Perhaps another way of saying it: “Do you really trust a car salesperson?”
GM needs, again, more money to keep the doors open and auto workers coming to work; It has made some progress with its creditors and the UAW, but neither of those negotiations is final, so some of what GM can do to cut costs and improve its balance sheet will have to be taken on faith.
Also, as quoted from TIME’s Online Newswire service, in an article entitled: “GM Bailout: Billions to Put People Out of Work.”
GM claims the amount of money it will need for the year at $16.6 billion. That will not guarantee the largest car company in the U.S. will get to break-even. If auto sales in America keep falling, GM may need more capital this year, and it will almost certainly need more again in 2010.
Now with this known and understood; the government is faced with several complex and painful decisions.
Analysts believe that GM going into Chapter 11 would put hundreds of thousands of Americans at the car company and its suppliers out of jobs. To counter that, the Congress and Administration may have to keep GM on life support indefinitely. The alternative is too awful. The part of the GM request for money that is very clear is that, in exchange for $16.6 billion, the company will fire 47,000 people. It may be the only example in U.S. history where the government will pay to put tens of thousands of its own citizens out on the street. Most of these people have probably been paying taxes to the IRS for years. The perversion of the government stepping in to run an industry to save the broader economy is that it must live with the consequences of its own actions, which in this case involves investing capital into a restructuring that increases the burden on social services, causes great suffering, and is a lesson to private enterprise that failure can, in some cases, be rewarded. The Administration knows that it has to save GM as part of steadying the economy, but it has put itself into a policy position where killing some jobs is the excuse for saving others.
Analysts believe that GM going into Chapter 11 would put hundreds of thousands of Americans at the car company and its suppliers out of jobs. To counter that, the Congress and Administration may have to keep GM on life support indefinitely. The alternative is too awful.
The part of the GM request for money that is very clear is that, in exchange for $16.6 billion, the company will fire 47,000 people. It may be the only example in U.S. history where the government will pay to put tens of thousands of its own citizens out on the street. Most of these people have probably been paying taxes to the IRS for years.
The perversion of the government stepping in to run an industry to save the broader economy is that it must live with the consequences of its own actions, which in this case involves investing capital into a restructuring that increases the burden on social services, causes great suffering, and is a lesson to private enterprise that failure can, in some cases, be rewarded. The Administration knows that it has to save GM as part of steadying the economy, but it has put itself into a policy position where killing some jobs is the excuse for saving others.
Now here’s where the meaning of the word “Trust” comes in; suppose we the taxpayers along with a “little” administrative help from our legislative branch of government lend GM the $16.6 B-bucks (this could mean the dismissal of 50,000 auto workers too), and after the aforementioned has been completed, GM would then declare itself “Bankrupt” any way.
Just a little reminder that we should have known that the USA economic failure was a possibility. Basic economics tells us annual withdrawals of hundreds of $ billions out of the economy will cause it serious harm. The Bush administration, through financial engineering, deregulation, securitization and fraudulent asset values, constructed a grand fraud that kept Americans and the rest of the world happy for some time. George I did this with the S&L’s and George II did it on a much grander scale with further deregulation. It was an enormous fraud. You fool me once shame on you. You fool me twice shame on me. We now know we fell straight into the trap.
Bin Laden: Goal is to bankrupt U.S.
