posted
I received this email today from GM headquarters...
Dear Robert,
We value and appreciate your loyalty more than anything. We are proud to announce we have repaid our government loan – in full, with interest, five years ahead of the original schedule. We realize we still have more to do. Our goal is to exceed every expectation you've set for us. We're designing, building and selling the best cars and trucks in the world. Like the award-winning Chevy Malibu, the all-new Buick LaCrosse, the versatile Cadillac CTS Sport Wagon and the innovative GMC Terrain, just to name a few. As we move into the future, we're thankful to have loyal owners like you. We invite you to learn more about the new GM and join our community, by visiting gm.com. And once again, thank you for your support.
Susan E. Docherty Vice President, U.S. Marketing
-------------------- ***********************
It's all in the timing... Posts: 4303 | From: DSA | Registered: Dec 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by buckstalker: I received this email today from GM headquarters...
Dear Robert,
We value and appreciate your loyalty more than anything. We are proud to announce we have repaid our government loan – in full, with interest, five years ahead of the original schedule. We realize we still have more to do. Our goal is to exceed every expectation you've set for us. We're designing, building and selling the best cars and trucks in the world. Like the award-winning Chevy Malibu, the all-new Buick LaCrosse, the versatile Cadillac CTS Sport Wagon and the innovative GMC Terrain, just to name a few. As we move into the future, we're thankful to have loyal owners like you. We invite you to learn more about the new GM and join our community, by visiting gm.com. And once again, thank you for your support.
Susan E. Docherty Vice President, U.S. Marketing
That same exact statement was given by the GM CEO last night in a commercial during the NFL Draft on ESPN last night.
-------------------- It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious. Posts: 3311 | From: St. Louis | Registered: Feb 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
They only paid back the funds that were not forgiven by the Government. Still, it's a good move. Whitaker is a sharp guy- he did alot for AT&T.
I heard the new GM is going to do a ipo eventually and since they have removed most most of their legacy costs and other assorted dead weight, I might invest in them...maybe.
Posts: 4 | From: St.Louis | Registered: Mar 2010
| IP: Logged |
posted
I am glad to hear that news about an early pay back.
I hope that GM goes on to be the great auto industry giant that it once was.
-------------------- Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise. Posts: 3827 | From: beautiful California | Registered: Sep 2008
| IP: Logged |
posted
Shock: General Motors did not repay loans as claimed
[i]“Treasury has merely exchanged a legal right to repayment for an uncertain hope of sharing in the future growth of GM, Grassley wrote. A debt-for-equity swap is not a repayment … In a hearing Tuesday before the Senate Finance Committee, TARP overseer Neil Barofsky confirmed that GM was using Treasury funds to make the loan repayment.”
We should really be surprised if the GM bailout (and the supposed re-payment message constantly repeated on the media) doesn’t rank at the very top of the list for all-time bad government spending policies. There are just so many reasons it should never have be allowed. On the most basic level it is outrageous to take the tax money paid by those making $10 per hour and give it away to a company like General Motors.
The fall of GM was pushed back by a few years, maybe decades if we bail them out again in the future which we most likely will. This assumption is based on the shocking claim made by Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley:
General Motors repaid TARP loans with other bailout funds instead of company earnings, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley claimed Thursday in a letter to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. The Iowa senator called the maneuver an “elaborate TARP money shuffle,” saying the auto maker siphoned funds from a multibillion-dollar Treasury escrow account to repay its bailout debts.
“Treasury has merely exchanged a legal right to repayment for an uncertain hope of sharing in the future growth of GM,” Grassley wrote. “A debt-for-equity swap is not a repayment.”
posted
doesn’t rank at the very top of the list for all-time bad government spending policies.
no way will economists ever agree with that.
they will tel you that it kept us out 25% to 30% real unemployment numbers and made this the depression that wasn't a depression. I predict that in the future this response to the crisis will be touted as genius.
never forget that we had a real contractual obligation to people who would have lost their jobs that actually cost more than "giving" the money to GM to spend. The ancillary service to GM and the the employees would have collapsed next and the dominoes would have never stopped tipping to we hit the very bottom of the barrel.
