Posted on 04/28/2010 7:34:49 AM PDT by yoe
Last week General Motors chairman and chief executive officer Edward Whitacre took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to make an important announcement: (The GM Bailout: Paid Back in Full) Whitacre asserted that GM had paid back all the funds it borrowed from the United States in full with interest.
Whitacre omitted two facts that rendered his column highly misleading. They are the kind of omissions that constitute securities fraud when made by a company in connection with the purchase or sale of a security or when a company reports its financial results.
If any investor bought GM shares based on Whitacre's column, it appears to me that the investor would have a good claim against GM. The SEC would in any event be warranted in taking a look at Whitacre's shenanigans on behalf of the company.
First, Whitacre omitted any mention of the remaining $50 billion or so that the government has sunk in the company's equity. Second, Whitacre omitted any mention of the source of the funds with which GM "repaid" the loan. According to TARP Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky, the source of the funds in whole or in substantial part was the United States government TARP program, not GM earnings. Shikka Dalmia has much more detail on the misrepresentations permeating Whitacre's public relations blitz in (this Forbes column.).
Whitacre's Wall Street Journal column was, in short, a fraud. But it was a fraud of a special kind. It was a fraud committed with the assistance if not the urging of the Obama administration. It was not, in short, the kind of fraud that Michigan Senator Carl Levin or his Democratic counterparts chairing other Senate committees will be holding hearings on any time soon.
I assume that Whitacre got paid by the Wall Street Journal for his fraudulent column and that the funds were paid over to General Motors. The GM advertisement below commits the same fraud as Whitacre committed in his Journal column, but this one is committed by Whitacre at GM's expense, underwritten by taxpayers. Someone in a position of authority really ought to investigate this.
Video:
Could it be that the mountain of government bailout cash was overkill-----much more than necessary? That the repayment is nothing other than a political and marketing ploy whereby the government gets repaid with the very same money they handed out?
WE BETTER CALL THE COPS Over-lending on a loan to achieve quick initial repayment (and thus inflate the loan's perceived value), in the private sector, is called fraud.
COUPLE CLUES (1) GM unveils ads with walking CEO, seeking to re-engage disaffected Americans under the pretense of its supposedly paid-in-full-with-interest loan. (2) Ohaha Toadie Larry Summers is touting "success." (3) The Reserve Primary Fund's recent failure may just be a diversion and scapegoating in a broad "War on Wall Street" that Obama, Soros and FDIC's Sheila Bair, among others, are engaged in right now, to get complete control of our financial system.
BIG QUESTION---WHERE IS THE $52 BILLION PRINCIPAL? As stephenjohnbanker posted: ”GM got a total of $52 billion from the US government---$6.7 billion of that was a loan. GM merely paid back the INTEREST. What about the $52 billion PRINCIPAL?
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Americans have yet to learn the full extent of official corruption, thievery, schemes and scams involving $TRILLIONS of tax dollars aided and abetted by the dupes on Capitol Hill.
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THE WHIFF OF MADOFF J, Ezra Merkin---ousted head of GMAC (GenMotors financing arm)---got a $6 Billion taxpayer bailout---and was also feeding hundreds of millions to jailed money launderer Bernie Madoff from Merkin's four offshore investment vehicles.
BAILOUT SWILLERS Stephen A. Fineberg's private equity firm---Cerberus Capital Management LP--- owns Chrysler Motors. The US Treasury bought a $5 billion stake in GMAC (GM's financing arm), and lent $1 billion to GM. This latest loan is IN ADDITION to the $13.4 billion the US Treasury lent earlier to Merkin's GMAC, and Fineberg's Chrysler.
SWILLING TIMELINE In 2006, GM sold 51% of Merkin's GMAC to Feinberg's private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management LP (which also owns Chrysler).
HOGGING AT THE PUBLIC TROUGH In May 2004, Feinberg's "private investment group," Cerberus Capital Management, LP became majority owner of IAP Worldwide Services, Inc, one of the US Army’s largest contractors in Iraq. In Afghanistan, Feinberg's IAP runs a drug/addiction center" in Kunduz---Kunduz is the largest opium supplier in the world. BUSY LITTLE BEAVER IAP also provides infrastructure support for the British Ministry of Defence in Kandahar....apart from supporting the US Army in Basra.
