Although it happened back in September, 2011, it appears many American taxpayers are unaware that General Motors struck a deal in Shanghai wherein the company has agreed to develop an electric vehicle (EV) platform with its longtime Chinese partner SAIC.
What else was included in this deal? GM has agreed to effectively move all future EV development to China. It could also mean that production of the vehicle itself will be moved overseas.
The agreement is the result of the Chinese government coercing foreign automakers into giving Chinese companies the EV technology they lack, according to an Associated Press report. Unsurprisingly, some U.S. lawmakers have voiced concerns that the deal is little more than a “shake down” from the Chinese to get GM’s Volt secrets. GM has denied reports that it will hand over the intellectual property underlying the Volt.
GM Vice Chairman Steve Girsky, in a conference call from Shanghai, said that neither SAIC nor the Chinese government have demanded Volt technology but that any future EV developments would, of course, draw on GM’s Volt “experience and technology,” according to a USA Today report first published in September, 2011.
CONTINUED:http://www.theblaze.com/stories/after-receiving-bailout-gm-may-move-volt-production-to-china/
Showing posts with label GM. Show all posts
Showing posts with label GM. Show all posts
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Sunday, November 20, 2011
One Year After the GM IPO…How is Our $50 Billion Investment Looking?
"Whiteacre was not lying. LOANS were paid back. Loans…not the $50 billion dollar investment. There is a difference.
The loans Whiteacre was speaking of were just a small portion of the $50 billion dollar bailout. In fact, they were less than 10 percent of the total package. And the sources of the money used to pay off those loans is also an important story."
Reason.tv provides a simple and graphic explanation of the facts of this reported payback of the loan.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/one-year-after-the-gm-ipo-how-is-our-50-billion-investment-looking/
The loans Whiteacre was speaking of were just a small portion of the $50 billion dollar bailout. In fact, they were less than 10 percent of the total package. And the sources of the money used to pay off those loans is also an important story."
Reason.tv provides a simple and graphic explanation of the facts of this reported payback of the loan.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/one-year-after-the-gm-ipo-how-is-our-50-billion-investment-looking/
Friday, January 7, 2011
THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION
Morning Bell: Americans Are Fleeing Obama’s Crony Capitalist Economy
http://blog.heritage.org/2011/01/07/morning-bell-americans-are-fleeing-obamas-crony-capitalist-economy/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell
Today the Bureau of Labor and Statistics released its monthly jobs report showing that the U.S. economy added only 103,000 jobs this December. With the unemployment rate now at 9.4%, this marks the 20th month in a row that the unemployment has been over 9 percent, a post–World War II record. You are going to hear a lot of noise from the White House about how this drop from a 9.8% unemployment rate to 9.4% means the economy is in a strong recovery. This is false. The reality is that the only reason the unemployment rate dropped is because the U.S. labor force decreased by 434,000. More importantly 260,000 Americans dropped out of the labor force entirely. This means that the Obama economy is now driving Americans out of the labor force faster than it is bringing them.
This Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs tweeted out: “General Motors Co.’s sales were up 21 percent in 2010 for its four core brands.” Which is some interesting spin. As The Truth About Cars points out, GM’s retail market share for all of their brands actually fell a full 1.8 percent in 2010. So why is the President’s closest communication aide doing PR for what is, supposedly, a privately owned car company?
Yes, the Obama Administration did sell off a majority stake of their ownership of GM this November (at a $10 billion loss to taxpayers), but that still leaves them owning about a 37 percent share in the company. In other words, our government is still part owner of a supposedly private car company. And that is not the only continuing link between bailed-out GM and the Obama Administration. The Obama czar who oversaw the GM bailout, Ron Bloom, was just named the new czar for all of manufacturing policy at the White House’s National Economic Council (NEC). So we can expect to see continued favoritism for GM and its bailed-out brothers from the entire Obama Administration.
The manufacturing industry is not the only sector of the economy where the Administration has installed a bailout revolving door. Over just the last two months, the Obama White House has sent budget director Peter Orszag to Citibank ($306 billion bailout), taken in Gene Sperling as NEC director from Goldman Sachs (beneficiary of the $173 billion AIG bailout), and added former Fannie Mae ($135 billion bailout so far) lobbyist and JPMorgan ($12 billion bailout) executive Bill Daley as President Barack Obama’s Chief of Staff. There is a phrase for an economy that is so dependent on close relationships between business people and government officials: crony capitalism. And it is strangling our economic recovery.