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise. Posts: 36378 | From: USA | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Relentless.: It hasn't kept us from 25% unemployment... It merely delayed and prolonged it.
i agree with one exception, and that is that by stringing it out? there is less of a crash and people/businesses have more time to get their life in order to weather this out.
we may very well get 25% real unemployment, but what is going to happen would be much worse if the govt hadn't intervened. in essence the bottom whenever or wherever it hits, would have been much worse.
it's like bailing out the banks? people say let them fail but they forget this little issue of FDIC insurance... we end up paying anyway,a nd we would pay alot more.... i just want to see the people at fault get their just deserts, and the people that are not at fault to not suffer as much. i know it ain't perfect.
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise. Posts: 36378 | From: USA | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Lockman: Glassman...I predict that in the future this response to the crisis will be touted as genius.
Are you finally recognizing President Bush'es genius?
i was of the opinion that he did the right thing for the first time in 7.8 years of his office.
it was all his supporters that cried foul then. and if you ask me? the ONLY reason they could and did was because they knew he had already shot the GOP wad for what looked like forever, and the Dems were going to own it all no matter what.
the GOP minority congress enjoyed a luxury in going agin him that they could not have afforded if they were in charge.
it is stupid partisan politics that's shredding our country.
25% real unemployment is a tipping point. at 30% you do not recover, and we were already in a big expensive war.
in WW2? they had signs up everywhere- buy American SAVINGS bonds to fund the war, instead Bush cut taxes and told people to spend money on imported cargo and consumables (oil?). The stage was set for the crash way back in 2003.
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise. Posts: 36378 | From: USA | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged |
Being in debt is the problem. Being in more debt is not the solution...
The solution is invariably the opposite of the problem.
Simple F@#%$@#$g logic
The solution is invariably the opposite of the problem? nonsense.
i go straight to the founders who knew they could not tell people they were going to tax them to start the Revolution. They issues over 200 million paper dollars when the total money on hand in the colonies was a a paltry 12 million to wage teh war and raised taxes after the fact. We made it. We will again, but i do agree we have to pay the debts and the sooner the better.
you may remeber me beaching in 2003 or 4 when they gave us those 800$ checks. It's not like i applaud all govt spending, but when the govt is theonly place to borrow then that's where you have to borrow.
the lenders did not run out of money to lend because the govt screwed up -it was private industry that xcrewed up.
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise. Posts: 36378 | From: USA | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
We didn't borrow from the government... We borrowed more than any time in history from the federal reserve... A bank That eagerly lent out those funds at interest. Then they go and sell that debt to China or whoever else is willing to buy it.
So please tell me how selling our country to China is helping anything?
Oh sure CNN and FOX will tell you the bailouts were required, but parroting that BS makes no one any smarter.
How is China owning our debt a good thing.. how is that saving our country?
The best answers are simple.. give it a shot.
Posts: 2965 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
you will remember that i have also been beaching about China since we came here. I agree with Donald Trump on this, raise import duty on all chinese products to 50% pay them back and and retire our debt with them and never borrwo another penny from them.
as far as i'm concerned they are just as much our enemy as the Soviets were.
also? we did borrow alot of money from France to wage the revolution.
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise. Posts: 36378 | From: USA | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
It's not China's fault. Japan has bought a lot of our debt as well.. We aren't borrowing money from China. Our central bank is selling them the debt. We are borrowing the money from our own central bank. The fact that we have a central bank that not only prints our money but only lends it to us to use... at interest is the problem. So if we can agree that it is the existence of the central bank and it's role as currency provider that is the problem. And if we can agree that our current situation is merely the fruition of this supremely flawed endeavor. Then we can easily see that borrowing a motherload of that lent currency in a time when we can't pay for what we have already borrowed is in no way a solution, but is in fact the death blow.
