Did The Bailout Help You?

I really did not know how to title this article, so I decided to just ask this question. Did the bailout help you? I guess here in Northeast Arkansas in some way or the other it did help us, although I can’t say right off the top of my head how it did. I bank locally so to the best of my knowledge my bank was not involved in any TARP funds and any of us with cash in the bank were insured by the FDIC in case of failure. Failures continue even now months after the bailout. Just today CIT Group of New York failed and went into Bankruptcy after recieving 2.3 Billion Dollars in Federal Bailout Money and guess how much they had repaid, you guessed it NONE!! Also Google reported this bank as a “Hot Stock” recently in an article right along with Ford Motor Company. Well, I won’t be taking any stock advice from Google anytime soon. And congradulations to Ford Motor Company for posting 3rd Quarter Profits of over 1 Billion Dollars. Ford was not only the only United States car maker to show profit, they also showed profit in not only their worldwide business but also the U.S. market. A statement released today also stated that Ford would have been profitable even without the Cash For Clunkers Program. Oh and one more little fact, Ford did not take any TARP Funds from the government, costing the American Public not “one red cent”. No other car manufacture can say the same, so thank you Ford Motor Company, Mr. Henry Ford would be proud.

Other car companies are not fairing so well. Chrysler is still on the brink of failure, even after being bailed out twice. Alot of people have forgotten in the 1980’s when the Reagan Administration bailed out the company investing Billions. I wish every 25 years the government would bail me out, how about you? General Motors is not much better, changing CEO’s , selling off and closing brands such as Hummer and Saturn. After getting 50.4 Billion Dollars you would not think GM would further harm the blue collar tax payers, but they did by closing local factories of parts suppliers as well as manufacturing facilities further increasing the amount of unemployed in the U.S. and sure Ford Motor Company scaled back to help their profits but they did not take any TARP money. And since we are taking note of GM’s TARP we also need to be aware of the affiliate companies owned by General Motors who also recieved Bailout Funds.

Here’s an idea of the large scale:
General Motors 50.4 Billion
GMAC 12.5 Billion
GMAC Mortgage 3.6 Billion
GM Supplier Rec. LLC 2.5 Billion

Now you can do the math, also there are sure to be more companies owned by GM in the bailout list hidden among the hundreds of Banks and mortgage Companies. I urge you to look at the list yourself at bailout.propublica.org it is quite eye-opening. Now to be fair AIG recieved 69.8 Billion in TARP funds. The puzzling part of the GM story to me was the fact that GM turned down an offer by Toyota who is the largest auto manufacture to purchase the failing company. I think I would have sold out rather than go 60 plus Billion in debt to the government, but thats just me.

I welcome comments to this article, I also wish to express that this is just “me thinking out-loud” and I meant no offense to anyone. But (there is always a But) if I were in the snowcone business and was losing money and the government gave me 69 Billion Dollars in loans and created a 3 Billion Dollar program so the American people could purchase snowcones, then two things are for sure. One, I would be profitable and we’d all have snowcones. But that’s just me again.

Submitted by Clayton Williams