Free Republic

ReasonTV — April 30, 2010 — General Motors CEO Ed Whitacre has bragged in TV commercials and newspaper columns that GM has paid back its bailout "in full and ahead of schedule." As with the Pontiac Aztek, an ugly exterior masks an ever darker problem: Whitacre is being fanciful to the point of deceit. GM received $50 billion in TARP funds (never mind that TARP was only supposed to cover financial institutions). About $7 billion of that came in the form of a straight-up, low-interest loan. And about $13 billion came in the form of an escrow account. So how...

Obama says auto bailouts have paid off Photo 6:09am EDT By Steve Holland ASHEVILLE, North Carolina (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Saturday taxpayer-funded bailouts of the auto industry that he approved had paid off, in what amounted to a rejection of conservative arguments against such government help. In his weekly radio and Web address, Obama kept up the pressure for an overhaul of U.S. financial regulations, saying the promising news from the auto industry had not reduced the need for Wall Street changes. Government bailouts of Wall Street, begun by then-President George W. Bush in 2008 and continued...

General Motors lost $3.4 billion in the fourth quarter of 2009 and is still struggling to reorganize so the company can try to eke out a profit. This grim reality didn't stop GM from making hay last week for supposedly paying back a $6.7 billion government loan five years ahead of schedule. What was left unsaid was that the automaker used another kitty of taxpayer cash to pay off the earlier government loan. This is an accounting shell game, not progress. Previously unreleased documents supplied to The Washington Times reveal that GM specifically used funds it received from the Troubled...

How did a recently bankrupt company that is still hemorrhaging money pay back a multi-billion dollar loan five years early? Halleluiahs are ringing throughout the media over General Motor's bailout repayment. "GM pays back government loans from US, Canada" announces the Associated Press headline.