Letting GM fail, while not palatable and far from comfortable in the near term, would have been the only prudent course of action.
This is all assuming that anyone in power or anyone that I might converse with is in any way interested in the continuation of this nation.
As I have said over and over: This situation is not born of ineptitude.
Posts: 2965 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
from my perspective, letting GM fold wouldnot have been a "near term" incident.
if i beleived that? i would have been OK with letting it fold.
at the risk of being repetitive? letting GM fall would have caused several other jobs to fail for each GM job lost, eacjh of those other lost jobs would most likely have had the same exponential effect. the only way to stop that from happening was to act fast, and they did- my bat senses tell me we'd have lost at least five more, and possibly twenty.
if you begin to try to figure out how much unemployment benefits for that cost the numbers get spooky.
then consider that the unemployment benees are never recovered where as there's still some chance GM will pay back the money, or at least some of it. AIG will pay back th emoeny becuase it has good business that is still wroth something.
as to the central bank? i don't much like it. i know they are the bubble machine and they operate as tho the "consumers" (which they are not) of this country are like their personal sponge mop, they use us to sop up all th ecash they leak all over the place and then when it's time they wring us out in their bucket and start all over again...
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise. Posts: 36378 | From: USA | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
you are correct the China issue is seperate, so let's look at it.
what we have in the China deal is a few huge wholesale importers here and the bankers, that make a killing, and we have a lot of consumers that like buying cheap cargo.
the fact is that the Chinese Govt is a one party system that does not have popular elections. It would be as if we had only one party here, and the state CAUCUSES (not primary elections) picked the Senate and the Senate picked the president. Forget the HOuse entirely and forget eh Judiciary.
The Chinese govt looks at us and has to be laughing. They have to wonder how we could act against our own self interest in such a major way.
Our trade with them is paying for them to build surface navy that one day will compete with ours. They will then be able to dictate trade flows that we now protect.
They MAY have increased some freedoms for their people to maintain a front so that we still buy their cargo, but they have only gone a littel way and they will not go further. The google thing is perfect example. They steal our intellectual property with no qualms. Intellectual property is about all we produce anymore and we are good at it, but they see it as collective property there.
Financially? Our fiancial industry treated China like they were children. They actually tried to shame them into buying more mortgage money and they refused. People openly called them uninspired investors and simple and naive. Well, the Chinese came out better than we did because they were rightly skeptical of what was going on here.
My view is that they see see US as a weak enemy in a fifty year war and they will never have to even fire one shot if they follow their current plan
Sun Tzu:
All warfare is based on deception.
In the operations of war, where there are in the field a thousand swift chariots, as many heavy chariots, and a hundred thousand mail-clad soldiers, with provisions enough to carry them a thousand li, the expenditure at home and at the front, including entertainment of guests, small items such as glue and paint, and sums spent on chariots and armor, will reach the total of a thousand ounces of silver per day. Such is the cost of raising an army of 100,000 men. When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men's weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be damped. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength. Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain. Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor damped, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man, however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue. Thus, though we have heard of stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays. There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise. Posts: 36378 | From: USA | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged |
Poverty of the State exchequer causes an army to be maintained by contributions from a distance. Contributing to maintain an army at a distance causes the people to be impoverished.
all this stuff is part of their basic survival instincts by now, they've known this for hundreds of generations now:
they know what they are doing and we are absolute fools to go along with it for a few dollars and some chap plastic dishware
here is the most important thing Sun Tzu ever wrote:
Therefore the skillful leader subdues the enemy's troops without any fighting; he captures their cities without laying siege to them; he overthrows their kingdom without lengthy operations in the field.
that is their plan in a nutshell
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise. Posts: 36378 | From: USA | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged |
UBBFriend: Email this page to someone!
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
![[BadOne]](graemlins/headbash.gif)