There is a better way. Instead of relying on bailouts, subsidies, tax loopholes, and regulations to pick and choose which politically connected firms succeed or fail, government should unleash entrepreneurs to create jobs through true free enterprise policies. Specifically, Congress should:
•Rescind unspent stimulus funds;
•Reform regulations—specifically repealing Section 404 of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act—to reduce unnecessary business costs;
•Remove barriers to domestic energy production;
•Suspend the job-killing Davis–Bacon Act and prohibit Project Labor Agreement requirements on federally funded construction projects;
•Conclude the pending free trade agreements with Colombia and Panama, as well as the recently announced agreement with South Korea; and
•Reduce taxes on foreign earnings to encourage companies to repatriate the profits to America.
According to James Sherk, Karen Campbell, and John Ligon of the Center for Data Analysis, adopting these measures increase real gross domestic product by an average of $56 billion a year between 2011 and 2020, reduce the national debt by $305 billion by 2020, and increase job growth by 305,000 a year between 2011 and 2020.
This past June, marking the first anniversary of the Obama Administration’s destruction of our nation’s bankruptcy code, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels (R) warned: “The nation is not safe from crony capitalism. In the past year we’ve experienced the nationalization of the student loan industry and the passage of national health-care and financial-services regulation, each of which is rife with new opportunities for government favoritism and preferential handouts to favored corporations like Chrysler.” Our economy will never reach its full potential as long as the best way to succeed in business is to succeed in Washington.
© 2011, The Heritage Foundation
Conservative policy research since 1973
http://blog.heritage.org/2011/01/07/morning-bell-americans-are-fleeing-obamas-crony-capitalist-economy/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell
Today the Bureau of Labor and Statistics released its monthly jobs report showing that the U.S. economy added only 103,000 jobs this December. With the unemployment rate now at 9.4%, this marks the 20th month in a row that the unemployment has been over 9 percent, a post–World War II record. You are going to hear a lot of noise from the White House about how this drop from a 9.8% unemployment rate to 9.4% means the economy is in a strong recovery. This is false. The reality is that the only reason the unemployment rate dropped is because the U.S. labor force decreased by 434,000. More importantly 260,000 Americans dropped out of the labor force entirely. This means that the Obama economy is now driving Americans out of the labor force faster than it is bringing them.
This Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs tweeted out: “General Motors Co.’s sales were up 21 percent in 2010 for its four core brands.” Which is some interesting spin. As The Truth About Cars points out, GM’s retail market share for all of their brands actually fell a full 1.8 percent in 2010. So why is the President’s closest communication aide doing PR for what is, supposedly, a privately owned car company?
Yes, the Obama Administration did sell off a majority stake of their ownership of GM this November (at a $10 billion loss to taxpayers), but that still leaves them owning about a 37 percent share in the company. In other words, our government is still part owner of a supposedly private car company. And that is not the only continuing link between bailed-out GM and the Obama Administration. The Obama czar who oversaw the GM bailout, Ron Bloom, was just named the new czar for all of manufacturing policy at the White House’s National Economic Council (NEC). So we can expect to see continued favoritism for GM and its bailed-out brothers from the entire Obama Administration.
The manufacturing industry is not the only sector of the economy where the Administration has installed a bailout revolving door. Over just the last two months, the Obama White House has sent budget director Peter Orszag to Citibank ($306 billion bailout), taken in Gene Sperling as NEC director from Goldman Sachs (beneficiary of the $173 billion AIG bailout), and added former Fannie Mae ($135 billion bailout so far) lobbyist and JPMorgan ($12 billion bailout) executive Bill Daley as President Barack Obama’s Chief of Staff. There is a phrase for an economy that is so dependent on close relationships between business people and government officials: crony capitalism. And it is strangling our economic recovery.
There is a better way. Instead of relying on bailouts, subsidies, tax loopholes, and regulations to pick and choose which politically connected firms succeed or fail, government should unleash entrepreneurs to create jobs through true free enterprise policies. Specifically, Congress should:
•Rescind unspent stimulus funds;
•Reform regulations—specifically repealing Section 404 of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act—to reduce unnecessary business costs;
•Remove barriers to domestic energy production;
•Suspend the job-killing Davis–Bacon Act and prohibit Project Labor Agreement requirements on federally funded construction projects;
•Conclude the pending free trade agreements with Colombia and Panama, as well as the recently announced agreement with South Korea; and
•Reduce taxes on foreign earnings to encourage companies to repatriate the profits to America.
