Originally posted by no1marauder
GW is the one who bailed out GM.
Critics of GM's $50 billion federal bailout in 2009 say the Obama administration stuck taxpayers with a bill that will never be paid in full as Treasury's 27 percent stake in GM remains underwater.
"Because of the Treasury Department's risky decision to swap debt for equity, Treasury gave away any right that taxpayers had to be made whole," said Charles Grassley, a Republican senator from Iowa. "Legally, GM can use its excess cash in whatever way it wants, and there's nothing we can do about it."On December 19, 2008, a week after Republicans in the Senate had killed a bailout bill proposed by Democrats, saying it didn’t impose big enough wage cuts on the U.A.W., Bush unilaterally agreed to lend $17.4 billion of taxpayers’ money to General Motors and Chrysler, of which $13.4 billion was to be extended immediately. He had to twist the law to get the money. Deprived of congressional funding, he diverted cash from the loathed TARP program, which Congress had already passed, but which was supposed to be restricted to rescuing the banks. “I didn’t want there to twenty-one-per-cent unemployment,” he said to a meeting of the National Automobile Dealers Association in Las Vegas last month, explaining why he acted as he did. “I didn’t want history to look back and say, ‘Bush could have done something but chose not to do it.’ ”
Obama, who in December, 2008, was the President-elect, publicly supported Bush’s move, saying it was a “necessary step to avoid a collapse in our auto industry that would have devastating consequences for our economy and our workers.” After taking office six weeks later, Obama put together an auto task force that extended tens of billions more in emergency financing to Detroit over the ensuing months, and also did what appears to have been a pretty good job in restructuring G.M. and selling Chrysler to Fiat.
Obama deserves a lot of credit for finishing the job that Bush and his Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson, had started. He stood with the auto companies, which were victims of extraordinary circumstances beyond their control. As the price of the bailout, he also insisted on some changes at G.M., including the installation of new leadership and the elimination of several brands.
But that hardly justifies writing Bush and Paulson out of history, which is
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2012/03/an-inconvenient-truth-it-was-george-w-bush-who-bailed-out-the-auto-makers.html#ixzz23lUHmVtU
Another GM bailout please...
17 Aug '12 01:11
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