Posted on 10/29/2012 6:26:39 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Barack Obama believes he can take Ohio voters for fools. His “I saved GM from bankruptcy” was his first whopper. As if that was not enough, Obama, aided and abetted by Bill Clinton in Charlotte, conceived an even bigger whopper: “I saved the entire U.S. auto industry.” These two claims were supposed to assure Obama Ohio’s electoral votes with its 76,000 jobs in motor vehicle assembly and manufacture of bodies, trailers and parts.
November 6 will show that Ohio voters have too much common sense to be taken in by Obama’s whoppers.
Obama’s claim that he saved GM from bankruptcy is false. Even a bizarre bankruptcy is a bankruptcy is a bankruptcy, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein, for my intellectual readers. Obama’s cars Czar strong armed GM through a political bankruptcy that flaunted judicial practice to reward Obama’s union allies and protect their gold-plated pensions, put the government in charge of product lines and investment, cheat creditors, and leave taxpayers on the hook for tens of billions of dollars.
Just ask the tens of thousands of retirees who sunk their life savings into now-worthless GM stock, whether Obama “saved” GM? Ask small bondholder, Debra June, whose $70,000 investment in GM bonds is now worth $200, whether Obama’s GM bankruptcy was fair to all or favored his political cronies?
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
THE REAL STORY OF THE GM BAILOUT:
Mitt Romney sensibly proposed in a New York Times article to create a new and competitive GM through a normal structured bankruptcy. In a case of blatant journalistic malpractice, the venerable Times chose the headline: Romney wants to Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.
Obama had his false narrative and sound bites for his stump speeches: Heartless Bain-capitalist, Mitt Romney, wants to destroy all GM jobs. He could care less about the embattled middle-class UAW workers earning more than a hundred grand. Regrettably, this malarkey resonated throughout much of the campaign.
Contrary to Obama’s claim that there was no financing for a normal bankruptcy, the Treasury could have provided secured credit (at no risk to taxpayers) and then stepped back and let the chips fall where they may, as the bankruptcy court created a truly “new” and competitive GM. Any government creditor-in-possession funds would have been chump change relative to the $25 billion the bailout has cost taxpayers.
Obama rejected this sensible and tried-and-true route favored by Romney. He wanted a political bankruptcy to reward friends, punish enemies, and secure Michigan and Ohio for the 2012 election.
not only did he not save GM, he guaranteed that they will fail again, and probably within the next 5 years.
he didn’t fix the problem. unsustainable and extortionist claims on GM by the parasitic unions will doom GM again.
I believe most of the Delphi employees who got SCROOOOOD are in Ohio.
dumping the stupid Volt would be a good start to recovery of GM
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that “Ohioans are no fools” since they went for him in 2008. Anybody who voted for Obama in ‘08 is a fool and should be ashamed of themselves.
OK< how about this alternative title : OHIOANS WON’T BE FOOLED AGAIN ?
If I still lived in Ohio just that ridiculous bald-faced lie that he was gonna repeal NAFTA would have done it for me.
The wisest and most far-seeing, the most skeptical of Dems, etc, held their noses and voted for McCain, knowing even better than McCain knew(he who said we had nothing to fear from Obama if he were to win)...
They voted that way to stop Obama, because they did know.
However, there’s a group of people who trusted in what they thought they heard Obama saying and promising. Post racial, post partisan, fix Washington gridlock, cut the deficit in half, shovel ready jobs, yada yada yada.
They were too gullible. Fools is a bridge too far, in my opinion...HOWEVER, that was then this is now and there’s no longer the slightest excuse.
For all the wailing and teeth grinding over OH, I believe they will not be had twice, and will rectify their mistake.
The context of McCain’s remark was that of race — that Obama’s “blackness” was not (of itself) a reason to fear. Too bad he did not go on to make it clear that Obama’s likely policies were something to fear greatly.
Saturn?
Hummer?
Saved?
You would probably enjoy reading “General Mayhem” by Bill Hempel. Bill rose up the ranks at GM from General Motors Institute to an executive position, and his book is an expose of how GM worked. The revelations were mostly shocking to me, and included excesses by union and management.
