l****z
发帖数: 29846 | 1 By: John Hayward
8/16/2012 10:17 AM
President Obama loves to tout the General Motors bailout as the signature “
achievement” of his presidency, even though current taxpayer losses on the
deal are estimated at over $25 billion. The exact degree to which the rest
of us got soaked so Obama could give GM to his union allies changes
constantly as the value of the stock held by We the People fluctuates. You
don’t remember being asked if you would like to become a GM stockholder and
willingly accept massive losses to protect highly compensated union jobs,
do you? Well, that’s the great thing about command economics. It relieves
the ruling class of the tedious chores private-sector entrepreneurs face
when attracting voluntary investment.
Not only does Obama portray the GM bailout as a great success, he has
actually said, in public, that he wants a lot more “successes” just like
it. “I said I believe in American workers, I believe in this American
industry, and now the American auto industry has come roaring back,” he
told an audience in Colorado last week. “Now I want to do the same thing
with manufacturing jobs, not just in the auto industry, but in every
industry.”
(Emphasis mine.) That really should have been accompanied by some ominous
thunderclaps, or perhaps the “Friday the 13th” musical cue that plays when
Jason Voorhees is stalking a victim. Even if you can swallow the idea that
the GM bailout was a “success,” there is literally not enough money in
the world for a $25 billion bailout of every industry. The point of the
2012 presidential campaign is getting delusional liberals to understand that
our beyond-bankrupt government doesn’t have enough money to take over any
more industries, and had no business taking over industries to begin with.
Unfortunately for Obama, it’s increasingly difficult to pretend the GM
bailout was a “success” for anyone but the United Auto Workers. Earlier
this week, Investors Business Daily described the loss taxpayers took for
President Obama’s inaugural adventure in crony socialism as “staggering,”
a judgment not improved by the recall of 38,000 Chevy Impalas, which are
widely used as police cars. In fact, the only reason GM can post decent
sales figures is that government agencies buy a lot of fleet vehicles from
them. Taxpayers were compelled to rescue the company from bankruptcy, then
they were compelled to buy its products, and Obama tells them it’s all a
smashing “success” that should be duplicated throughout the private sector
. Taken literally, as the President prefers his words not to be taken, this
would mean the end of the private sector.
A normal bankruptcy procedure would have spared the taxpayers from this raid
on the public treasury, and as IBD notes, it didn’t even “save” jobs in
the long run. Bankruptcy would not have erased GM facilities, or Detroit.
It would have allowed GM to correct the ridiculously expensive labor
contracts that caused it to go belly-up in the first place. Instead, we got
large-scale closures of small businesses selling GM cars – a process the
TARP Inspector General officially condemned as politicized, with some
dealerships “retained because they were recently appointed, were key
wholesale parts dealers, or were minority- or woman-owned dealerships.”
And let’s not get started on the ill-fated, heavily subsidized Chevy Volt,
which is basically Solyndra on wheels.
Now Forbes tells us GM is probably heading for bankruptcy again. Its stock
price would have to more than double, to $53.00 per share, for taxpayers to
recover their “investment.” Instead, stock values have declined by 39
percent in absolute terms, and 49 percent relative to the Dow average, since
GM went public in 2010. Louis Woodhill of Forbes thinks political
considerations would prompt Obama to “ride the stock down to zero” instead
of cashing out at a massive loss to the public.
GM’s market share is also falling, as competitors beat its pants off in key
vehicle classes. Disappointing new models will likely yield excess
inventory that must be sold off at a loss in years to come. GM CEO Dan
Akerson, who has mused on the record that it would be awfully nice if Obama
made gas more expensive with higher taxes so GM’s electric cars would sell
better, is “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic” in Woodhill’s
view, while more innovative and knowledgeable managers at competing
companies run rings around him.
Not only does the government lack the money to nationalize all industries,
as in Obama’s fever dreams, but it doesn’t have the resources to bail GM
out again. There’s no money for more Solyndras, either. The absurd
fiction of command economics, government-created jobs, and ideologically-
driven “investment” must be put to rest, along with Barack Obama’s career
, if the American economy is to have a prayer of recovery. | j**********n
发帖数: 390 | 2 McCain 失败的一个直接原因是雷曼兄弟破产的时间恰好在电视辩论之前，如果 GM 也
在这个节骨眼上破产的话，那么 Obama 的失败也是板上钉钉的了。 | l******a
发帖数: 3803 | 3
come on, the main-street bigotry media like CNN, MSNBC would not air it.
They would hold it as long as they can until ... election is over.
【在 j**********n 的大作中提到】
: McCain 失败的一个直接原因是雷曼兄弟破产的时间恰好在电视辩论之前，如果 GM 也
: 在这个节骨眼上破产的话，那么 Obama 的失败也是板上钉钉的了。
| l******a
发帖数: 3803 | 4 libtards like 0dumba, talks about his rescue of business???
they can save an industry, not ACORN?
I guess the odumba campaign nasty liars are scrambling to find any
"success" under Dumba's watch for the past 3 years. |
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