Unconventional Wisdom

Here’s the description:

General Motors CEO Ed Whitacre has bragged in TV commercials and newspaper columns that GM has paid back its bailout “in full and ahead of schedule.”

As with the Pontiac Aztek, an ugly exterior masks an ever darker problem: Whitacre is being fanciful to the point of deceit. GM received $50 billion in TARP funds (never mind that TARP was only supposed to cover financial institutions). About $7 billion of that came in the form of a straight-up, low-interest loan. And about $13 billion came in the form of an escrow account.

So how has GM, which lost $38 billion in 2007 even as it sold 9.4 million cars, paid back its debt? It took money from the escrow account to pay back the $6.7 billion loan.

Do you remember when you were a kid and your parents gave you $20 to buy them a Christmas present? You bought them something worth $3 and pocketed the rest? That’s what GM has just done.

Oh, and do you remember when you hit your parents up for college? GM has applied for a $10 billion, low-interest loan from the government to modernize its plants so its cars will meet new federal mileage standards.

If you think all this constitutes paying back their debt in full and ahead of schedule, you might want to check out the new line of GM cars. And hope that the company’s safety engineers are better at math than their CEO.

Originally posted at It’s My Mind on Apr. 23, 2010!

I would very much consider this good news. I’m sure many would use this to say that this only is going to justify future bailouts of failing businesses. Well I would be concerned about that for certain!

General Motors Co. has repaid $8.1 billion in loans it got from the U.S. and Canadian governments, a move its CEO says is a sign automaker is on the road to recovery.

CEO Ed Whitacre announced the repayments Wednesday at GM’s Fairfax Assembly Plant in Kansas City, Kan., where he said GM is investing $257 million in that factory and the Detroit-Hamtramck plant. This afternoon, he flies to Washington to meet with top lawmakers.

The White House pointed to GM’s repayment of the loan and Chrysler LLC’s posting of an operating profit in the first quarter of 2010 as concrete signs that the bailout of the U.S. automakers was working.

Get this!

GM got a total of $52 billion from the U.S. government and $9.5 billion from the Canadian and Ontario governments as it went through bankruptcy protection last year. At first the entire amount of U.S. aid was considered a loan as the government tried to keep GM from going under and pulling the fragile economy into a depression.

But during bankruptcy, the U.S. government reduced the loan portion to $6.7 billion and converted the rest to company stock, while the Canadian governments held $1.4 billion in loans. Those loans were repaid Tuesday, five years ahead of schedule.

The automaker hopes to repay the remaining $45.3 billion to the U.S. government and $8.1 billion to Canada via a public stock offering, perhaps later this year. The U.S. government now owns 61 percent of the company and Canada owns roughly 12 percent.

So GM also got money from Canadian taxpayers as well?

You know the sooner GM is able to pay off it’s gov’t loans the better. No one was happy about these bailouts and gov’t outright owning a business. I just hope that in the future we don’t repeat this example.

BTW, while looking for stories on this I found this headline “GM Pays Back TARP, But Unions May Need More” from FOX Business. I almost used this article, however, many may view FOX as having their own bias.

Within five years, they will have to pay $15.7 billion into the carmakers’ union pensions to comply with federal funding requirements, ($12.3 billion to GM’s pensions, $3.4 billion to Chrysler’s plans), according to the GAO report.

The problem with the automakers that are struggling right now many are saying rest with the unions they have to work with.

BTW, I would really like to buy that new Cadillac SRV in a newly privatized GM. Just saw that vehicle today although not the whole vehicle. It’s really a nicely designed vehicle unlike it’s predecessor.

ALSO, when will they bring back either Oldsmobile or Pontiac!

Then I think someone needs to start one straight away!

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has warned in a secret three-page memorandum to top White House officials that the United States does not have an effective long-range policy for dealing with Iran’s steady progress toward nuclear capability, according to government officials familiar with the document.

Several officials said the highly classified analysis, written in January to President Obama’s national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, came in the midst of an intensifying effort inside the Pentagon, the White House and the intelligence agencies to develop new options for Mr. Obama. They include a set of military alternatives, still under development, to be considered should diplomacy and sanctions fail to force Iran to change course.

Officials familiar with the memo’s contents would describe only portions dealing with strategy and policy, and not sections that apparently dealt with secret operations against Iran, or how to deal with Persian Gulf allies.

One senior official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the memo, described the document as “a wake-up call.” But White House officials dispute that view, insisting that for 15 months they had been conducting detailed planning for many possible outcomes regarding Iran’s nuclear program.

In an interview on Friday, General Jones declined to speak about the memorandum. But he said: “On Iran, we are doing what we said we were going to do. The fact that we don’t announce publicly our entire strategy for the world to see doesn’t mean we don’t have a strategy that anticipates the full range of contingencies — we do.”

But in his memo, Mr. Gates wrote of a variety of concerns, including the absence of an effective strategy should Iran choose the course that many government and outside analysts consider likely: Iran could assemble all the major parts it needs for a nuclear weapon — fuel, designs and detonators — but stop just short of assembling a fully operational weapon.

My Way News:

President Barack Obama said Thursday he’s amused by the anti-tax tea party protests that have been taking place around Tax Day.

Obama told a fundraiser in Miami that he’s cut taxes, contrary to the claims of protesters.

“You would think they’d be saying thank you,” he said.

At that, many in the crowd at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts stood and yelled, “Thank you!”

I wish that I knew how the President cut taxes.

