Epic Fail! GM Recalls 500,00 Cruze Cars Over Engine Fire Risk

 

Apparently it's not only GM's hybrid electric Volt that has a tendency to catch on fire. Not to mention GM's other hybrids. The new GM Cruze is also one hot car, with over a half a million of them recalled after over 30 engine fires broke out. And that's not all:

The recall covers 475,000 vehicles made in the U.S. from September of 2010 through May of 2012. It's the car's fifth recall since it arrived in showrooms nearly two years ago, raising questions about the sedan's reliability.[...]

In addition, 61,000 of the recalled Cruzes are covered under another recall. GM says 249 of them have welds missing from a bracket that holds the tanks. Federal safety officials say the tanks could come lose in a crash, possibly leaking and causing fires. Dealers will secure brackets with fasteners. The fuel tank recall was the outgrowth of GM's internal safety testing, Adler said.

That last sentence means that GM shoved this into the marketplace before the car was adequately tested.Just like the Volt.

The Cruze, introduced in September of 2010, has been recalled far more frequently than other new models launched around the same time.

The high number of recalls is out of the ordinary for a new model and a sign of quality problems, said Clarence Ditlow, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety, a consumer group.

"You definitely don't want to see that many recalls on a new model," he said.

President Obama saw to it that the American taxpayers spent over $80 billion to bail out GM and gift it to his UAW allies. It's money that will not only never be recouped, but apparently won't even result in a decent product anyone in his right mind would want to buy.

And the jobs it was supposed to save? Those are mostly going to China, while the sweetheart tax break President Obama gave GM ensures they will be tax free for years at our expense.

During the campaign, President Obama  told the American people that he wanted to ' repeat my success with GM in other manufacturing industries.'

Yes, Government Motors is a real success story alright.

Results Of Obama's Bailout -GM To Build New Cadillac Plant - In China

“I said, I believe in American workers, I believe in this American industry, and now the American auto industry has come roaring back,” he said. “Now I want to do the same thing with manufacturing jobs, not just in the auto industry, but in every industry.

“I don’t want those jobs taking root in places like China, I want those jobs taking root in places like Pueblo,” Obama told a crowd gathered for a campaign rally at the Palace of Agriculture at the Colorado State Fairgrounds here. - President Barack Obama, on the campaign trail 2012

"I've got a little bumper sticker for you: Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive." - Vice President Joe Biden, speaking at a union Labor Day rally,2012.

The American taxpayer, courtesy of President Barack Obama, bailed out GM. Or more accurately wiped out private equity holders (including a lot of retirees who were holding GM stock and bonds as a big part of their retirement)and gifted the company to the president's  union political allies.

The cost  was actually a lot more than people realize.

The losses alone on the devalued stock the feds are holding came to over $16.6 billion...not counting the $26.4 billion in direct aid that's never been recouped and never will be.

There's also that $45.4 billion dollar tax credit against future profits at the American taxpayer's expense given to them by the Obama Administration that could keep GM tax free for years.GM earned a $7.6 billion 'profit' in 2011 but paid no taxes.

And to make the whole thing even more ironic,  those deluded union workers who cheered what the president and his VP had to say didn't even end up with most of the jobs that were supposedly saved.

GM has just announced that it is enlarging its already sizable car making operation in China to include a big new plant for  Cadillacs.

That's essentially what the American people got for their over $88 billion dollar bailout of GM - a cheap, misleading slogan,  a large payout to union coffers and an increase in China's employment and industrial capacity.

Oh yes, and some poorly designed and downright dangerous electric cars.

State Of The Union?

 

Last night was the first night of Mardi Gras in New Orleans. For those of you who've been there, it's  a serious street party and a night when people put on masks and costumes and pretend to be something they're not - to deceive people.

It was a perfect choice for the night of this president's State of the Union.

For the masochists among you, the entire text is here, but I can tell you everything you need to know about it with a lot less pain.

First, the president's delivery was astounding for a man who just won re-election. It was halting, stumbling and for the most part gave the impression that President Obama would rather have been anywhere else.There was even a faint air of resentment. Can it be that even he realizes deep inside that the act is wearing thin, but still was obliged to put on the performance?

