Just days after the Export-Import Bank approved a multi-million dollar federal loan guarantee to benefit a mostly foreign-based wind-energy outfit, the company pink-slipped more than 200 American workers.
The Export-Import Bank, a federal agency that promotes and finances sales of U.S. exports to foreign buyers, approved a $32 million loan guarantee on Aug. 2 for a Brazilian firm to purchase wind turbines from LM Wind Power. According to its website, LM Wind Power is headquartered in Denmark.
“Ex-Im Bank’s financing, which guarantees a Bank of America loan, will support approximately 250 permanent American jobs at the company’s Little Rock, Ark., and Grand Forks, N.D., manufacturing facilities,” the bank said in a release.
The company maintains a manufacturing presence in Arkansas and North Dakota—but the company laid off 234 of the Arkansas plant’s roughly 300 workers just two days after its loan was approved.
[…]
The Ex-Im Bank has drawn criticism from free-market advocates, who call it “corporate welfare.”
“The Export-Import Bank is a slush fund for corporate welfare that distorts trade flows and should be eliminated,” Barney Keller, spokesman for the conservative Club for Growth, said in a statement to the Free Beacon. “It’s a ticking time-bomb that has subsidized everything from Enron to Mexican drug cartels and it should be eliminated as soon as possible before it costs taxpayers.”
The Ex-Im Bank enjoys broad support from Democrats and some Republicans, who say it bolsters U.S. exports.
“We’re helping thousands of businesses sell more of their products and services overseas,” President Obama said after Congress recently extended funding for the Ex-Im Bank through 2014.
Under a deal cut in Congress by House majority leader Eric Cantor and House minority whip Steny Hoyer, the bank’s lending limit was increased to $140 billion over three years, up from its previous $100 billion limit.
The Export-Import Bank did not respond to requests for comment.
Money, power, crony capitalism, corporate welfare. And for the most part, party affiliation doesn’t make a damn bit of difference, when it gets down to “brass tacks” that can be melted down into lawmaker gold.
It’s time to put some permanent crime scene tape around DC and be done with it.
It’s time to put some permanent crime scene tape around DC and be done with it.
Or we could invite the British to send a contingent of Her Majesty’s soldiers and marines to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Sack of Washington by re-enacting the events in a most realistic fashion. We’re just 2 years from the big day!
Is there any doubt which portrait our modern-day Dolley would grab to save from the flames? Oh wait, that one won’t arrive until a couple of years from now, will it?
Save some crime scene tape for Chicago. Have I mentioned how much I loathe that place?
Modern-Dolley can just grab this one instead, I guess.
Probably this one.
It pays to have friends in high places.
It’s heartening to hear that Jon Corzine can sleep a little lighter on his pile of stolen cash tonight.
Too big to jail.
And too small to suffer.
Money, power, crony capitalism, corporate welfare.
…party affiliation doesn’t make a damn bit of difference.
Ich bin eine Illini.
I posted this in another thread, but it gets better. Not only is Corzine not going to jail, he’s thinking of starting a new hedge fund. Tyler at ZH has a contest to name Corzine’s new hedge fund that is worth reading.
Söze Financial Company LLP
[…] awarded to Jeff Goldstein for succinctly stating the solution to many of our major problems: It’s time to put some permanent crime scene tape around DC and be […]