In sum, the inspector general found: “(A)t a time when the country was experiencing the worst economic downturn in generations and the government was asking its taxpayers to support a $787 billion stimulus package designed primarily to preserve jobs, Treasury made a series of decisions that may have substantially contributed to the accelerated shuttering of thousands of small businesses and thereby potentially adding tens of thousands of workers to the already lengthy unemployment rolls — all based on a theory and without sufficient consideration of the decisions’ broader economic impact.”
This is no surprise, of course, considering the amount of actual business expertise among Obama’s auto czars and key staff. That is: zero. Obama’s first auto czar, Steve Rattner, ran a private equity firm in New York before resigning his position amid a financial ethics cloud.
Rattner’s chief auto expert adviser, Brian Deese, is a 30-something former Hillary Clinton/Barack Obama campaign aide and law school grad with no business experience, who openly boasted that he “never set foot in an automotive assembly plant.”
And Rattner’s auto czar successor, Ron Bloom, is a far-left union lawyer who cut his teeth under Big Labor boss John Sweeney, has ideological ties to the corporate-hating Labor Zionist movement; and opined that “the blather about free trade, free-markets and the joys of competition is nothing but pabulum for the suckers.”
In search of the rationale for Team Obama’s bizarre, job-killing exercise of power over thousands of small car dealerships, the TARP inspector general may have stumbled onto the truth from Bloom. On page 33 of its report, Barofsky writes that “no one from Treasury, the manufacturers or from anywhere else indicated that implementing a smaller or more gradual dealership termination plan would have resulted in the cataclysmic scenario spelled out in Treasury’s response; indeed, when asked explicitly whether the Auto Team could have left the dealerships out of the restructurings, Mr. Bloom, the current head of the Auto Team, confirmed that the Auto Team ‘could have left any one component (of the restructuring plan) alone,’ but that doing so would have been inconsistent with the President’s mandate for ‘shared sacrifice.’”
“Social justice” chickens coming home to roost.
Michelle Malkin is the author of “Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies” (Regnery 2010). Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com.
So this is how its going to be? Obama is going to make sure that we all feel the same amount of pain…..how nice. Well at least he is fair.
And you thought there was no way this guy was a communist. Nobody is a communist in this day and age. Really?
Many of hussein's auto panel also come from the 'environmental' movement, with no industry experience. They've had to rehire some of the execs they fired because nobody they could find begin to do their jobs, but the unqualified and incompetent fools are still the ones in charge overall. If things keep going like this we can expect GM and Chrysler to become federal dependents, existing as long as DC can borrow money, but never turning a profit.
This is just the beginning. Since the new financial regulations were made law a few days ago, the W.H. is now able to tell a bank to do certain things it wants done or they will take them over. So, being judicious, the bank will capitulate. Just watch the plays made to further destroy this country. If it wasn't so tragic it would be fun to watch – in a movie – like a big game of monopoly with the Gov. being the owner of all it wants.
The worst possible financial position for a country to be in is were the government and its political lackies can dictate to businesses how to conduct their business.
I drove down to Houston on Interstate 45 and went past what was the former largest Cheverolet dealer in North America and it is 100% vacated. GM has no one to blame but themselves. the government should have let them fail and go bankrupt.
yeah…deep investigation will show he didn't support the current admin with dollars; that he supported Hillary, or the Republicans…thus he got the ax…only supporters kept their franchises…
In 2009 there were some stories about how democrat=owned dealerships were saved and those owned by republican contributors were closed, and even GIVEN to cronies. What's up with that or has it been debunked?
The absolute worse part about this was transferring corporate bondholder's investment over to the union. Where did they get the power to abrogate contracts and buy bonds for 10 cents on the dollar, by force?
Which would explain why some very profitable dealerships were closed. If a dealership is profitable then it is selling cars and makes no sense to close it without damaging the manufacturer whom you are trying to save. Many dealerships that closed were privately owned and very profitable. I'm sure GM and Chrylser were not selling cars to them at a loss.
The beginnings of tyranny, pure and simple. And people's lives are already adversely affected. Great piece, Michelle.
There was an article in Forbes magazine a couple of years ago about GM having too many dealerships. GM has wanted for a long time to close down at least a third of their dealerships but state laws either make it prohibitively expensive. What if the reason for the rush to close dealerships was to get around these state franchise laws by using the bankruptcy law. Remember, it is easier to re-open a dealership than to close it.
Thanks for the good writeup. It if truth be told was a amusement account it. Look complicated to far introduced agreeable from you! However, how could we communicate?