Rather than an energetic war cry to the progressive Übermenschen we were told to expect, it was, well, small. Just a tired restatement of the same old failed agenda and false claims. It was even even petulant at times.

The content itself is what you'd call a target rich environment, to the point where it's difficult to know where to start to deconstruct this lame gibberish, although I though Senator Rand Paul did a decent job:


Marco Rubio wasn't bad either, and probably a bit more charismatic:

Interesting how both of them trod pretty much the same ground...

For my part, and especially since I don't have to be correct in the least, here are just a few specific nuggets neither one mentioned per se. I won't even bother going after President Obama's fairy tales about deficit reduction or job creation:

 "My message is simple. It is time to stop rewarding businesses that ship jobs overseas and start rewarding companies that create jobs right here in America. Send me these tax reforms, and I will sign them right away."

 Please,my sides. Shipping jobs overseas? You mean like the UAW that owns GM courtesy of your rewarding them for campaign donations and political support, let alone taxpayer dollars to seal the deal and a $450 billion tax break so they needn't pay taxes and can build cars in China? And after all, Mr. President...with ObamaCare,a poisonous regulatory environment, high energy costs and the highest corporate taxes in the developed world, why would they create jobs here?

 "I will not cede the wind or solar or battery industry to China or Germany because we refuse to make the same commitment here. We’ve subsidized oil companies for a century. That’s long enough."

 First of all, almost all of the president's pet green energy projects ala' Solyndra have been total failures, except when it comes to fattening the personal wallets of the well connected Obama donors running them. They haven't created jobs, and they haven't provided cheaper or more reliable energy unless you count political hot air.

Oh, and by the way..the Germans are more than willing for you to take as much of the solar action as you can handle.You must of missed that briefing too.

 And that bit about 'subsidizing' the oil companies.. The average profit for one the Evil Oil Companies for locating the oil, drilling it out of the ground, shipping it, refining it into gasoline, marketing it and shipping it to your local gas station is around 9% per gallon. Government's cut, just for being there? Depending on your state and local taxes, between 22-28%!

So guess what...Big Government loves high gas prices,because the higher they go, the more of your money they get to grab.Any wonder that President Obama's policies have been grooved to encourage price hikes, by handcuffing domestic production, vetoing the Keystone Pipeline and encouraging monetary policies like quantitative easing that weaken the dollar? And that affects not just the price at the pump, but the price of food at the market and goods people buy that get shipped by trucks and trains that gulf fuel to run. And might we mention all the jobs this has eliminated?

Way to champion the middle class, Mr. President!

The president mentioned in passing in last night's remarks that Americans are using less oil. At $4.00+ per gallon, we sure are, Mr. President. As little as we can, because we can't all  manage to be driven around in pimped out black Cadillac Escalades or on Air Force One at someone else's expense.

 The president also thumped his chest about how he ended the Iraq War, even though the entire agreement on withdrawing our forces was set up by President Bush and all Obama had to do was keep hitting the golf course for that to occur. Howdy Doody could have been elected president and the war would have ended. Not only that, but let's not forget how the Iraq war ended...the surge strategy, which President Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, John Kerry and yes Chuck Hagel all opposed and did their very best to sabotage. How hypocritical and self-deluding to you have to be to take credit for something not only did nothing to bring about but did your best to prevent in the name of partisan politics?

 Oh, and I loved this one: "And while it’s ultimately up to the people of the region to decide their fate, we will advocate for those values that have served our own country so well. We will stand against violence and intimidation. We will stand for the rights and dignity of all human beings, men and women, Christians, Muslims, and Jews. We will support policies that lead to strong and stable democracies and open markets, because tyranny is no match for liberty."

So that's why this president has enabled and supported the Islamist takeover of Egypt, because they're oh-so-democratic and into human rights and all that.That's why we're shipping F-16's and Abrams tanks to Mohammed Morsi who considers Jews the descendants of apes and pigs, has his paid gangs rape women protestors in Cairo and supports sharia law that will take away the rights of women and Christians! That's why we're funding Hamas and the unelected dictator of the Palestinian Authority.That's why we've been arming the Syrian rebels even though we know that they're dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood and even al-Qaeda affiliates.Who knew?

