Thursday, November 18, 2010

(Because You Can Tell the Taxpayers Anything!) Lying Liars at GM Have NOT Repaid the "Loans/TARP/$$$" At All (Certainly Not In Full)

Those Magnificent Bastards!!!
You will not be surprised to find out that one more eager and willing Rethuglican recipient of the Bush/Paulson (and now Obama) "Throwing Your $$$ To Their Friends Before They Get Out of D.C. Relief Crowd" is lying about having already repaid the loans (investment?). Or whatever they're calling it now. LIARS! Where are the truth tellers? (Emphasis marks added - Ed.)
GM Pays Back TARP Loans With...TARP Loans!

Have you driven a Ford lately? That might be a good idea, as it seems that GM's claims to have repaid its TARP loans in full and ahead of schedule are, well, bullshit. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) has sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner pointing out that GM has apparently paid back its TARP money with...more TARP money. Here's some of Grassley's query:

During his testimony [Inspector General for TARP Neil] Barofsky addressed GM’s recent debt repayment activity, and stated that the funds GM is using to repay its TARP debt are not coming from GM earnings. Instead, GM seems to be using TARP funds from an escrow account at Treasury to make the debt repayments.

The most recent quarterly report from the Office of the Special Inspector General for TARP says "The source of funds for these quarterly [debt] payments will be other TARP funds currently held in an escrow account."... Therefore, it is unclear how GM and the Administration could have accurately announced yesterday that GM repaid its TARP loans in any meaningful way. In reality, it looks like GM merely used one source of TARP funds to repay another. The taxpayers are still on the hook...

The bottom line seems to be that the TARP loans were "repaid" with other TARP funds in a Treasury escrow account. The TARP loans were not repaid from money GM is earning selling cars, as GM and the Administration have claimed in their speeches, press releases and television commercials. When these criticisms were put to GM’s Vice Chairman Stephen Girsky in a television interview yesterday, he admitted that the criticisms were valid:

Question: Are you just paying the government back with government money?

Mr. Girsky: Well listen, that is in effect true, but a year ago nobody thought we’d be able to pay this back.

Girsky, you magnificent bastard! If you managed to say that line without laughing, you deserve all the unsold Pontiacs in North America.

Whole thing here. Via Real Clear Politics via Reason stalwart Manny Klausner.

And, needless to say, Grassley isn't even raising the massively important issue of whether the freaking bailout via TARP funds was legal. Spoiler alert: It wasn't.

But don't worry, GM loses money hand over fist and is poised to lose even more money when the market rebounds and they start selling more units. That's what happened in 2007, a record-setting year for GM when it sold 9.4 million cars worldwide and lost $38 billion. Check it out, why don't you?

This post, incidentally, was written by a very satisfied owner of a used Buick.

Update: Fox News reports that TARP IG Barofsky told them on Wednesday: "I think the one thing that a lot of people overlook with this is where they got the money to pay back the loan. And it isn't from earnings . . . . It's actually from another pool of TARP money that they've already received . . . I don't think we should exaggerate it too much. Remember that the source of this money is just other TARP money."

Fox News unconvincingly hypothesizes "the TV spot [touting its early payback of loans] may land GM in hot water with the Federal Trade Commission over its truth-in-advertising laws, which prohibit ads that are 'likely to mislead consumers.'"

But not to worry since they haven't caught on since April. And what exactly did Dr. Mengele say yesterday was "shovel ready?" I think I can see something ready right in front of me here. Call the prosecutors! I rest my case. Suzan ___________________

6 comments:

Marc McDonald said...

Nice article, Suzan. I've always believed that GM's woes were entirely self-inflicted and were the result of horrendous management over many years.

The most sickening aspect of GM's terrible management is that the company's CEOs have always pulled down enormous pay packages----vastly larger than any automaker CEO in Japan or Europe.

Take GM CEO Rick Wagoner. In 2007, he made $14.4 million. That works out to $39,452 per day, including weekends. (Note that in 2007, GM lost a staggering $38.7 billion).

Cirze said...

Thanks, Marc,

But you only think that's the worst part of their sorry tale of screwing American consumers.

Read my essay today for the rest of the story (as Drew Pearson used to say).

Love ya,

S

Tom Harper said...

"GM pays back TARP loans with TARP loans."

Why is this not surprising?

Cirze said...

Probably because we're used to getting kicked in the groin by now?

Thanks for commenting!

Love ya, sweetie!

S

Life As I Know It Now said...

Recently on NPR I heard them say that only half of their debt is paid off. Not that I believe anything on NPR necessarily. ;D

Cirze said...

Glad you brought that up, Lib.

Thanks for your public spiritedness!

I'd like to see a breakdown of exactly where they get their money.

The Rethugs stopped the public funding long ago in favor of "interested" parties being able to fund what they wanted to see it promote.

And thus, it's as trustworthy politically as the rest of the Faux stations.

Has anyone seen these figures?

S