BAILED OUT AND STILL SWILLING Stephen A. Feinberg's IAP also serves a broad array of federal clients including the US DOD, NASA, the US Geological Survey, the US Agency for International Development, the IRS, and a variety of other federal agencies.
BACKSTORY GMAC's Merkin and Chrysler's Feinberg paid the Israeli govt $500M to buy Bank Leumi. An “inside” deal not just anybody could get. Bank Leumi looms large in the missing billion dollar bailouts since Israel is the only place in the world where an individual can fly-in, go to a bank with a suitcase full of cash, and nobody asks where they got it, or whether taxes were paid on it.
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REFERENCE --- AUGUST 2009 Taxpayers Face Heavy Losses on Auto Bailout. A Congressional Oversight Panel recommends the Treasury Dept perform a legal analysis for providing TARP funds to (1) GM, (2) Chrysler Motors, (3) GMAC, their financing arm.Treasury Dept officials have acknowledged that most of the $23 billion TARP provided by the Bush administration is likely to be lost. Bush should have refused to do it (there was $15B fund already appropriated and committed but unspent - for "greening" of the auto industry - that should have been used) and could help convince the management of both companies to file for prepackaged bankruptcy, which would allow both companies (and maybe Ford, as well) to restructure their debts and union and pension contracts, reorganize and emerge far stronger, without taxpayers losing a dime. Now he is (rightly) being blamed by media and Democrats, who at the time demanded the auto companies bailout, for wasting taxpayers money.............The report also recommends the department perform a legal analysis of its decision to provide TARP funds to GM and Chrysler, their financing arms and many auto parts suppliers. Some critics say the law creating TARP didn't allow for such funding.
DID YOU KNOW? TARP was not designed to be a pool of money available for bailout of just anything that didn't move, like a couple of bankrupt unionized companies in the automobile industry. TARP was very specific in its purpose to provide liquidity to frozen banking and financial system and stave off the run on the banks (attack on the financial system, by proxy) and allow the 'netting' of the [frozen] assets on the books of financial institutions, in the aftermath of fall of Lehman Bros and run on trillions of dollars in the money market funds in the consequent "breaking the buck" by Reserve Primary Fund managed by Bruce Bent, father of the money market mutual fund.
Bent was charged with fraud by US regulators over accusations he deceived investors into believing his flagship fund was safe before it "broke the buck" last year. The civil charges against the veteran money manager, his son and their investment company come eight months after the Reserve Primary Fund, loaded with Lehman Brothers debt, halted redemptions after the investment bank declared bankruptcy, sparking a run on money-market funds. The Reserve Primary Fund's failure has been a tragedy for investors and the Bents, said Peter Crane, president of Crane Data and publisher of Money Fund Intelligence. (Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com )
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NOTE WELL In addition to his role as White House Chief of Staff, Emanuel is heavily involved in decisions made by the US Treasury.
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Behind The Real Size of the Wall Street Bailout (magazine details $14 trillion bailout)
Mother Jones | Dec. 21, 2009 / FR Posted Jan 04, 2010 by E. Pluribus Unum
A guide to the abbreviations, acronyms, and obscure programs that make up the $14 trillion federal bailout of Wall Street.
The price tag for the Wall Street bailout is often put at $700 billion—the size of 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 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 our chart here. Below, a guide to the pieces of the puzzle:
Treasury Department bailout programs (controlled by Rahm Emanuel)
Money Market Mutual Fund: In September 2008, the Treasury 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 has 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 has 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 may buy mortgage-backed securities from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. According to SIGTARP, these purchases could cost as much as $314 billion [PDF].
--SNIP--- long read
Federal Reserve bailout programs
Commercial Paper Funding Facility: With the support from the Treasury, the Fed established the CPFF in October 2008 to increase the availability of short-term debt (commercial paper) funding. Up to $1.8 trillion [PDF] was earmarked for the program.
Mortgage-backed securities purchase: In 2009, the Fed earmarked up to $1.25 trillion to buy investments based on home loans.
Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility: TALF provides financing to investors who are buying asset-backed securities. In February 2009, the Fed and Treasury announced an expansion of the program to generate up to $1 trillion in new lending.
Foreign Central Bank Currency Liquidity Swaps: The Fed has provided $755 billion [PDF] for currency liquidity swaps with foreign central banks.
--SNIP--- long read
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