And I won't even get into the numerous people with strong Muslim Brotherhood connections or people whom can only be considered their dupes who work in the administration..

President Obama may be advocating for something,but it isn't liberty or American values.

I often wonder how future generations will view these times. We've had three Boomer presidents, and all three have been self-involved, narcissistic, and self-serving, with President Obama by far being the worst of the lot.Former President Bush, with all his failings at least had the grace to appear embarrassed some of the time and at least to demonstrate some humility from time to time.

In an e-mail thread today, it was mentioned that Fidel Castro came from the middle class, and that his father owned a banana plantation. My response was that Castor was a typical Marxist - just like Lenin, someone whom came out of the comfortable well-off, middle class bourgeoisie and grew up to somehow learn to hate his own class so much that he made it his life's mission to destroy it.

It occurs to me that this is President Obama's story as well.

It's embarrassing that this president considers us fools, expects us to swallow this kind of swill and say 'thank you sir! May I have another?' But that's the situation we find ourselves in.It's like living in Rome during the period of the Bad Emperors that started once Commodus became emperor in 180 AD and continued for about a century - no term limits back then except the ones you get with a sword in the ribs or a poisoned wine cup.

The country is crying for leadership, whether those in the DC and media bubbles realize it or not.And politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum.

As the Chinese say, we live in interesting times.

Merry Christmas, Taxpayers! Obama To Dump GM Stock At $12 B Loss

Ho ho ho, has Obama Claus got something for you!

Back when President Obama was pounding his chest about his wonderful success with the GM bailout, I never could figure out why a sharp businessman like Mitt Romney chose not to reveal the truth to the voters.

The GM bailout was only designed to do one thing - pay back the president's union supporters and campaign contributors at taxpayer expense, Chicago-style. It amounted to wiping out GM's private equity holders,many of them elderly retirees and gifting the company to the unions.

The cost? Oh before today's announcement, something like $88 billion in taxpayer funds.

The GM stock the feds were holding was put up for sale in the initial public offering which was supposed to recoup our initial $50 billion 'investment' was supposed to start out at $36 per share, around where the stock traded shortly after the offering hit the market. Instead, it tanked and the losses alone on the devalued stock the feds got stuck with came to over $16.6 billion...not counting the $26.4 billion in direct aid that's never been recouped.

There's also that $45.4 billion dollar tax credit against future profits at the American taxpayer's expense given to them by the Obama Administration that could keep GM tax free for years.GM earned a $7.6 billion 'profit' in 2011 but paid no taxes.

Now, we can up the cost even higher. President Obama's lump of coal in your stocking is today's announcement that the feds will be dumping their remaining GM stock.

About half of the stock is going to be sold back to GM's union owners for $5.5 billion. And that's not all, the union is getting a price of $27.50 per share, about 8 percent higher than GM’s closing price yesterday,when the deal was signed. The Feds are going to try to sell the rest of it at any price they can get over the next 15 months or so. The cost to the taxpayers? An estimated $12 billion.

That brings the cost of the GM bailout to a nice $100 billion or so, give or take.The linked Examiner article doesn't count the tax break and thus severely understates what the GM bailout actually cost.

During the campaign , President Obama lied to the American people telling us that the Obama Administration 'got back every dime we invested'.

That $100 billion or so is money the taxpayers will never see again. Unless you happen to be a Democrat running for office with union campaign contributions in your war chest.

Merry Christmas.

Obama To Union Auto Workers: "I Bet On You"

President Obama was in Toledo, Ohio today speaking to a group of UAW workers on the eve of the Democrat's convention in Charlotte and made the following statement and chest thumping about his supposed rescue of the auto industry:

"I bet on you. I'll make that bet any day of the week and because of that bet, three years later, that bet is paying off for America," he said.

Just two things...first of all, President Empty Chair made that bet with other people's money, not his. He risked nothing.

And second, that bet isn't paying off for anyone except the unions, who spent $40 million and up in 2008 to elect this president.

The rest of us are the ones doing the paying, and the tab is in the billions...at least $43 billion in direct aid we'll never see again and losses on devalued stocvk the government was left holding, and an additional $45.4 billion dollar tax credit against future profits at the American taxpayer's expense given to them by the Obama Administration that could keep GM tax free for years.