BTW, found this article via Instapundit, that linked to another blog who posted a link to that article. This to the blogger at Pajama Guy who sees this as “life imitates art”. Click the link to that blog and you may understand.

Washington Examiner via Instapundit:

Three years ago, the Republican establishment piled scorn on the presidential candidacy of Ron Paul.

Today, he is in a statistical tie with President Obama in 2012 polling. His son, an ophthalmologist who has never run for elective office, is well ahead of not only the GOP’s handpicked candidate for Senate in Kentucky but also both Democratic contenders — all statewide officeholders.

What happened? Did America sudden develop an insatiable appetite for 74-year-old, cranky congressmen from Texas? Is the gold standard catching on?
…
After Barack Obama’s election, Democrats assumed that the American people were battered, bruised and ready for a morphine drip of European-style socialism. Republicans, shocked by their stunning reversals, figured the Democrats were right and started looking for technocrats of their own.

And in a political system fueled by special-interest money, it was hard for the leaders of major parties to imagine anything other than an activist government. After all, if you pay for someone to get elected, you don’t expect him to just sit there.

Just 18 months ago the leaders of both parties were quite sure that Obama would be the popular, transformative president he aspires to be. The Republicans who emerged from the wreckage of November were certain to look a lot more like Charlie Crist and Mitt Romney than Marco Rubio and Ron Paul.

But Crist’s embrace of Obamanomics seems to have utterly destroyed his chances at a Senate seat that was once his for the taking. Romney, considered a near lock for the 2012 Republican nomination, has seen his candidacy badly damaged by a populist revolt against the passage of a national health care plan that looks like the one he designed for Massachusetts.

Obama, who said that passage of his health plan proved that Washington could still do big things, finds himself deeply at odds with an electorate that is not confident of government’s ability to do anything at all.

I could’ve voted for Ron Paul in 2008 had he become the nominee. Not sure I would vote for him in 2012, and the reason for that is mainly age. That could become a problem for me in two years.

My hope however is that libertarianism will become more of a mainstream concept in 2012. It looks like “progressivism” is out the door and conservatism has been watered down. Right now libertarianism is on the rise of course if that ideology does succeed there is a small chance it could get watered down like conservatism seems to have been.

Do you think our current President is the most naive US President in history? Well read this article by Nile Gardiner at the Telegraph. My personal favorite is that Obama is naive because the President believes in using taxes to bring our country back to prosperity!

While even the Germans are balking at spending more taxpayers’ money to stimulate the economy or bail out failing members of the Eurozone, the Obama administration seems determined to build up ever greater levels of government debt, with vastly expanded entitlement programmes and government spending. At the same time, Paul Volcker, its chief economic adviser, is dangling the prospect of additional European-style taxes to pay for it all, the surest way to kill economic growth and stifle job creation. As the recent success of countries like Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand attest, economic growth and prosperity is directly linked to limited government intervention, low taxation, and above all, economic freedom.

BTW, this is the first original post here in a while so for today at least there is no cross-post of any old post from that other blog.

Via Newsalert!

Originally posted at It’s My Mind on April 11, 2010

It was breaking news yesterday Saturday morning that the President of Poland, Lech Kaczynski, and his wife were killed in a plane crash on their way to Russia. Now there are concerns over relations between Poland and Russia.

The crash came as a stunning blow to Poland, wiping out a large portion of the country’s leadership in one fiery explosion. And in a chilling twist, it happened at the moment that Russia and Poland were beginning to come to terms with the killing of more than 20,000 members of Poland’s elite officer corps in the same place 70 years ago.

“It is a damned place,” former President Aleksander Kwasniewski told TVN24. “It sends shivers down my spine.”

“This is a wound which will be very difficult to heal,” he said.
…
Russian emergency officials said 97 people were killed. They included Poland’s deputy foreign minister and a dozen members of Parliament, the chiefs of the army and the navy, and the president of the national bank. They included Anna Walentynowicz, 80, the former dock worker whose firing in 1980 set off the Solidarity strike that ultimately overthrew Polish Communism, as well as relatives of victims of the massacre that they were on their way to commemorate.
…
While the crash is not likely to substantially change Poland’s relationships with other countries, including its plans to host part of an American missile defense system, it could agitate Poland’s relationship with Russia.

Mr. Kaczynski, 60, a pugnacious nationalist who often clashed with Russia, was on his way to Katyn, where members of the Soviet secret police executed Polish officers captured after the Red Army invaded Poland in 1939.

Relations between Warsaw and Moscow have been strained ever since. For half a century, Moscow denied involvement in the killings, blaming the Nazis. But last Wednesday, Mr. Putin took a major step to improve relations by becoming the first Russian or Soviet leader to join Polish officials in commemorating the massacre’s anniversary. He was joined there by Mr. Tusk.

Mr. Kaczynski, seen by the Kremlin as less friendly to Russia, was not invited. Instead, he decided to attend a separate, Polish-organized event on Saturday.

Russia’s leaders, acutely aware of the potential political fallout of the crash, immediately reached out to Poland with condolences. Mr. Putin left Moscow to meet Mr. Tusk at the site of the crash, and President Dmitri A. Medvedev recorded an address to the Polish people, saying, “All Russians share your sorrow and mourning.”

Because this crash resulted in the deaths of other prominent Polish officials (or leadership) well there might be one scramble to see who’ll lead the nation. Of course that’s not to say that there isn’t anyone already there who may prove to be important during this difficult time. Let’s just hope that the Poles will learn something from this and hopefully a disastrous crash like this will never happen again.