-By Warner Todd Huston
General Motors was too big to fail. This is why President Obama had to ride in on his white steed with billions of taxpayers dollars in hand to bailout GM rechristening it Government Motors. Besides, we were told it would be a great deal, a money maker, right? Well, not so much. The Administration has reported a dramatic increase in the money We The People have lost on the GM bailout.
This week the Treasury Dept. has announced that the estimates of our loss has gone from $14.33 billion tax dollars to $26.6 billion.
To put it in terms easier to understand, for the American people to just break even on the bailout deal the more than 500 million shares owned by the U.S. Treasury must sell at $53 a share. Unfortunately for all of us, GM stock has tumbled to just $22.99 (as of closing on Nov.14). We are waaay off from the break even point, folks!
So, what is Obama going to do about this failed bailout program? How is he going to rectify it all? He intends to make it worse by changing fuel standards to the point where new cars will cost another $2,000 per car.
Obama has decreed through his powers to regulate that the auto industry must raise fuel efficiency standards by five percent by 2025. There is only one little problem with these demands. Current technological development and science cannot yet reach those goals. Obama has set standards just because he feels like it, not standards based on realistic goals.
These requirements will make cars harder to afford for folks in the middle class and lower middle class not to mention the additional burdens it will place on small businesses trying to purchase cars for their businesses.
Worse, with the costs of new cars skyrocketing, the costs of used cars will go up commensurately. And none of this will help GM’s stock prices go up high enough for the American people to break even on the billions our president gave away to the auto giant.
Sadly, Obama’s polices don’t appear to be too big to fail.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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The ultimate insightful and omnipresent Michael Moore once said:”Now that we own GM, we will have it make new stuff for us for our future…” I’ve told my sister then: the only one that can thrust society into the future is the individual’s creativity and his ingenuity with ideally, democratic and les affaires politicians leading the way. At a Business symposium in Asia that I watched on Bloomberg’s Tv, there were several business leaders, in it, the American representative said, among other things: most Asia and even China’s representative had the leadership that most Americans would like to see at home…