GM and Chrysler could have easily been bailed out using a managed bankruptcy instead of a massive taxpayer bailout, after which they could have renegotiated their contracts with the unions. But that's not what the union bosses were buying when they purchased Barack Obama.

It's about time someone mentioned it and questioned President Obama's claim of an 'achievement'.

Obama: "Hey Let's Repeat My Auto Industry 'Success' "

Some stories almost write themselves. Here's President Obama speaking in Colorado:

President Obama, while villifying Mitt Romney for opposing the auto industry bailout, bragged about the success of his decision to provide government assistance and said he now wants to see every manufacturing industry come roaring back.

“I said, I believe in American workers, I believe in this American industry, and now the American auto industry has come roaring back,” he said. “Now I want to do the same thing with manufacturing jobs, not just in the auto industry, but in every industry.

“I don’t want those jobs taking root in places like China, I want those jobs taking root in places like Pueblo,” Obama told a crowd gathered for a campaign rally at the Palace of Agriculture at the Colorado State Fairgrounds here.

Either our president has finally slipped his moorings or he arrogantly thinks everyone is stupid but him. There's no third possibility.

The cost of the bail out to the American taxpayer (which, let's face it, was done strictly to benefit Obama's union allies, as it amounted to wiping out private equity holders and gifting the company to the unions) was actually a lot more than people realize.

The losses alone on the devalued stock the feds are holding came to over $16.6 billion...not counting the $26.4 billion in direct aid that's never been recouped.

There's also that $45.4 billion dollar tax credit against future profits at the American taxpayer's expense given to them by the Obama Administration that could keep GM tax free for years.GM earned a $7.6 billion 'profit' in 2011 but paid no taxes.

Yes. let's keep doing that..until we go broke., which won't be long if President Obama's re-elected.

And speaking of keeping jobs...obviously the president is quite choosy about which jobs, and who gets to keep them.

There were over 1100 GM dealership that were arbitrarly closed down, no matter how profitable they were. It's also a matter of record that no dealership that was minority owned got the axe,no matter how unprofitable they were.

Then, there's the story about what happened at Delphi, a company closely associated with GM and the largest auto parts manufacturer in the world. When they were taken over by th eObama Administration as part of the bail out, a funny thing happened; Twenty thousand of its salaried non-union retirees lost nearly their entire pensions when the government bailed out GM. At the same time, Delphi retirees who were members of the United Auto Workers union kept their full pensions and had them made good:

The move, made in 2009 while the Obama administration implemented its auto bailout plan, appears to have been made solely because those retirees were not members of labor unions.

The internal government emails contradict sworn testimony, in federal court and before Congress, given by several Obama administration figures. They also indicate that the administration misled lawmakers and the courts about the sequence of events surrounding the termination of those non-union pensions, and that administration figures violated federal law.

Another day, another lie, another scandal...business as usual.

Perhaps, though the president ought to work on his stump speech to make things a little more challenging. The contempt he must have for other people's intelligence is just a tad too obvious.

'Government Motors' - Taxpayer Losses On GM Bailout Rise to $35 Billion

The cost of the Obama Administration's bailout of General Motors keeps rising. GM shares fell to a 2012 low of 19.57 yesterday.

If you recall, GM's starting share price in the company's initial public offering (IPO) after the bailout was $33 per share. Most experts estimated that the stock would have to rise to at least $52 and by some estimates as high as $103 in order for the taxpayers to just break even on the large block of shares the government was holding as 'collateral' for the $85 billion bailout.

As it turned out, the IPO was a huge bust and the Obama Administration was forced to dump stock at below market prices, something probably against SEC rules if a private investor did it.

The losses on the stock sale plus the declining price of the 26.5% of GM, or 500 million shares the taxpayers still own adds up to $16.6 billion...not counting the $26.4 billion in direct aid that's never been recouped.

There's also that $45.4 billion dollar tax credit against future profits at the American taxpayer's expense given to them by the Obama Administration that could keep GM tax free for years.GM earned a $7.6 billion 'profit' in 2011 but paid no taxes.

