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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (82862)	4/21/2010 2:47:27 PM
From: TideGlider	1 Recommendation Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 224724

They got a tiny percentage of their money back. You are a headline hero. lol Look into it Kenneth...try your best Googling!

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (82862)	4/21/2010 3:00:11 PM
From: JakeStraw	2 Recommendations Respond to of 224724

GM repaid $8 billion; they got a total of $52 billion from the U.S. gov't. The remaining balance due is supposed to be repaid via a GM public stock offering later this year which also hinges on the company making a profit.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (82862)	4/22/2010 6:47:46 AM
From: Hope Praytochange	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 224724

idiotObama suggests value-added tax may be an option By CHARLES BABINGTON, Associated Press Writer Charles Babington, Associated Press Writer – Wed Apr 21, 7:14 pm ET WASHINGTON – Barack idiotObama suggested Wednesday that a new value-added tax on Americans is still on the table, seeming to show more openness to the idea than his aides have expressed in recent days. Before deciding what revenue options are best for dealing with the deficit and the economy, idiotObama said in an interview with CNBC, "I want to get a better picture of what our options are." After idiotObama adviser Paul Volcker recently raised the prospect of a value-added tax, or VAT, the Senate voted 85-13 last week for a nonbinding "sense of the Senate" resolution that calls the such a tax "a massive tax increase that will cripple families on fixed income and only further push back America's economic recovery." For days, White House spokesmen have said the president has not proposed and is not considering a VAT. "I think I directly answered this the other day by saying that it wasn't something that the idiot had under consideration," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters shortly before idiotObama spoke with CNBC. After the interview, White House deputy communications director Jen Psaki said nothing has changed and the White House is "not considering" a VAT. Many European countries impose a VAT, which taxes the value that is added at each stage of production of certain commodities. It could apply, for instance, to raw products delivered to a mill, the mill's production work and so on up the line to the retailer. In the CNBC interview, idiotObama said he was waiting for recommendations from a bipartisan fiscal advisory commission on ways to tackle the deficit and other problems. When asked if he could see a potential VAT in this nation, the idiot said: "I know that there's been a lot of talk around town lately about the value-added tax. That is something that has worked for some countries. It's something that would be novel for the United States." "And before, you know, I start saying 'this makes sense or that makes sense,' I want to get a better picture of what our options are," idiotObama said. He said his first priority "is to figure out how can we reduce wasteful spending so that, you know, we have a baseline of the core services that we need and the government should provide. And then we decide how do we pay for that." Volcker has said taxes might have to be raised to slow the deficit's growth. He said a value-added tax "was not as toxic an idea" as it had been in the past. Since then, some GOP lawmakers and conservative commentators have said the idiotObama administration is edging toward a VAT.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (82862)	4/29/2010 4:10:36 PM
From: TimF	1 Recommendation Respond to of 224724

No Ken. The taxpayers did not get their money back from GM. The loan was only a fraction of the money GM received. It had earlier been bailed out with billions from the Bush administration, then there is over $40bil the government gave GM in exchange for an equity position. The loan was "paid back" with other government money, and GM plans to ask for another loan soon. Also the loan itself was at a subsidized interest rate and the subsidy inherent in that rate will never be paid back.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (82862)	4/29/2010 4:12:03 PM
From: TimF	1 Recommendation Respond to of 224724

