Quote Of The Day: I Gave At The Office Edition

Edward Niedermeyer
by Edward Niedermeyer

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Edward Niedermeyer
Edward Niedermeyer

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  • Windswords Windswords on Apr 27, 2010

    I heard the radio commercial touting the loan "payoff" this morning on the way to work. It struck me that not only is GM lying to us, but they are "plagiarizing" Chrysler too. That line about "we paid off our loan years early with interest" is taken directly from what Chrysler actually did in the 80's. They paid their loans from private banks (not the government) early and with interest when many pundits (just like today) said they would never make it. I believe that GM is trying to cast themselves in the same light as Chrysler back in the 80's, which they know many people still remember.

  • N Number N Number on Apr 27, 2010

    I'd find GM's statement much more credible if it was written in complete sentences.

  • Picard234 Picard234 on Apr 27, 2010

    This email has one giant sentence fragment and improper comma usage. Nice proofreading. She sent this to how many people?

    • Rmwill Rmwill on Apr 27, 2010

      The only one more illiterate than Hummer Susan is Aztek Mark Reuss. He talks like a a 11th grader in a remedial English class. He must have partied a lot at Vanderbilt, as most rich kids who go there to spend daddy's money are known to do.

  • Ronnie Schreiber Ronnie Schreiber on Apr 27, 2010
    Although Camaro Kid is correct in pointing out that this travesty commenced 12/19/08 under Mr. Bush. The current administration simply put the whole thing on steroids. That's historical revisionism. When the Senate couldn't come up with a plan, the Bush administration indeed loaned money to GM & Chrysler, but only enough to last until after Obama's inauguration. The plan that Obama ultimately implemented was almost entirely his administration's work. When the outgoing administration invited the transition team to take part in the discussions while they were still in power, the Obama team refused to participate, preferring to craft their own bailout program after Jan 20. This is all well documented. Comparing the Bush administration's fairly simple bridge loan to Obama's voiding the property rights of senior debt holders and effectively giving GM to the UAW and Chrysler to Fiat is not intellectually honest.
    • See 2 previous
    • Psarhjinian Psarhjinian on Apr 27, 2010

      GM's bondholders were not secured, and were well back in the line behind GM's (many) other creditors. Ergo, were it not for the government's assisted suicide of Old GM, those bondholders would have gotten table scraps. Pre-bankruptcy, GM was functionally worth nothing, and what assets it had would have gone to lien holders. The bond-holders would have ended up with GM's cash. Guess how much actual cash GM had? Hint: you'll have trouble using numbers above zero. In theory, yes, the Obama administration did provide a structure to GM's bankruptcy which is a little different than letting GM twist in the wind. Without that structure, financing and guarantees of equity, those poor, bedraggled bondholders would have gotten nothing. So no, they didn't "get screwed". If they think that, they are were clinging to a false assumption about what their bonds were worth, or being deliberately disingenuous for the sake of the own, undeserved, gain. Recall that those bonds were rated Junk for years prior. The bondholders "getting screwed" was little more than PR stunt to try to wring blood from a stone. Unfortunately, the "poor little old lady" bondholder, supposedly screwed by Big Bad Barack Obama makes a really good image for the Right to cling to. But just as Reagan's "Welfare Cadillac" or Hillary Clinton's "Running under Fire" was, it's pure, heartstring-tugging fiction.

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