The gifting of GM to President Obama's union allies was simply a transfer of wealth directly from taxpayers to the unions who invested millions in campaign work hours and in contributions to get the president elected, and you can bet that a substantial amount of the taxpayer money spent to keep GM alive will simply be 'recycled' back into campaign funds for President Obama and his fellow Democrats.

Obama's State Of The Union - The Hollow Man

Ah, the Hollow Man...

As I've told you before, I listen to these things so you don't have to, and I've got a pretty strong stomach - but tonight's festivities were truly something else.

A transcript is available here for those of you into self-mortification, but I'll go over the basics.

First off, the speech was obviously very well rehearsed down to the last vocal inflection and raised eyebrow..in fact. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if there were theatrical directions emanating from TOTUS tonight. Simply amazing..yet as he spoke, the contradictions between what was coming out of his mouth and what we've seen coming out of this White House are so radically different they underlined one of the qualities I dislike most about this president -the way he arrogantly thinks everyone's stupid except him, and thinks that the usual rule that nothing ever goes away on the internet doesn't apply where he's concerned.

The president started off and ended by invoking what he referred to as 'this generation of heroes' returning from victory in Iraq, and indeed he used the military frequently as an example of how he wants the Republicans in Congress to behave . It was disgusting to hear, considering how Senator Obama and many of his fellow Democrats cheering him on tonight did everything they could to sabotage our troops in the field and their mission during wartime. Yet he had the unmitigated gall to use military teamwork as an example of what he wants to see in Washington!

Our military is legally bound to follow President Obama's orders no matter how nonsensical. Congress is not, especially when their common sense revolts and it was both deeply insulting as well as very revealing of the president to use the comparison, making the expected rhetoric that came later about working together a mockery. As if President Obama made any pretense of that when he and the Democrats controlled Congress!

The president of course mentioned bin-Laden, and regular members of Joshua's Army may recall what I had to say President Obama's chief boast perhaps being a huge error. And his statement about how the Taliban's momentum has been broken was simply a blatant falsehood - which is exactly why we're desperately negotiating with them and just released one of their leaders with American blood on his hands from Club Gitmo as a 'confidence gesture'.

The president's chief theme, under the slogan 'an economy built to last' is actually pretty simple - eat the rich and punish the corporations to pay for more government spending.

He called for a punishment levy on 'big banks' and 'big oil companies' and is apparently going to sic Eric Holder on the financial sector to ' find out who was responsible for the mortgage collapse'. I guarantee you that well connected Democrats like Franklin Raines and Jaimie Gorelick who ran Fannie Mae into the ground and walked away with multi-million dollar bonuses are not going to have to worry on that account.

You see, it wasn't the banks that made the rules that governed the secondary mortgage market..it was Washington, and government entities Fannie and Freddie set the pace by reducing underwriting standards and down payment requirements while demanding that lenders make more loans to the unqualified based on racial bean counting. And the Democrat majority in Congress defended them from any oversight or reigning in while they did it.

The president went on to mention his great achievement of 'saving' the auto industry. Will anyone remind him that he did it by gifting GM to his union political allies, crapping on private equity holders and giving the company special tax breaks at the taxpayer's expense to make them look artificially profitable? Or that he allowed GM to do stock dumping that was against SEC rules?

Or about the outright lies he told the American people about GM and Chrysler being profitable and returning the money used to bail them out, when in reality they were a huge loss?

We also had to listen to the president's blathering about trade. Rather than lower our corporate income tax sufficiently to encourage more companies to do business here, his solution is to put another punishment levy on companies that outsource, which will have the effect of even more companies relocating all but bare bones operations elsewhere. When Canada's corporate rate is less than half of ours, why not ?

It was also unintentionally comical to hear the president make a vague call for tearing down regulations that stifle entrepreneurship in one part of his speech while mentioning at least three or four brand new regulatory bureaucracies he wants to create and calling for cap n' trade and climate change legislation in another.

The president went on to discuss education, and of course his solution is to spend more taxpayer dollars to hire more teachers to pay more union dues to fund the Democrats. For such a pro-education guy, you'd never think he'd be the one to stop poor kids from getting into a decent school right there in DC.