According to James Sherk, Karen Campbell, and John Ligon of the Center for Data Analysis, adopting these measures increase real gross domestic product by an average of $56 billion a year between 2011 and 2020, reduce the national debt by $305 billion by 2020, and increase job growth by 305,000 a year between 2011 and 2020.
This past June, marking the first anniversary of the Obama Administration’s destruction of our nation’s bankruptcy code, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels (R) warned: “The nation is not safe from crony capitalism. In the past year we’ve experienced the nationalization of the student loan industry and the passage of national health-care and financial-services regulation, each of which is rife with new opportunities for government favoritism and preferential handouts to favored corporations like Chrysler.” Our economy will never reach its full potential as long as the best way to succeed in business is to succeed in Washington.
© 2011, The Heritage Foundation
Conservative policy research since 1973
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Michelle Malkin
The Delphi Disaster: An Economic Horror Story Obama Won't Tell
The White House believes it can win back depressed and economically stressed voters by turning President Obama into the storyteller-in-chief again. But victims of Obama's Chicago politics don't want to hear any more of his own well-worn tales of struggle and sacrifice. They've got their own tragedies to tell -- heart-wrenching dramas of personal and financial suffering at the very hands of Obama.
Consider the real-life horror story of 20,000 white-collar workers at Delphi, a leading auto parts company spun off from GM a decade ago. As Washington rushed to nationalize the U.S. auto industry with $80 billion in taxpayer "rescue" funds and avoid contested court termination proceedings, the White House auto team schemed with Big Labor bosses to preserve UAW members' costly pension funds by shafting their nonunion counterparts. In addition, the nonunion pensioners lost all of their health and life insurance benefits.
The abused workers -- most from hard-hit northeast Ohio, Michigan and neighboring states -- had devoted decades of their lives as secretaries, technicians, engineers and sales employees at Delphi/GM. Some workers have watched up to 70 percent of their pensions vanish.
John Berent of Marblehead, Ohio, lost one-third of his pension: "I worked as a salaried employee for GM (30 years) and Delphi (10 years). After 40 years of dedicated service, I was forced to retire. Then Delphi terminated my health care, life insurance, vision, dental, then terminated the pension plan. Everything I worked 40 years for was wiped out."
Kelly Fabrizio of Franksville, Wis., saw her pension reduced by 55 percent after working 30 years at Delphi/GM: "I am truly scared for my future. Every day I wake up, shake my head and say out loud -- This Is Not How It Was Supposed To Be."
Roger Hoke of Columbus, Mich., and his wife were both longtime Delphi workers. His pension shrunk by more than 40 percent: "After 33 years with GM and another 10 with Delphi, what did I do wrong to deserve such a fate?"
Paul Dobosz of the Delphi Salaried Retiree Association recounts how they got screwed: "The Auto Task Force knew that the only thing standing in the way of GM getting what they wanted out of Delphi was the already frozen pension obligations." They hatched a plan to dump those pensions on the federally run Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, while at the same time "devising a clever way to make the UAW pensions whole using GM and TARP money to accomplish it. The scheme was documented in sworn depositions (that) revealed ... that some groups of workers were more 'politically sensitive' and would be afforded special treatment (i.e. subsidy using TARP money) while others less politically worthy would be left out."
In other words: Obama's team of auto-crats -- stocked with Big Labor-friendly appointees and self-admitted know-nothings about the car industry -- decided to "cherry pick" (one Obama official's own words) which obligations the new Government Motors company would assume and which they would abandon based on their own political whims and fealty. Due process and equal treatment of union and nonunion workers be damned. Administration officials assert that the Delphi workers' pension fund was underfunded, but two separate actuarial analyses undercut the claim.
The Delphi workers sued the feds and will have a day in court on Sept. 24. They are not asking for a bailout. They are simply asking for fair treatment under the rule of law. Delphi supporters also point out that the very scheme used to "top up" the union workers' pensions with taxpayer subsidies was challenged by the federal government and ruled illegal by the Supreme Court in the 1990s.
A separate investigation by TARP inspector general Neil Barofsky, announced last week, will also probe "whether political considerations played a role in favoring hourly over salaried retirees." It shouldn't take long to unearth the facts. Obama's own former auto czar Steve Rattner admitted in his new memoir that "attacking the union's sacred cow" could "jeopardize" the auto bailout deal.