The subtitle of the book reads “An insiders look at the failures of a corporate giant”.
Bill is my cousin, but the book is still an important read.
"...Just ask the tens of thousands of retirees who sunk their life savings into now-worthless GM stock, whether Obama “saved” GM? Ask small bondholder, Debra June, whose $70,000 investment in GM bonds is now worth $200, whether Obama’s GM bankruptcy was fair to all or favored his political cronies?"
Devastating.
dumping the stupid Volt would be a good start to recovery of GM”””
Dumping stupid Obama would be an even better start.
Let’s not forget the illegal closing of republican leaning dealerships where a lot of blue collar non-union workers lost their jobs.
Let’s not forget the illegal closing of republican leaning dealerships where a lot of blue collar non-union workers lost their jobs.
Bingo!
We have a winner!
And perhaps no workers were less equal in the bailouts than the employees of GM and Chrysler dealerships. About 100,000 mostly [non-union] blue-collar jobs — a number approaching the total work force of GM and Chrysler— were put on the chopping block by “Team Auto,” the Obama administration’s auto-bailout task force, which insisted on extraordinarily rapid closures.What the GM bailout really cost American taxpayers
In addition to the more than $50 billion given to General Motors in the bailout, the Obama administration quietly snuck in a special tax break for GM, which allows the company to write off approximately $45 billion in post-bankruptcy losses against post-bankruptcy profits.Sherk and Zywicki: Obama's United Auto Workers BailoutThe result? In 2011, GM paid nothing in federal income taxes despite claiming record profits of $7.6 billion, the “highest profits in the 100 year history of that company”according to President Obama.
If the administration treated the UAW in the manner required by bankruptcy law, it could have saved U.S. taxpayers $26.5 billion.In the auto bankruptcies, however, the administration gave the unsecured claims of VEBA much higher priority than those of other unsecured creditors, such as suppliers and unsecured bondholders.
At the time of bankruptcy, GM owed these unsecured creditors $29.9 billion, for which they received 10% of the stock of "new" GM, which went public in November 2010, and warrants to purchase 15% more at preferred prices. Yet VEBA got 17.5% of new GM and $9 billion in preferred stock and debt obligations. Based on GM's current stock price, VEBA collected assets worth $17.8 billion—$12.2 billion more than if the administration had treated it like the other unsecured creditors.
The same thing happened at Chrysler, only to a greater degree. Chrysler's junior creditors recovered none of their $7 billion in claims. In normal bankruptcy proceedings, the UAW would have also collected nothing. Instead it walked away owning almost half of new Chrysler and a $4.6 billion promissory note earning 9% interest. Had the stock and note gone to the Treasury instead, the bailout would have cost taxpayers $9.2 billion less.
The administration also insulated the UAW from most of the sacrifices that unions usually make in bankruptcy—at taxpayer expense. Section 1113 of the Bankruptcy Code enables reorganizing companies to improve their post-bankruptcy competitiveness by renegotiating union contracts to competitive rates.In April, for example, American Airlines proposed using this power to bring down its labor costs to the level of its rivals, just as Delta and United had in earlier bankruptcy filings.
The administration decided not to do this at GM. The UAW did accept sharp pay cuts for new hires. But they only made modest concessions for their existing members, like eliminating the much-maligned Jobs Bank that paid workers even when they were laid off.
As a result, GM still has higher labor costs ($56 an hour) than any of its competitors. Had bankruptcy brought GM compensation in line with its competitors' (approximately $47 an hour), we estimate the resulting savings would have increased the value of the taxpayers' stake in GM by $4.1 billion. This would still leave UAW members making 40% more than the average American manufacturing worker.
Finally, GM's decision to assume certain pension obligations of Delphi, the bankrupt former GM subsidiary, also increased the cost of the bailout. New GM no longer had an obligation to support Delphi's pensions. Yet it decided to spend $1 billion to top up the pensions of Delphi's UAW retirees.Delphi's nonunion retirees and retirees in other unions did not fare so well. GM gave them nothing.
We saw this blatantly here in Ca. They didn’t even try to hide it!
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