Not to mention the trillion dollar time bomb for America's economy this president enacted by executive order concerning a new student loans entitlement that will eventually create a bubble similar to housing and is guaranteed to raise the cost of college education.

Yes, he really does intend to bankrupt the country. Or he's simply clueless, take your pick.

The president also got in a nice plug for the DREAM Act for illegal aliens that he enacted by executive order after Congress rejected it twice. What was that about working together again?

President Obama made quite a thing about his favoring the creation of domestic energy while believing that those of us listening would forget about his job killing de facto prohibition on offshore drilling, his opposition to drilling in ANWR , his recent fiasco with the Keystone Pipeline and his war on the coal industry. Or about Solyndra and the other green energy scams he doled out to his campaign donors and bundlers. All you have to do is look at what the price at the pump was when he came into office and what it is now, the largest increase in history...and that doesn't even calculate the corresponding rise in the price of food and other goods.

And speaking of Keystone, I had to chuckle at President Obama's solemnly intoning the so-called Buffet Rule as an example of how 'the rich' should behave. Buffet, a nicely placed Obama donor stands to make a tidy sum because the pipeline got cancelled because the oil we buy from Canada will now have to be shipped via Buffet's railroads. At a surcharge, of course. It's good to be the King's friend!

There's plenty more, but a few final bits that stood out.

President Obama talked a bit about his foreign policy. He reverently evoked the Arab Spring he helped along as 'a wave of change', which it is. He failed to mention that the change involves the rebirth of al-Qaeda and some of it's affiliates in these countries and replacing dictators like Khaddaffi who was no threat to us and Mubarak, Ali Abdullah Saleh and Ben Ali who were at least nominal allies and replacing them with hard line Islamists and salafists who are not going to be friends to the West, not to mention the 'men and women; Christians, Muslims, and Jews' whose dignity and freedom he claims to be so concerned about. President Obama committed an an historic error here that will come back to haunt us long after he departs the scene.

The president also mentioned what he described as his 'iron clad commitment to Israel's security' which is news to those of us who have followed the interaction between this president and Israel closely.But hey, it's election time, and there a sucker born every minute.

I also found it particularly nauseating to hear this president talk about how smart he is in hollowing out our military budget and in the next moment talking about jobs and VA benefits for those he described as 'those men and women in uniform who defend our freedom.'

This is the same president who is laying off an estimated 500,000 military personnel, many of them who haven't been in long enough to become vested for a military pension or full medical benefits. They'll simply be tossed into an already toxic job market for their 'reward' so President Obama can have more money for his domestic agenda. And I got a horrible taste in my mouth hearing the same President who tried to take away their VA benefits early in his administration talk about health care for veterans.

You have to wonder at what goes through someone's mind when putting on this kind of a performance. Is it simply a case of 'the show must go on'? Or has he simply been mouthing these lies and untruths for so long that he actually believes them by now?

Barack Obama is the modern version of Rehoboam, telling the people of America that he's going to double down his failed policies and add to their yoke.

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, who gave the Republican rebuttal did a decent job of responding to the president's little show tonight. But he didn't mention much about a lot of the things I've talked about here, and most of the media certainly won't.

That's the real tragedy. It's one thing to snicker to yourself as you see through a cynical con man going through his act for you, but it' s quite another to keep quiet about it and let the rubes get screwed in the name of 'civility' by the Hollow Men of this world.

They deserve better at your hands. We all do.

The GM Volt's One Hot Car - Recent Fires Show Safety Findings May Have Been Suppressed

Government Motor's flagship product, the vastly underselling Volt has some additional problems to contend with. Its lithium-ion battery system has shown a disturbing tendency to catch on fire in test crashes, even crashes at relatively slow velocity.

Even worse,evidence has been discovered indicating that both Government Motors and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration delayed disclosure of their original safety findings about the fire by months:

Apparently, way back in June, General Motors heard about a Volt fire that happened three weeks after said vehicle was crash tested, yet it wasn’t until November that the company, or NHTSA disclosed there was a potential problem, urging both dealers and customers to drain the battery pack immediately following an accident.

