Cerberus has billions and billions of dollars in their pocket, they took a risk and lost and now the taxpayer is in the hole.
You sound like someone who just checked the news for the first in a year or so.
Yes. Make no mistake the taxpayer is in the hole regardless. We either pay by the loss of jobs and the downturn of the economy, or through the increased taxes it will take to recover from these bailouts. The question isnt does the Amercian public suffer or not, but in finding a tightrope to walk between the extremes that is less impacting than the rest.
It’s a no-brainer. The only reason the financial institutions have been immune to this sort of scrutiny and accountability is because they’ve got their tendrils deeper into the heart of government.
Wall Street created this crisis. Detroit hasn’t f’d up to nearly the degree Wall Street has, but Detroit doesn’t have the lobbying machine that Wall Street does, so we’re the ones getting the shaft here.
It’s the biggest joke of all.
Let’s just ask them for our $14B back and go our own separate ways.
good song
They turned Chrysler into more of a joke than it ever was before while sucking it dry. They were never about “running a car company.”
That and a couple of car companies does not a great depression make.
The difference between Chrysler to me and any of the financial markets is that the financial markets had no money (except Goldman Sachs who are fleecing us). Cerberus has money to put into Chrysler. Do they still hold ownership rights? Or do we get all of that?
What?
$20 million retirement package.
Oh, thanks for this. I Googled a few links this morning on AIG, and the way the first links reported it was that after last September’s appeal to Congress, AIG’s old CEO Willumstad was going to leave. It wasn’t clear whether it was the board or the government that asked for the change.
But according to the Wall Street Journal:
For three hours Tuesday evening, the board of American International Group Inc. wrestled with the government’s offer: an $85 billion loan in return for surrendering control of the insurance giant.
The directors were stunned by the “onerous” proposal, as one called it. They were surprised by an order to replace Chief Executive Robert Willumstad and bristled at what they considered Washington’s heavy-handed treatment. One director said he felt “violated.”
I’d still like to see a few more financial executives be asked to leave, but the GM situation feels more equitable now.
I’d like to see a few more directors “violated”. With extreme prejudice…
Yeah, this whole Detroit thing has been a fiasco. From what I’m reading the main complaint with Wagoner is that wasn’t downsizing fast enough. In other words, they were too big to fail, so we bailed them out and told them to start getting smaller anyway. And now we’re telling them they may be allowed to fail after all, getting just as small as they can. Soon they’ll be too small to fail.
Anyway, thank god they finally got rid of Wagoner and put his #2 in charge. That ought to turn things right around. I wonder what the janitor will do once we get down to him.
Is that a joke, or are you seriously that stupid?
I’m going to chalk that up to ignorance and give you the benefit of the doubt.
I’m aware that there’s roughly 3 million people involved in various ways around the car companies. But that isn’t the same as credit markets locking up and our money markets failing. Someone will come in and buy up the bankrupt assets of what’s left of the American auto industry and/or other companies will move in to fill the sustainable void. It’s no where near the level of disaster created by a failed financial system, so don’t pretend it’s otherwise. Or are you seriously that stupid?
The directors were stunned by the “onerous” proposal, as one called it. They were surprised by an order to replace Chief Executive Robert Willumstad and bristled at what they considered Washington’s heavy-handed treatment. One director said he felt “violated.”
I love how shocked and aggrieved the executives get when there are any strings at all attached to the taxpayer money they’re getting. How dare you tell us how to run our business that we just bankrupted! This is an outrage!
It just sucks that the other 90% of the time there are no strings attached.
Who is this white knight, Mordrak? Car sales are tanking pretty much across the board due to the economic meltdown. It’s not like Honda or Toyota are just going to walk in, buy everything up, and keep the factories running as normal. GM and Chrysler go under and the chaos will be incredible. As bad as the US financial crisis is, putting a million or more people out of work overnight will be apocalyptic.
Are you really dumb enough that you don’t get this? How can you be so stupid as to think that we can just absorb a million or two lost jobs? In this economic climate?
I never said they’d buy all of it, I’m saying at bankruptcy prices, someone will move in to buy some of it and other companies will expand to fill the profitable void left behind. There will be some loss no matter what because they are making more cars than they can sell. Durr. There’s not an infinitely large market here.
GM and Chrysler go under and the chaos will be incredible. As bad as the US financial crisis is, putting a million or more people out of work overnight will be apocalyptic.
Are you really dumb enough that you don’t get this? How can you be so stupid as to think that we can just absorb a million or two lost jobs? In this economic climate?
We’re already losing 500k jobs a month. Let’s put this in perspective. In this economic climate only, should the car companies have any leverage. Without money (credit), people aren’t buying any cars to begin with. Are you all really this dumb?
The people tossing out the accusations of stupidity should probably be a little more level-headed. Three million jobs is what, two percentage points on unemployment?
The apocalypse didn’t arrive with 30% unemployment in the 1930s. It will suck but humanity will survive.
What concerns me more than the end result here is the emotional extremism that could lead to bad policy in general.