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Gary Edwards

The inside story of the GM, Chrysler bailouts | detnews.com | The Detroit News - 0 views

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    Incredible story of how the Obama bailout of GM and Chrysler went down.  Very in-depth, exhaustively researched, and well written. excerpt: Detroit's Big Three automakers came closer than America realized to becoming the Big Two. General Motors Corp. ended merger talks with Chrysler LLC in November 2008 to focus on getting emergency federal aid, but Chrysler continued to believe a tie-up with GM was its best chance for survival. In April, as both automakers were surviving on government aid and fighting bankruptcy, Obama administration officials spent two weeks working on a plan for GM to acquire Chrysler's best assets and keep the doors open on a third of its factories. Advertisement Some members of President Barack Obama's auto task force saw it as a fallback position if Chrysler failed to reach a partnership deal with Italy's Fiat SpA. Other members opposed it. But top task force officials ultimately decided it was too late in the game for a merger, too complicated and would cost too many jobs compared to an alliance with Fiat. The GM-Chrysler tale is among new details that emerged in Detroit News interviews with more than a dozen insiders -- automakers as well as government officials -- over the past two months. They reveal the much greater government role in the historic bailout of both companies than has been disclosed previously. Faced with the prospect of losing 1.1 million direct and indirect American jobs, as well as a major leg of the nation's economy, the government believed it could not afford to let the industry fail. In the end, the GM and Chrysler bailout resulted from fortunate timing and the work of a group of unknown Wall Street veterans. Under the aegis of the White House, and without congressional approval, they forced a restructuring that the automakers themselves had been unwilling or unable to accomplish -- even as they saw disaster looming.
Gary Edwards

Fact Check: Osama Bin Laden Alive, General Motors Dead - 0 views

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    Excellent analysis and statement of facts in evidence.   Conclussion is that Osama is well on his way to winning on every one of his stated objectives, and GM is heading for a real bankruptcy, despie $100 Billion in taxpayer bailout funds.  GM is expected to cost taxpayers upwards of $56 Billion when all is said and done. excerpt: "Vice President Joe Biden has a suggested slogan for the Obama/Biden 2012 campaign. He repeats it everywhere he goes. "Osama Bin Laden is dead," he bellows, "and General Motors is alive!" There's only one problem. He's wrong. Yes, Bin Laden's dead, thank God. And General Motors is still an operating concern. But in point of fact, the cause for which Osama Bin Laden stood is stronger than at any time in American history, thanks in large part to the Obama administration. And as for GM, it's not so much alive as it is a member of the corporate living dead, feasting on taxpayer brains while slowly deteriorating, the first zombie company created by Obama's cronyism. On the eleventh anniversary of Osama Bin Laden's attack on America, it's worthwhile to examine just what he hoped to accomplish. He spelled out his goals in three documents: a 1996 fatwa titled, "Declaration of War Against The Americans Occupying The Land of the Two Holy Places"; a 2002 "Letter to America"; and a 2004 video. In these manifestos, he declared his willingness to die, of course. His goals included:"
Paul Merrell

New Report: Fortune 100 Companies Have Received a Whopping $1.2 Trillion in Corporate W... - 0 views

  • Most of us are aware that the government gives mountains of cash to powerful corporations in the form of tax breaks, grants, loans and subsidies--what some have called "corporate welfare." However, little has been revealed about exactly how much money Washington is forking over to mega businesses. Until now. A new venture called Open the Books, based in Illinois, was founded with a mission to bring transparency to how the federal budget is spent. And what they found is shocking: between 2000 and 2012, the top Fortune 100 companies received $1.2 trillion from the government. That doesn't include all the billions of dollars doled out to housing, auto and banking enterprises in 2008-2009, nor does it include ethanol subsidies to agribusiness or tax breaks for wind turbine makers. 
  • What Open the Book's forthcoming report does reveal is that the most valuable contracts between the government and private firms were for military procrument deals, including Lockheed Martin ($392 billion), General Dynamics ($170 billion), and United Technologies ($73 billion).  After military contractors, $21.8 billion was granted out to corporate recipients in the form of direct subsidies; literally transfers of cash from the pockets of Americans to major corporations. The biggest winners were General Electric (GE) ($380 million), followed by General Motors (GM) ($370 million), Boeing (BA) ($264 million), ADM ($174 million) and United Technologies ($160 million).  $8.5 billion in federally subsidized loans were also doled out to giant oil companies Chevron and Exxon Mobile, and $1 billion went directly to massive agri-business Archer Daniels Midland. 
  • Of course, the banks also got their piece of the pie: $10 billion in federal insurance went to Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, not including any of the 2008 bailout money. Walmart enjoyed its share of federal insurance backing as well.    Thanks to Open the Books, the curtain has been lifted and the whole country can now witness the great suckling of corporate America. As Open the Books founder Adam Andrzejewski put it: "Mitt Romney had it wrong: When it comes to the Fortune 100, it's 99%, not 47%, on some form of the government's gravy train." 
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