Al-Jazeera releases full transcript of al Qaeda leader's tapeMonday, November 1, 2004 Posted: 8:07 PM EST (0107 GMT)
-- The Arabic-language network Al-Jazeera released a full transcript Monday of the most recent videotape from Osama bin Laden in which the head of al Qaeda said his group's goal is to force America into bankruptcy.Al-Jazeera aired portions of the videotape Friday but released the full transcript of the entire tape on its Web site Monday."We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. Allah willing, and nothing is too great for Allah," bin Laden said in the transcript.He said the mujahedeen fighters did the same thing to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s, "using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers.""We, alongside the mujahedeen, bled Russia for 10 years until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat," bin Laden said.He also said al Qaeda has found it "easy for us to provoke and bait this administration.""All that we have to do is to send two mujahedeen to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al Qaeda, in order to make generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses without their achieving anything of note other than some benefits for their private corporations," bin Laden said.Al-Jazeera executives said they decided to post the entire speech because rumors were circulating that the network omitted parts that "had direct threats toward specific states, which was totally untrue.""We chose the most newsworthy parts of the address and aired them. The rest was used in lower thirds in graphics format," said one official.U.S. intelligence officials Monday confirmed that the transcript made public Monday by Al-Jazeera was a complete one.As part of the "bleed-until-bankruptcy plan," bin Laden cited a British estimate that it cost al Qaeda about $500,000 to carry out the attacks of September 11, 2001, an amount that he said paled in comparison with the costs incurred by the United States."Every dollar of al Qaeda defeated a million dollars, by the permission of Allah, besides the loss of a huge number of jobs," he said. "As for the economic deficit, it has reached record astronomical numbers estimated to total more than a trillion dollars.The total U.S. national debt is more than $7 trillion. The U.S. federal deficit was $413 billion in 2004, according to the Treasury Department."It is true that this shows that al Qaeda has gained, but on the other hand it shows that the Bush administration has also gained, something that anyone who looks at the size of the contracts acquired by the shady Bush administration-linked mega-corporations, like Halliburton and its kind, will be convinced."And it all shows that the real loser is you," he said. "It is the American people and their economy."As for President Bush's Iraq policy, Bin Laden said, "the darkness of black gold blurred his vision and insight, and he gave priority to private interests over the public interests of America."So the war went ahead, the death toll rose, the American economy bled, and Bush became embroiled in the swamps of Iraq that threaten his future," bin Laden said.U.S. government officials said Friday that the tape appeared to be authentic and recently made. It was the first videotaped message from the al Qaeda leader in nearly three years.
The McCain campaign has decided that the New York Times is not real journalism. The stinging article below may be why...
Senator John McCain’s campaign manager was paid more than $30,000 a month for five years as president of an advocacy group set up by the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to defend them against stricter regulations, current and former officials say.
Mr. McCain, the Republican candidate for president, has recently begun campaigning as a critic of the two companies and the lobbying army that helped them evade greater regulation as they began buying riskier mortgages with implicit federal backing. He and his Democratic rival, Senator Barack Obama, have donors and advisers who are tied to the companies.
But last week the McCain campaign stepped up a running battle of guilt by association when it began broadcasting commercials trying to link Mr. Obama directly to the government bailout of the mortgage giants this month by charging that he takes advice from Fannie Mae’s former chief executive, Franklin Raines, an assertion both Mr. Raines and the Obama campaign dispute.
Incensed by the advertisements, several current and former executives of the companies came forward to discuss the role that Rick Davis, Mr. McCain’s campaign manager and longtime adviser, played in helping Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac beat back regulatory challenges when he served as president of their advocacy group, the Homeownership Alliance, formed in the summer of 2000. Some who came forward were Democrats, but Republicans, speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed their descriptions.
“The value that he brought to the relationship was the closeness to Senator McCain and the possibility that Senator McCain was going to run for president again,” said Robert McCarson, a former spokesman for Fannie Mae, who said that while he worked there from 2000 to 2002, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac together paid Mr. Davis’s firm $35,000 a month. Mr. Davis “didn’t really do anything,” Mr. McCarson, a Democrat, said.
Mr. Davis’s role with the group has bubbled up as an issue in the campaign, but the extent of his compensation and the details of his role have not been reported previously.
Mr. McCain was never a leading critic or defender of the mortgage giants, although several former executives of the companies said Mr. Davis did draw Mr. McCain to a 2004 awards banquet that the companies’ Homeownership Alliance held in a Senate office building. The organization printed a photograph of Mr. McCain at the event in its 2004 annual report, bolstering its clout and credibility. The event honored several other elected officials, including at least two Democrats, Gov. Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania and Representative Artur Davis of Alabama.
In an interview Sunday night with CNBC and The New York Times, Mr. McCain noted that Mr. Davis was no longer working on behalf of the mortgage giants. He said Mr. Davis “has had nothing to do with it since, and I’ll be glad to have his record examined by anybody who wants to look at it.”
