Gary Jason, RCP:
The UAW was given a big chunk of new GM in the crooked bankruptcy settlement. To be precise, the very monster that drove GM off the cliff — the UAW — received 35% of the stock in the new company. With the sale of the stock in the new GM, the UAW earned an immediate $3.4 billion in selling about one third of its shares.
Moreover, if the UAW can get $36 per share for the other two-thirds of its shares, it will walk away breaking even — meaning it will walk away with its outrageously bloated pension and health care fund fully intact. The taxpayer, on the other hand, hasn’t fared well at all.
The media consensus — being pawned off as established truth — is that such bailouts have been hugely successful.
And this is true, if spoken of from the perspective of the unions. For actual capitalism? Not so much…
I’d love to hear what the former suckers…er, bondholders, stockholders of “old”GM had to say. I am always up for learning creative new curses.
This fucking infuriates me. How much of that money will get pumped right back into the Dem coffers?
the biggest suckers are the people who buy their dirty socialist shitmobiles
they’re hoping they can trick some of your dumber South Koreans into buying them
good luck with that
I remember reading about crap like this in the watered-down history books they gave us in school, and thinking how weird some of that was to my young, uncynical mind. Same old shit, new day, is how I see it now.
As a car guy, I’m glad to see GM and Chrysler still in business, but I think they would still be in business without the government’s “help” and would be in a much better position with respect to the unions. Plus, they wouldn’t have a big chunk of our money.
The funny thing is that the long-term effect of “helping” the unions won’t be at all helpful.
Knowing that secured creditors can be pushed to the back of the line behind the politically-connected unions, you would have to be stupid with a side order of extra stupid to allow any company with a heavily-unionized workforce to owe you very much money.
And if Card Check passes, you’d have to include any company that might suddenly find itself with such a unionized workforce.
…means the US is now indistinguishable from any random Third World nation.
Anyone read Hernando de Soto’s book on property rights being one of the key elements of economic development?