After suffering major electoral and legislative defeats last month, President Barack Obama took to the campaign trail in Nashua, New Hampshire, pitching his administration’s latest new plan to lower our nation’s double digit unemployment rate. This time, the President hopes to do for small businesses what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did for home mortgages. Specifically, he wants to create a new $30 billion “Small Business Lending Fund” which will loan money to banks with assets under $10 billion at favorable new rates, as long as they comply with a slew …
If President Barack Obama’s New Year’s resolution was for the federal government to stop taking majority ownership in private corporations, he’s off to a bad start (or he decided to get one more in before 2010). Yesterday, the government indicated it will provide $3.8 billion in additional aid to GMAC and increase its stake in the company from 35% to a whopping 56%. As The Washington Post reports, the federal government now has ownership stakes in GMAC, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, General Motors, and American International Group – and holds …
When the government bailed out General Motors and Chrysler, part of the necessary, painful road to recovery was to cut unnecessary dealerships. Before the cuts GM and Chrysler had over 9,000 independent dealerships in the United States. To save costs, GM and Chrysler cut 1,300 and 800 dealerships, respectively – still leaving them with many more dealerships than the likes of Toyota which only has 1,240. Both closed dealerships and some lawmakers have complained that the decision to close certain dealerships was politically motivated. But the reality is the choices …
There’s new evidence that General Motors and Chrysler, both owned partly by taxpayers, are still facing interference in the way they are run. The latest example comes not from the Obama Administration, but from Congress. At issue are the closures of over 2,000 dealerships announced by the two firms last summer. Despite much grumbling, the decisions appeared to be a non-political one, potentially saving as much as $2.5 billion annually according to the Washington Post. But politics did come in, in the form of congressional pressure to keep the dealerships …
It’s been used to buy one car company, give another to union allies, punish non-union workers, undermine the bankruptcy code, enrich Wall Street at the expense of Main Street, keep unionized Zombie firms from dying, and generally terrorize the world economy. Now the left in Congress wants to use it again, this time as a slush fund for a third round of stimulus funding. The AP reports: Democrats are looking to tap as much as $70 billion in unused funds from the Wall Street bailout to pay for new spending …
Not very often is losing $1.2 billion good news but that’s the way General Motors is spinning its third quarter earnings report. GM claims its finances are stable enough to begin repaying the $6.7 billion in government loans as soon as December and could be paid off ahead of schedule, potentially by June of 2010. But that’s a small share of what the government (aka the taxpayer) invested in GM. Americans unwillingly invested over $80 billion in auto industry, allowing the government to take a 61 percent stake and a 10 …
Last month when the White House released its visitor log for the first six months of the Obama presidency, one name appeared far more often than any other: Service Employee International Union (SEIU) President Andrew Stern. Stern has every right to expect to be welcome in the Obama White House. He has repeatedly bragged about the fact that under his leadership, the SEIU spent $60.7 million to elect Barack Obama president. Stern and Obama collectively support ever expanding federal government programs and state government bailouts which are rapidly bankrupting our country. …
Have an idea but strapped for cash? Not sure if the idea is going to pan out? That’s all right, just ask the government for a few billion dollars. That’s what the automakers did. USA Today reports: If you believed all the talk from Chrysler about how our tax dollars would help finance its fast-track electric-vehicle future, you’re in for a big disappointment. Chrysler has disbanded the engineering team that was trying to bring three electric models to market as a rush job, Automotive News reports today. Chrysler cited its …
Is the House of Representatives trying to start a trade war in the midst of the worst economy in a generation? Sure seems that way. When the House passed the Energy and Water appropriations bill they included a protectionist provision that is not only misguided, but it is poorly applied. The law states: “None of the funds made available in this Act may be used to purchase passenger motor vehicles other than those manufactured by Ford, General Motors, or Chrysler.” Not only does this bill ban foreign competition, but it …
In the wake of the General Motors and Chrysler’s bankruptcies, United Auto Workers finds itself in a complicated position. In some sense it has achieved a Marxist ideal: it has gained (at least some) control of its means of production. The UAW owns 55 percent of Chrysler and 17.5 percent of GM. Consequently, however, the UAW is placed in a strange situation when negotiating with Ford.