Asked about the reports of Mr. Davis’s role, a spokesman for Mr. McCain said that during the time when Mr. Davis ran the Homeownership Alliance, the senator had backed legislation to increase oversight of the mortgage companies’ accounting and executive compensation. The legislation, however, did not seek to change their anomalous structure as private companies with federal support.
The spokesman, Tucker Bounds, also noted that the Homeownership Alliance included nonprofit organizations like Habitat for Humanity and the Urban League. “It’s not controversial to promote homeownership and minority homeownership,” Mr. Bounds said. More than a half-dozen current and former executives, however, said the Homeownership Alliance was set up mainly to defend Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by promoting their role in the housing market, and the two companies paid almost the entire cost of the group’s operations.
“They were financed largely, possibly exclusively, by Fannie and Freddie,” said William R. Maloni, a Democrat who is a former head of industry relations for Fannie Mae. “We thought it would be helpful to have someone who was a broadly recognized Republican to be the face of the organization, and that person became Rick Davis.” Mr. Maloni added, “Rick, for that purpose, turned out to be quite good.” (Several executives said Mr. Davis’s compensation was not unusual for the companies’ well-connected consultants.)
The federal bailout of the two mortgage giants has become an emblem of what critics say is the outdated or inadequate regulatory system that allowed the financial system to slide into crisis this summer.
At the time that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac recruited Mr. Davis to run the Homeownership Alliance in 2000, they were under new pressure from private industry rivals and deregulation-minded Republicans who argued that the two companies’ federal sponsorship gave them an unfair advantage and put taxpayers at risk. Critics of the companies had formed their own Washington-based advocacy group, FM Watch. They were pushing for regulations that would deter the companies from expanding into new areas, including riskier and more profitable mortgages.
Mr. Davis had recently returned to his lobbying firm from running Mr. McCain’s unexpectedly strong 2000 Republican primary campaign, which elevated Mr. McCain’s profile as a legislator and Mr. Davis’s as a lobbyist.
“You can say what you want about free-market distortions, but people like the system because it gets them into houses cheap,” Mr. Davis said to Institutional Investor magazine in 2000, adding that he would run the advocacy group out of his Alexandria, Va., lobbying firm.
The organization also hired Public Strategies, a communications firm that included former Bush adviser Mark McKinnon. Mr. Davis wrote letters and gave speeches for the group. In April 2001, he sent out a press release headlined, “It’s Tax Day — Do You Know Where Your Deductions Are? For Most Americans, They’re in Your Home.”
But by the end of 2005, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were recovering from accounting problems and re-examining costs, former executives said. The companies decided the Homeownership Alliance had outlived its usefulness, and it disappeared.
John Harwood contributed reporting.
The Republicans greedy, corrupt and selfish policies have left the country in a financial crisis.
No more failed economy, No more Bankruptcies, No More Foreclosures, No More Senseless War, No More tax breaks for the rich only. No more corrupt government, No more windfall profits for the Oil companies. U.S.A. Citizens say: NO MORE Republicans, No John McCain on November 4.
Send A message with your vote: Enough IS Enough, We Can't Take NO MORE!
Stay hopeful and pray for real change that Barack Obama will bring.
Speak to your neighbors, cry loud against the lies and deceptive tactics of the Republicans
Greed has been the creed of the Bush Administration and McCain will continue the Age of Greed.
We cannot afford, 4 MORE YEARS, Of Tears
Now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aide of this country.
The Bible says, that when the Righteous are in charge, the people rejoice. I don't see any rejoicing during this financial mess that the Republican Bush Administration has created.
I am sick and tired of hearing the media push Sarah Palin. Puking Point 1
I am sick and tired of swift boating by the Republican media. Puking Point 2
I am outraged at what the Republican party has done to my America. Puking Point 3
I am embarrased about big oil, sex, and drugs that claim to be American. Puking Point 4
I am scared to death about a maverick running America. Puking Point 5
I am outraged about the propaganda coming out of Washington to apease America. Puking Point 6
America is Bankrupt!!!!! Puking Point 7
What is your Puking Point?