While Obama conducts his worker empathy tour at staged town halls and rallies across the country, his Treasury Department continues to stonewall and refuses to answer questions about the Delphi disaster. But many workers left out in the cold know the truth: Lip-biting, yarn-spinning Obama doesn't feel their pain. He caused it.
Michelle Malkin makes news and waves with a unique combination of investigative journalism and incisive commentary. She is the author of Culture of Corruption.
http://townhall.com/columnists/MichelleMalkin/2010/09/22/the_delphi_disaster_an_economic_horror_story_obama_wont_tell/page/1
The White House believes it can win back depressed and economically stressed voters by turning President Obama into the storyteller-in-chief again. But victims of Obama's Chicago politics don't want to hear any more of his own well-worn tales of struggle and sacrifice. They've got their own tragedies to tell -- heart-wrenching dramas of personal and financial suffering at the very hands of Obama.
Consider the real-life horror story of 20,000 white-collar workers at Delphi, a leading auto parts company spun off from GM a decade ago. As Washington rushed to nationalize the U.S. auto industry with $80 billion in taxpayer "rescue" funds and avoid contested court termination proceedings, the White House auto team schemed with Big Labor bosses to preserve UAW members' costly pension funds by shafting their nonunion counterparts. In addition, the nonunion pensioners lost all of their health and life insurance benefits.
The abused workers -- most from hard-hit northeast Ohio, Michigan and neighboring states -- had devoted decades of their lives as secretaries, technicians, engineers and sales employees at Delphi/GM. Some workers have watched up to 70 percent of their pensions vanish.
John Berent of Marblehead, Ohio, lost one-third of his pension: "I worked as a salaried employee for GM (30 years) and Delphi (10 years). After 40 years of dedicated service, I was forced to retire. Then Delphi terminated my health care, life insurance, vision, dental, then terminated the pension plan. Everything I worked 40 years for was wiped out."
Kelly Fabrizio of Franksville, Wis., saw her pension reduced by 55 percent after working 30 years at Delphi/GM: "I am truly scared for my future. Every day I wake up, shake my head and say out loud -- This Is Not How It Was Supposed To Be."
Roger Hoke of Columbus, Mich., and his wife were both longtime Delphi workers. His pension shrunk by more than 40 percent: "After 33 years with GM and another 10 with Delphi, what did I do wrong to deserve such a fate?"
Paul Dobosz of the Delphi Salaried Retiree Association recounts how they got screwed: "The Auto Task Force knew that the only thing standing in the way of GM getting what they wanted out of Delphi was the already frozen pension obligations." They hatched a plan to dump those pensions on the federally run Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, while at the same time "devising a clever way to make the UAW pensions whole using GM and TARP money to accomplish it. The scheme was documented in sworn depositions (that) revealed ... that some groups of workers were more 'politically sensitive' and would be afforded special treatment (i.e. subsidy using TARP money) while others less politically worthy would be left out."
In other words: Obama's team of auto-crats -- stocked with Big Labor-friendly appointees and self-admitted know-nothings about the car industry -- decided to "cherry pick" (one Obama official's own words) which obligations the new Government Motors company would assume and which they would abandon based on their own political whims and fealty. Due process and equal treatment of union and nonunion workers be damned. Administration officials assert that the Delphi workers' pension fund was underfunded, but two separate actuarial analyses undercut the claim.
The Delphi workers sued the feds and will have a day in court on Sept. 24. They are not asking for a bailout. They are simply asking for fair treatment under the rule of law. Delphi supporters also point out that the very scheme used to "top up" the union workers' pensions with taxpayer subsidies was challenged by the federal government and ruled illegal by the Supreme Court in the 1990s.
A separate investigation by TARP inspector general Neil Barofsky, announced last week, will also probe "whether political considerations played a role in favoring hourly over salaried retirees." It shouldn't take long to unearth the facts. Obama's own former auto czar Steve Rattner admitted in his new memoir that "attacking the union's sacred cow" could "jeopardize" the auto bailout deal.
While Obama conducts his worker empathy tour at staged town halls and rallies across the country, his Treasury Department continues to stonewall and refuses to answer questions about the Delphi disaster. But many workers left out in the cold know the truth: Lip-biting, yarn-spinning Obama doesn't feel their pain. He caused it.
Michelle Malkin makes news and waves with a unique combination of investigative journalism and incisive commentary. She is the author of Culture of Corruption.
http://townhall.com/columnists/MichelleMalkin/2010/09/22/the_delphi_disaster_an_economic_horror_story_obama_wont_tell/page/1
Monday, March 29, 2010
American Capitalism Gone With A Whimper
http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/pravda.asp ://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/pravda.asp
From a Russian Newspaper
The irony of this article appearing in the English edition of Pravda (Russian on-line newspaper) defies description. Why can a Russian newspaper print the following yet the American media can't/won't see it?
