 (UPI) -- Youngstown, Ohio, Mayor Jay Williams will lead the Obama administration's efforts to help communities dependent on the auto industry recover, officials said. Beginning Aug. 8, Williams will be executive director of the Labor Department's Office of Recovery for Auto Communities and Workers, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said Wednesday in a release.

Shockingly poor financial management at General Motors and Chrysler weakened their case for a federal bailout, but officials feared letting them collapse, the former head of a government auto task force said Wednesday. In a first-person account posted on Fortune magazine's Web site and in a Brookings Institution speech, Steven Rattner said he was alarmed by the "stunningly poor management" at the Detroit companies and said GM had "perhaps the weakest finance operation any of us had ever seen in a major company." GM's board of directors was "utterly docile in the face of mounting evidence of a looming disaster"...

The Obama administration's auto czar on Tuesday said political interference by Congress could jeopardize the bailouts of General Motors and Chrysler.

Steven Rattner, the leader of the Obama administration's auto task force, was one of the executives involved with payments under scrutiny in a probe of an alleged kickback scheme at New York state's pension fund, according to a person familiar with the matter. A Securities and Exchange Commission complaint says a "senior executive" of Mr. Rattner's investment firm met with a politically connected consultant about a finder's fee. Later, the complaint says, the firm received an investment from the state pension fund, then paid a $1.1 million fee.

Obama weighing idea of "auto czar," aide says 11 mins ago CHICAGO (Reuters) – President-elect Barack Obama is considering naming a point person to lead efforts to help the distressed auto industry return to health, an Obama aide said on Thursday. General Motors Corp, Ford Motor Co and Chrysler LLC are seeking a federal bailout of up to $50 billion. Automakers and Democratic congressional leaders have discussed a two-stage process in which government would provide $25 billion in direct loans to meet urgent needs. A second $25 billion would come later and could be applied to a United Auto Workers...