GM's Phony Bailout Payback The company is setting the stage for another taxpayer shakedown Shikha Dalmia \| April 27, 2010 GM CEO Ed Whitacre announced in a Wall Street Journal column last Wednesday that his company has paid back its government bailout loan "in full, with interest, years ahead of schedule." He is even running TV ads on all major networks to that effect—a needless expense given that a credulous media is only too happy to parrot his claims for free. Detroit Free Press' Mike Thompson, for example, advises bailout proponents to start "warming up their vocal chords" to jeer their opponents with chants of "I told you so." But before belting out their victory aria, GM-boosters ought to hear the whole story—not just the fairytale version about Government Motors' grand comeback that Whitacre is feeding them. Uncle Sam gave GM $49.5 billion last summer in aid to finance its bankruptcy. (If it hadn't, the company, which couldn't raise this kind of money from private lenders, would have been forced into liquidation, its assets sold for scrap.) So when Whitacre publishes a column with the headline, "The GM Bailout: Paid Back in Full," most ordinary mortals unfamiliar with bailout minutia would assume that he is alluding to the entire $49.5 billion. That, however, is far from the case. Because a loan of such a huge amount would have been politically controversial, the Obama administration handed GM only $6.7 billion as a pure loan. (It asked for only a 7 percent interest rate—a very sweet deal considering that GM bonds at that time were trading below junk level.) The vast bulk of the bailout money was transferred to GM through the purchase of 60.8 percent equity stake in the company—arguably an even worse deal for taxpayers than the loan, given that the equity position requires them to bear the risk of the investment without any guaranteed return. (The Canadian government likewise gave GM $1.4 billion as a pure loan, and another $8.1 billion for an 11.7 percent equity stake. The U.S. and Canadian government together own 72.5 percent of the company.) But when Whitacre says GM has paid back the bailout money in full, he means not the entire $49.5 billion—the loan and the equity. In fact, he avoids all mention of that figure in his column. He means only the $6.7 billion loan amount. But wait! Even that's not the full story given that GM, which has not yet broken even, much less turned a profit, can't pay even this puny amount from its own earnings. So how is it paying it? As it turns out, the Obama administration put $13.4 billion of the aid money as "working capital" in an escrow account when the company was in bankruptcy. The company is using this escrow money—government money—to pay back the government loan. GM claims that the fact that it is even using the escrow money to pay back the loan instead of using it all to shore itself up shows that it is on the road to recovery. That actually would be a positive development—although hardly one worth hyping in ads and columns—if it were not for a further plot twist. Sean McAlinden, chief economist at the Ann Arbor-based Center for Automotive Research, points out that the company has applied to the Department of Energy for $10 billion in low (5 percent) interest loan to retool its plants to meet the government's tougher new CAFÉ (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards. However, giving GM more taxpayer money on top of the existing bailout would have been a political disaster for the Obama administration and a PR debacle for the company. Paying back the small bailout loan makes the new—and bigger—DOE loan much more feasible. In short, GM is using government money to pay back government money to get more government money. And at a 2 percent lower interest rate at that. This is a nifty scheme to refinance GM's government debt—not pay it back! GM boasts that, because it is doing so well, it is paying the $6.7 billion five years ahead of schedule since it was not due until 2015. So will there be an accelerated payback of the rest of the $49.6 billion investment? No. That goal has been pushed back, as it turns out. In order to recover that investment, the government has to sell its equity. It plans to do that only when GM becomes a publicly traded company once again. GM was hoping to turn a profit by the end of 2010 and float an initial public offering this winter. However, GM Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell, when queried about that timeline a few days ago, demurred. The offering will be made, he said, "when the markets and the company are ready." (Take that, taxpayers!) The reality is that there is no certainty that GM will ever be able to make taxpayers whole. Some analysts such as Center for Automotive Research's Sean McAlinden and Global Insight's George Magliano believe that it will—eventually. McAlinden maintains that this will happen when the company's market capitalization touches $60 billion. (At GM's peak in 2000, this level was only $57 billion.) This is a challenging but not an impossible goal—provided the economy does not dip into another recession, he maintains. Magliano too maintains that the company will be able to pay back taxpayers if the industry is able to ramp up annual vehicle sales from the expected 10.8 million this year to 17 million in 2014 and GM captures 20 percent of these sales. The General Accountability Office, on the other hand, remains deeply pessimistic. It concluded in a December report (which a more recent April report has said nothing to contradict, despite media spin to the contrary) that: "The Treasury is unlikely to recover the entirety of its investment in Chrysler or GM, given that the companies' values would have to grow substantially more than they have in the past." Whitacre's bailout payback ploy is a desperate attempt to win back the car-buying public deeply disgusted by the spectacle of GM rattling its tin-cup before Uncle Sam. But the fact of the matter is that the company is still deep in the hole. It might claw its way back—or it might not. But surely it's premature for its media boosters to pop open the champagne bottle without getting their story straight? reason.com