American Capitalism Gone With A Whimper
It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American descent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.
True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.
Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.
First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas than the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonalds burger or a Burger King burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our "democracy". Pride blind the foolish.
Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different "branches and denominations" were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the "winning" side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the "winning" side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America .
The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America 's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Weimar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.
These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, losses, and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?
These men, of course, are not an elected panel but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs and their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American dollars, in one bailout after another. They are also usurping the rights, duties, and powers of the American congress (parliament). Again, congress has put up little more than a whimper to their masters.
Then came Barack Obama's command that GM's (General Motors) president step down from leadership of his company. That is correct, dear reader, in the land of "pure" free markets, the American president now has the power, the self-given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will. Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions.
So it should be no surprise, that the American president has followed this up with a "bold" move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies. I am sure that if given the chance, they would happily try and redesign it for the whole of the world, too. Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK 's Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our "wise" Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.
Again, the American public has taken this with barely a whimper...but a "free man" whimper.
So, should it be any surprise to discover that the Democratically controlled Congress of America is working on passing a new regulation that would give the American Treasury department the power to set "fair" maximum salaries, evaluate performance, and control how private companies give out pay raises and bonuses? Senator Barney Frank, a social pervert basking in his homosexuality (of course, amongst the modern, enlightened American societal norm, as well as that of the general West, homosexuality is not only not a looked down upon life choice, but is often praised as a virtue) and his Marxist enlightenment, has led this effort. He stresses that this only affects companies that receive government monies, but it is retroactive and taken to a logical extreme, this would include any company or industry that has ever received a tax break or incentive.
The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left.
The proud American will go down into his slavery without a fight, beating his chest, and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker.
Stanislav Mishin
© 1999-2009.. PRAVDA.Ru. When reproducing our materials in whole or in part, hyperlink to PRAVDA.Ru should be made. The opinions and views of the authors do not always coincide with the point of view of PRAVDA.Ru's editors.
27.04.2009
Source: Pravda.Ru
URL: http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/107459-american_capitalism-0
From a Russian Newspaper
The irony of this article appearing in the English edition of Pravda (Russian on-line newspaper) defies description. Why can a Russian newspaper print the following yet the American media can't/won't see it?
American Capitalism Gone With A Whimper
It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American descent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.
True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.
Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.
First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas than the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonalds burger or a Burger King burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our "democracy". Pride blind the foolish.
Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different "branches and denominations" were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the "winning" side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the "winning" side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America .
The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America 's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Weimar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.
These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, losses, and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?
These men, of course, are not an elected panel but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs and their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American dollars, in one bailout after another. They are also usurping the rights, duties, and powers of the American congress (parliament). Again, congress has put up little more than a whimper to their masters.
Then came Barack Obama's command that GM's (General Motors) president step down from leadership of his company. That is correct, dear reader, in the land of "pure" free markets, the American president now has the power, the self-given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will. Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions.
So it should be no surprise, that the American president has followed this up with a "bold" move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies. I am sure that if given the chance, they would happily try and redesign it for the whole of the world, too. Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK 's Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our "wise" Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.
Again, the American public has taken this with barely a whimper...but a "free man" whimper.
So, should it be any surprise to discover that the Democratically controlled Congress of America is working on passing a new regulation that would give the American Treasury department the power to set "fair" maximum salaries, evaluate performance, and control how private companies give out pay raises and bonuses? Senator Barney Frank, a social pervert basking in his homosexuality (of course, amongst the modern, enlightened American societal norm, as well as that of the general West, homosexuality is not only not a looked down upon life choice, but is often praised as a virtue) and his Marxist enlightenment, has led this effort. He stresses that this only affects companies that receive government monies, but it is retroactive and taken to a logical extreme, this would include any company or industry that has ever received a tax break or incentive.
The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left.
The proud American will go down into his slavery without a fight, beating his chest, and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker.
Stanislav Mishin
© 1999-2009.. PRAVDA.Ru. When reproducing our materials in whole or in part, hyperlink to PRAVDA.Ru should be made. The opinions and views of the authors do not always coincide with the point of view of PRAVDA.Ru's editors.
27.04.2009
Source: Pravda.Ru
URL: http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/107459-american_capitalism-0
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