Do The Conservatives Deserve Another Chance?
- Thread starter Liberalman
- Start date
I don't think it saved any jobs. But it sure cost Canadians (and Americans) money.
GM should have been left to die. That is what free enterprise is all about.
And those plants would almost assuredly been bought up by other car companies to take up the slack in production that GM's departure would have left. just like Chrysler was bought up by Fiat.
All that money was loaned for nothing.
Actually, most people think like you.
But actually, TARP had almost nothing to do with saving U.S. banks.
Have you looked at the assets of the major U.S. banks? Look at Bank of America?
Bank of America - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
It's assets are over 2 trillion dollars. And it received $20 billion dollars from TARP.
Are people seriously suggesting that a bank will go under unless it gets a loan equalling less then 1/100th of it's assets?
In fact, Paulson (head of the Treasury back then) had to force banks to take TARP funds:
'The first 1-pager is Paulson's talking points for the bank. It basically confirms that he put a gun to all their heads. It says they must agree to take their cash, and that if they protested, then each bank's regulator would force them to take it anyway.'
Uncovered TARP Docs Reveal How Paulson Forced Bankers To Take Cash
Now why would he have to do that if these funds were so important for their survival?
Also, the Fed bought up over $1.7 trillion dollars in toxic assets from the banks. That is a fact.
How can $1.7 trillion not save the banks but $700 billion can (and much of that did not even go to the banks)?
I will tell you what happened:
The Fed bought up at least $1.7 trillion in toxic assets from the banks PLUS the government approved Mark to Market rule changes which also saved the banks hundreds of billions of dollars:
InvestorCentric: Mark-To-Market Rule Change Controversy
It was the Fed toxic buy up and the Mark to Market rule changes that 'saved' the banks.
Many banks did not need and did not even want TARP funds - because of the stigma attached to them.
But many others took the money and invested it in the stock markets - since they knew the markets would rebound with all the money the gov't and Fed were pouring into the economy.
Did you not find it strange that these banks that were crying their demise had but a year later declared record profits?
Much of that was the profit they made on the TARP funds they invested.
Many banks just looked at the TARP funds as a free loan to go to the track, bet on a sure thing, take the winnings and pay back the loan at ridiculously low interest rates.
Once again, the public get duped into thinking something that is not true.
TARP did not save the banks.
TARP gave the banks a ton of virtually free cash to go and bet on at taxpayers expense.
Once again, cronyism at it's finest.
The rich get richer on the backs of the poor/middle class taxpayers.
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So... you never noticed that the bailout happened in the form of shares of GM being picked up by the government, such that since GM's making a profit again, the government is getting share dividends, which means it doesn't have to collect so many taxes from taxpayers.
In other-words, it became an investment by taxpayers - that's you - and now your investment is paying back with lower taxes.
Let me guess... you're going to be the type who thinks that if a government operation is making a profit, it shouldn't be going to everyone... that profits should only be going into the hands of a few, such that you'll say any government department that's self sufficient to the extent that it is actually makes a profit must be privatized into the hands of the few immediately, right?
Maybe, except you're not mentioning how GM was in special crisis not because of problems that *would* have corrected under normal market conditions, but because they got pinched in what was an abnormality that has nothing to do with the operations of a normal economy... the financial crisis we're in now, created by unregulated golman-sackers.
If their inability to recover had been under normal market conditions, then yes, let them collapse, but it wasn't a normal economy.
Well, until nobody's looking so Harper can sneak a sale of the GM shares back into the hands of the few, your taxes will be lower because you are part-owner of GM shares and the dividends go to pay the stuff that normally you'd be taxed for.
Darn right, all we did was subsidize a bunch of over paid lazy union slobs who are pricing themselves out of the market and the company was dumb enough to let them do it.
We would have killed two birds with one stone.
Gotten rid of a company that managed itself poorly and destroyed the CAW.
It's a win win.
1. Canadians might end up not losing money. But it could have cost us billions. And if the company had just been let fail - it's assets would almost assuredly been bought up by other companies at no cost to taxpayers.
And 2. There is a MASSIVE conflict of interest when a government buys up shares of a company that it regulates. You honestly think that the government is going to not do whatever it can to hurt GM's competition to help make it's purchase of GM stock not look better at the polls?
