Despite GM Ad Claim, Taxpayers Still on Hook April 23rd, 2010
Despite GM Ad Claim, Taxpayers Still on Hook:
http://bobmccarty.com/2010/04/23/despite-gm-ad-claim-taxpayers-still-on-hook/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=despite-gm-ad-claim-taxpayers-still-on-hook
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“A lot of Americans didn’t agree with giving General Motors a second chance,” says General Motors Chairman and CEO Ed Whitacer in the opening moments of a new television commercial (below) the government-owned automaker began airing Wednesday. Now things have gone from bad to worse as one U.S. senator is questioning the claim Whitacre makes later in the ad: “We have repaid our government loan. In full. With interest. Five years ahead of the original schedule.”
“I am concerned, however, that this announcement is not what it seems,” wrote Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) in the first paragraph of a letter he sent to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner Wednesday. “In fact, it appears to be nothing more than an elaborate TARP money shuffle.”
“In reality, it looks like GM merely used one source of TARP funds to repay another,” Senator Grassley added after highlighting both the testimony given Tuesday by Neil Barofsky, the Special Inspector General for TARP, and the Form 8K filed by GM with the SEC Nov. 16, 2009, which “seems to confirm that the source of funds for GM’s debt repayments was a multi-billion dollar escrow account at Treasury — not from earnings.”
“The bottom line seems to be that the TARP loans were ‘repaid’ with other TARP funds in a Treasury escrow account,” the senator added on the second page of the three-page letter. “The TARP loans were not repaid from money GM is earning selling cars, as GM and the Administration have claimed in their speeches, press releases and television commercials.”
Developing…
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