As a result the public relations nightmare surrounding Chevy’s halo vehicle appears to be deepening, though a good deal of the blame in this case also rests with NHTSA.

Joan Claybrook, a former adminstrator at NHTSA believes part of the reason for the delay was the “fragility of Volt sales.” Yet she also believes that “NHTSA could have put out a consumer alert, not to tell them [customers] for six months makes no sense to me.”

Hmmm..it doesn't make sense? Yes, I see. I mean, who would have imagined that a government agency would fail to publicize negative safety information that might kill sales on a product put out by Government Motors and its union owners..especially with a highly publicized IPO for GM coming up before investors earlier this year..

I don't know about you, but I'd be very cautious of any GM dealers offering unMATCHED prices or red hot deals if you know what I mean.

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Auto Bailout Losses From Obama's Gift To His Union Supporters Skyrockets To $23.6B

In its monthly report to Congress, the Treasury Department now says it expects to lose $23.6 billion from its $85 billion bailout of the auto industry. This is a mere $9 billion jump from its previous estimate of $14.33 billion.

Since Democrats are constantly claiming to be concerned about 'new revenues', it's worth mentioning that the above figures don't include that $45.4 billion dollar tax credit against future profits at the American taxpayer's expense given to them by the Obama Administration that could keep GM and its UAW owners tax free for years.

It also doesn't include $5 billion the government set aside to guarantee payments to auto suppliers in 2009.

What's going on here is a sharp decline in the value of GM's stock price. GM's Sept. 30 closing price is $20.18, down one-third over the previous quarterly price.

As I told you early this year, the Initial Public Offering (IPO) of stock for Government Motors was a huge bust, and the Feds were forced to sell a large block of shares it was holding as 'collateral' for the $85 billion bailout at a below break even price (otherwise known as a loss) of $33 per share. For those of you whom are math challenged, the current price reflects over a 38% decline in value since January from even that fire sale price.

In order for the taxpayers to have broken even, the price of the stock would have to rise to at least $52 and by some estimates as high as $103. It'll take years to get there, if it ever does, and the Obama Administration was simply being deceptive when it suggested that the stock price of $45 per share ( which it never even came close to hitting) would be enough for the taxpayers to recoup their considerable investment.

Part of the reason the stock has declined so rapidly is that GM is simply not making cars the public wants to buy. The Volt was a huge bust, even with the $10K government subsidy..it had sold only 3,895 units as of September. The Nissan Leaf, a similar hybrid car sold over twice as many cars during the same period, and did it without the American taxpayers paying people to buy it.

Overall productivity and quality control have also plummeted sharply since the government and the unions took over the reins.

The other reason the stock price has tanked is, well, poetic justice.

When the Obama Administration took over, the existing private stockholders, many of them retirees, saw their investment become virtually worthless overnight, as they were placed in the food chain behind the federal government and the UAW. In the restructuring, their 'equity' was reduced to 10% by government decree.

Stuff like that tends to be remembered. Is it any wonder no one wants to buy the stock as a private or institutional investor after that hosing?

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Obama Dumps GM Stock At Below Market Price;Taxpayers Likely Won't Recoup Bailout

Just a passing story on the economy in the midst of all the political news..

The Initial Public Offering (IPO) of stock for Government Motors was a huge bust, and the Feds were forced to sell a large block of shares it was holding as 'collateral' for the $85 billion GM bailout at a below break even price (otherwise known as a loss) of $33 per share. As I reported earlier, for taxpayers to break even the stock would have to rise to at least $52 and by some estimates as high as $103 — levels that would take years to achieve if they ever got there. The article linked claims the break even was $44.59 a share, which doesn't correspond to any rational data or sources I've seen, but why quibble?

This stock dumping - which might actually be against SEC rules if a private investor did it - pretty much means the American taxpayer will never fully recoup what it cost to gift GM to the UAW, screwing over the private equity holders in the process.

Of course it's not just the stock dumping. There's also that $45.4 billion dollar tax credit against future profits at the American taxpayer's expense given to them by the Obama Administration that could keep GM tax free for years.

Needless to say, some of the profits coming from the UAW's equity in Government Motors will be recycled straight into the Democrat party coffers as political donations.

Nice the way that works.

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