Remember when the U.s./Canadian government came out right after they bought GM and stated how Toyota had very serious safety issues with it's vehicles? Safety issues which no one seems to be able to duplicate in many instances - like that ridiculous unintended acceleration?
And you think that was a total coincidence?
Or do you think that just maybe the Obama administration said 'We have to do something to help GM so we don't end up with egg on our faces? I know...'
What?
A company that was selling more cars then anyone else (which GM was before the crisis) is one of the few that declared bankruptcy and you think it was not their fault?
If a company is selling more widgets then it's competition - yet is losing more money then the competition then it is obviously running it's company INCREDIBLY badly.
That is just common sense - is it not?
GM was heading for a crisis for 20 years, and everyone involved in the car business knew it. People didn't want their cars unless they were sold with huge incentives, and GM tried for years to cut their lines and dealership network, but couldn't.
The financial crisis did nothing to GM other than bring a quick end to the long drawn out death that it was heading toward for decades.
Since the bailout, GMs big investments have been in China, no surprise.
Then how come Ford, with workers making the same rates as GM, didn't have a problem?
The problem wasn't the unions... it was bad management.
I'm puzzled... what's wrong with paying someone building a machine that will kill me if it malfunctions a living wage?
Seriously... the job's already mundane and boring. What improvements to the car are you expecting to see by NOT paying the guy building it enough to make it worth his while to be there?
Which has already happened. Canadians did not loose money on it.
Yeah, but it didn't did it. Therefore it was a good risk.
With massive unemployment in the meantime, costing the government anyway, only from welfare, but by doing it the way they did, not only did people keeping working, but a taxpayer investment resulted, such that if the shares currently owned by the taxpayers are not sold back into the hands of a few, then overall everyone's taxes go down.
It's no different than a Crown Corporation, which the government is able to run without conflict of interest.
Fine...I assume you have a link to factually prove that as of right now Canadians have not lost and cannot ever lose one penny on this adventure?
How can the government have partial ownership of a car manufacturer that competes with other car manufacturers that the same government regulates and say there is no conflict of interest?
Conflict of Interest
1. Situation that has the potential to undermine the impartiality of a person because of the possibility of a clash between the person's self-interest and professional-interest or public-interest.
What is conflict of interest? Definition and Meaning, Business Dictionary
And the auto plants WERE shut down during the negotiation process for the bailouts.
Now prove to me that they would have been shut down for as long had the company been allowed to file Chapter 11 and been purchased by another?
Many companies every year file for bankruptcy and continue on at a normal pace while the proceedings work their way through the courts - all while having protection from their creditors.
Please prove to me that this would not have been the case with GM?
Hint - you cannot.
So there is NO WAY to prove that had GM been left to fail that Canada would not have had to bail them out AND that the autoworkers would not have had to been laid off for even less time then they were.
So there is NO WAY to prove that this was better for Canadians.
Additionally, under the restructuring, three entire divisions of GM were killed off - even though all three had offers from other sources to buy them up and maintain production (Pontiac, Hummer and Saturn). And they were killed off because (as I recall) the US/Canadian governments refused to allow them to be sold.
This not only caused thousands and thousands of auto workers in America to lose their jobs. But also caused the eventual closures of ALL Pontiac and Saturn dealerships across North America - also costing hundreds, if not over a thousand, of Canadian jobs.
I heard it on CBC about a month ago. GM Canada was back in black, and they were mulling over whether to sell the shares and make a one-time profit, reducing taxes a lot for just one year, or hang on and collect dividends, thus reducing taxes a bit over a long time.
The government was pulled internally, because the Reformist faction's knee-jerk reaction was to sell it of because of their hyper-ideological belief that government's job is to make sure private owners can make as much as they can with as little taxation as possible such that if the lower-classes want social services, then the lower classes can be taxed for those services...
Whereas remnants of the old-guard PCs could see the value of the dividends being useful for keeping taxes down, therefore they should hold onto those shares while the company was profitable and everyone else was in a recession, and only think about re-privatizing it when the recession is over and everyone's making lots of money so nobody will care if their taxes go up by selling off the government shares.
Same way they do it with Crown Corporations to prevent conflict of interest.
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So your answers to my first question is 'no'.
As for the second one - How does the definition of 'conflict of interest' not apply to the Canadian government co-owning GM?
If you've been listening to Avro you would know that EVERY Union is bad and EVERY Union employee is a useless, lazy, thieving jerk. I think Ford was possibly better managed, BUT G.M. sure didn't take long to get back on their feet and repaid all the money right away. I think they did have to lay the law down about wages.
HALIFAX—Stephen Harper is facing questions about his questions.
Namely, how many he’s willing to take each day. And he’s refusing to answer.
Harper takes only five questions from the media each day – four from the reporters on his tour and one from a local reporter – unlike his political rivals, who place no restrictions on how many questions they take.
That’s produced tensions between the Conservative leader and the journalists following his campaign tour as it crisscrosses the country.
The situation boiled over Thursday when Harper was repeatedly asked why he refused to take more a handful of questions each day.
At first, he refused to answer but when pressed, suggested he’d be open to addressing any issues he hadn’t already discussed. But he never explained his rationale for not fielding more questions.
“In terms of questions, is there any specific issue that I haven’t addressed that you want me to address,” Harper said.
“If there’s another subject, I’ll answer,” the Conservative leader said to journalists, who were kept more than 10 metres away, penned in behind a yellow fence.
Later Harper supporter David Cameron came up to the journalists to express his frustration at their questions.
“You guys reporting the news or making it?” he said.
Namely, how many he’s willing to take each day. And he’s refusing to answer.
Harper takes only five questions from the media each day – four from the reporters on his tour and one from a local reporter – unlike his political rivals, who place no restrictions on how many questions they take.
That’s produced tensions between the Conservative leader and the journalists following his campaign tour as it crisscrosses the country.
The situation boiled over Thursday when Harper was repeatedly asked why he refused to take more a handful of questions each day.
At first, he refused to answer but when pressed, suggested he’d be open to addressing any issues he hadn’t already discussed. But he never explained his rationale for not fielding more questions.
“In terms of questions, is there any specific issue that I haven’t addressed that you want me to address,” Harper said.
“If there’s another subject, I’ll answer,” the Conservative leader said to journalists, who were kept more than 10 metres away, penned in behind a yellow fence.
Later Harper supporter David Cameron came up to the journalists to express his frustration at their questions.
“You guys reporting the news or making it?” he said.
The reason GM got back on their feet so quickly - is primarily the same reason ALL the major car companies enjoyed huge jumps in profits after 2008. The recession officially ended because the governments of the world poured over 10 trillion dollars in debt into their economies to artificially stimulate them (along with the fact that GM now has a virtually bottomless well of money thanks to their new majority owners - the United States government).
All of which, btw, will almost surely come crashing down when the money taps stop flowing and inflation starts to go through the roof....which it has already begun to do in terms of oil, other commodity and food prices.
O.K. - you know more about it than I do, but I do know the bail out from the Canadian Gov't was repaid right away (or was it transferred from what they owe the U.S.?) :smile:
It was on CBC so it's probably archived as a podcast somewhere in their archives.
You're not one of these guys who thinks others learn everythIng off the net and therefore there must be a link to it, are you?
In case you're curious, I don't do *any* of my keeping-up stuff from the net, even though I helped build it when I first came to Canada.
I read magazines. Every month I go cover-to-cover Scientific American, Discover, Harpers and the Economist, and I listen to CBC, which isn't as good as it used to be what all the rebroadcasting in the evening the same stuff they play early.
Because those mags and radio station have websites, they probably have links to stories I read or heard, which means I could probably find them if it was worth my while, so if you want a link, you can pay me to fetch it.
All Canada has to do is treat their shareholdership in GM the same way they treat their total ownership of Crown Corporations.
There is no way that GM has repaid the money. They repaid some of it, but they have not repaid it all by a long shot. And it's extremely unlikely that the shares owned by the gov'ts will ever become worth enough to recoup the rest - it would require the pared-down GM to be valued more highly than it ever was in its history.
My only source of information was the news at the time that said the debt to the Canadian Gov't. was paid in full. :smile:
I think a lot of intelligent people agree with you.
Maybe when the Prime Minister calls one or no longer than about 4 years. Definitely not by three dough heads who are in a power struggle. :smile: