Auto State Politicians Stunned By Obama's 'Tough Love' For Them And Not So Much For Wall Street

news.yahoo.com:

The Obama administration's harsh treatment of the auto industry is backfiring with some auto state politicians despite a concerted effort to build support for the federal crackdown on General Motors and Chrysler.

Late Sunday evening, the White House held an hour-long conference call with a half-dozen lawmakers who represent auto industry states, laying out a "tough love" scenario in which GM will get 60 days of working capital, while Chrysler has only 30 days to cut a deal with Italian automaker Fiat if they are to survive.

Read the whole story: news.yahoo.com

Comments

[hoopesaz]

They are "stunned" because they are politicians. GM lost $31 billion last year. BofA MADE $4 billion last year. GM hasn't been profitable for FIVE YEARS!

Even a child can understand the difference, yet michigan politicians cannot. That's why the government (and politicians) should NOT run private business. For all of the incompetence in big business, there is vastly greater incompetence in the government.

[kstuff]

Tough love works for the 40 yr. old living in his parents basement. Not for the hard working midwesterners who've been kicked and beaten for years by reganomics. For them, it's an insult. No, fighting words. Midwesterners voted Obama in. Watch them vote him out in 2012.

[jadeba]

Like many here, I've been getting caught up (not as much as the Goldmann Sachs opposers - I admit my ignorance of those details). The reasons I voted for Obama were health care, affordable education, climate change, creating jobs that could not be outsourced. Regarding the economy, I just couldn't see how MC and Phil Gramm could possibly get us out of this mess with more and larger tax cuts and deregulation. During the campaign, neither candidate offered specific methods they would use or people they would task in addressing the disaster that is our economy. I don't see how he broke any promises in this regard.

He has tried to be bi-partisan and we have seen how willing the opposition is to enter the discussion. He did not fail us here either.

If we want to get what we were promised, we can't take our eyes off the ball. That means working to get the budget passed, getting affordable (ideally single payer) health care, affordable higher education and alternative energy. He has broken no promises in dealing with these issues.

The economy is on everyone's mind and it's good that some are taking the administration to task, I just worry that concentrating on Geithner, Summers, their histories will end up grinding progress on other issues to a halt and make achieving other goals, much more difficult, if not, impossible. I have to concentrate, focus, get back to my original hopes and goals.

[Paul Hackett]

Watch your dream regarding universal health coverage, better education funding, etc, get quietly pushed aside due to the fact that our treasury is being bankrupted in order to bailout investment banks. The Fed and Treasury Department have committed $11 trillion dollars to the bailout between them. America's entire annual GDP is $14 trillion, so that's a frightening amount of money. Obama already cleared the field by saying that some of his promises would have to be scaled down or delayed during the later stages of the campaign last year. Watch as he keeps pushing the programs you care about back towards the horizon and keeps shovelling money to Goldman and hedge funds. That's what happens when you have people like Geithner, Summers, Kashkari etc in charge of your treasury and a new president with what appears to be very little confidence regarding economic issues. He has basically rehired Bill Clinton's deregulatory economic team. Sound like "change" to you?

[Paul Hackett]

if we've reached a point where we're bailing out institutions because to not do so would lead to a systemic failure, does that not tell us there's a systemic problem?

We've entered a period of post-capitalism where investment banks are the new kings of the road. These "investment banks" don't actually invest in American businesses as they once did, they instead make their money through derivatives trading and other economically useless financial "bets". They have unbridled power and they use it to no end other than to increase their short term returns by any means necessary.

The following is a list of Goldman Sachs ex-executives who are in positons of control in our Treasury:

Larry Summers - Obamas chief financial advisor

Neel Kaskari - 36 and head of the trillion dollar TARP program, a position for which he is completely unqualified

Hank Paulson - ex treasury head who negotiated the bailout with Summers

Lloyd Blankfein - CEO of Goldman, astonishingly he co-negotiated AIG's bailout

Edward Liddy - current head of AIG appointed by Geithner

Mark Patterson - Timothy Geithner's chief of staff and Goldman's ex-lobbyist in Washington (!)

Gary Genslery - Obama's nominee for chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Bernie Saunders is trying to block him because of his history of lobbying for deregulation

And it goes on and on and on. Time to wake up America.

[jadeba]

It's probably pretty hard to find anyone on Wall Street who hasn't worked at Goldman Sachs. Not criticizing your research, just saying most have gone through those doors.

[Paul Hackett]

The above guys (with the exception of Summers) either came to their posts directly from Goldman or spent literally decades working at the top level of the company. I work in Wall Street, there are plenty of other investment banks, insurance companies, regualorty commissions (FDIC, the Fed, SEC, etc., etc.) that nominees for these positions could have been harvested from. This is NOT a conicidence. Goldman Sachs is the largest contributor to both parties campaigns and have been for some time. They were Obama's largest corportate donor. They received $14 of your tax money two weeks ago via co-payments of public money from AIG. Those copayments were to pay off purely speculative unsecured credit default swap "bets" that Goldman's derivative traders had made with AIG. This is a wealth and power grab and we need to stand up and do something about it.

If you'd like some more information I suggest the following articles:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover

http://seekingalpha.com/article/108113-what-obama-needs-to-know-about-tim-geithner-the-aig-fiasco-and-citigroup

[tomas0808]

Unfortunately in the short run (fortunately in the long) the whole thing has to collapse for some value to be restored to a persons physical labor.

What people don't realize is that this isn't just the bursting of the housing bubble, (after the tech bubble etc) this is the bursting of the 'Disconnected from Reality-Capitalist Bubble' that's been inflating since the late 70's.

Reality Bites

[mtdon]

Pick up the newest edition of Forbes and read how the oil market was manipulated in order to bankrupt Semgroup - an oil pipeline company......guess who it was that manipulated the market - -drove oil thru the roof to 147 a barrel and then profited when the Semgroup went down ---

if you guessed Goldman Sachs you are RIGHT!

these criminals could care less about anything but the fast buck at the expense of everyone else.....they want to bankrupt the world economy so they can pick up the peices for a dime on the dollar.....

AND these are Obamas friends? When are the democrats going to wake up that we were "jobbed" just as goldman sachs jobbed the oil market.....

CRIMINALS!!!!!!!

I say until the goldman sachs criminals are out of the white house why bother to pay taxes.....if it's class warfare they are practising on us why should we not at least stand up once to them?

2009 = TAX HOLIDAY

[Paul Hackett]

Obama has appointed two men who built their careers on deregulation - Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers - to fix an economy that has been wrecked by deregulation. That's like putting Hitler in charge of de-nazifying Europe if he had survived the war.

But to a lot of people on here that's just fine cause, hey, Obama's the president and he's your favoritest person ever, right? So anybody who thinks this situation is nuts is obviously a troll or a Bush/McCain supporter or whatever.

Guess what people? You are now officially the democratic party equivalent of Rush Limbaugh dittoheads. And I'm telling you this as someone who schlepped my ass to Philadelphia to campaign door to door for Obama last summer and fall.

[mtdon]

If obama thinks that his "big business knows best" approach is better than the approach he campaigned for I predict that the large numbers of 1st time voters that turned out for change will stay home and it'll be one and done.....

[Paul Hackett]

I campaigned for him by schlepping my ass to Philadelphia from New York last summer and fall, I thought he was a good guy and there was no way in hell I could sit back and do nothing when McCain/Palin was the alternative. But if things keep going like this I will campaign for an alternative democratic candidate to challenge him in the 2012 primaries. He wasn't elected by people like us in order to preside over the looting of our public treasury by Goldman Sachs and other investment banks.

[jadeba]

Even MC is now saying we need regulation and he was the biggest promoter of de-regulation. Intelligent people are capable of changing their minds when it becomes clear that what they assumed to be correct, is shown to be incorrect. And, although I happen to be a big believer in regulation (putting the fix in the henhouse never made sense to me) it seemed that the system was working - until it fell apart. I don't know what kind of people Geithner and Summers are and that's what's missing here. We know Hitler's core beliefs would not have changed, we do not know that about Geithner and Summers. Until I have some reason to criticize, pertaining to this situation, I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt.

[Paul Hackett]

So, by your logic, if Hitler had survived World War 2 and he renounced his previous ideologies as mistaken, you'd have been fine with putting him in charge of de-nazifying Europe? You really think Geithner's the best man for this job? He and Larry Summers build their careers on deregulation - they lobbied the 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act through Congress - the one that caused this whole mess by deregulating banks. He was in charge of regulating Citibank as part of his duties as head of the New York Fed for the past 5 years, during that time he allowed Citibank to increase its debt to capital ratio from the traditional statutory limit of 12:1 to an unheard of 33:1! the result is that Citibank is now basically ownded by the taxpayer. Geithner is and has always has been a complete screwup. Having him in charge of the treasury right now makes me want saw my own arm off.

[Michael Briggs]

I really hate to say this, because I voted for Obama and really had the highest hopes for his administration, but today I am losing my faith in Obama. I'm tired of hearing people tell me to wait and see the wonderful things he's going to do. This whole auto industry tough love stance is just not fair when he's giving Wall Street every protection possible. I think Americans know the difference. It is just so sad.

[Pete2069]

It is plane as the nose on one's face,,, Obama is following down the same path as Bush's administration with his priorities...

This is a transfer of wealth and control to Global corporations...

We should have supported the mom and pop businesses and closed the Global financial institutions like Goldman Sache and company

We have also been force to pay foreign banks money to get them in business...

There is a lot going on which is secret from Americans in Obama's Secret and Closed government..

If you do not believe your eyes then you can belive Obama and his given of our Tax money to these global criminals..

[Paul Hackett]

Timothy Geithner, like Hank Paulson and Robert Rubin before him, only cares about one thing - investment banks like Goldman Sachs. He has zero interest in or knowledge of Main Street. All of his experience comes from investment banking.

His top deputy came to the job directly from his position as a Goldman Sachs lobbyist for Pete's sake. He appointed Edward Liddy (ex-Goldman) to run AIG. Obama's other top economic advisor is Larry "deregulation" Summers, also ex-Goldman. The guy who is running the trillion dollar TARP bailout program - Neel Kashkari came to the job directly from his position as a VP at Goldman. Hank Paulson, who negotiated the bailout package with Geithner was at Goldman for almost twenty years.

When AIG's rescue plan was being negotiated the three people in the room were Hank Paulson, Timothy Geithner and Llody Blankfein. Who is Lloyd Blankfein? He's the CEO of Goldman Sachs. There's more - Obama's nominee for head of Commodities Futures Trading Commision (the body which regulates derivatives) is Gary Gensler who spent 18 years at Goldman. Bernie Saunders is trying to block the nomination because of Gensler's long history as a deregulation idealogue.

We need to wake up to what's going on, people! This is a wealth grab by Goldman Sachs and other

[mtdon]

pick up the newest edition of forbes and read all about the goldman sachs manipulation of the oil market that drove oil to 147 a barrel.......

then come and tell me we live in a free market economy OR even in a democracy when we vote for change but it's nothing more than OBAMA lying to get into office so he can continue the handouts to the multi-nationals.

[Paul Hackett]

Will check it out, though I'm sure it will be completely depressing. Thanks for the tip.

As for Obama, if he keeps going like this I will strongly campaign for an alternative candidate during the democratic party primaries in 2012. I campaigned for him last year and this situation just sucks.

[nypoet22]

The banks owe money to more foreign countries than the car companies, so bankruptcy is a trickier proposition in their case. that would cause a world-wide economic and diplomatic ripple. personally i think the banks should be temporarily nationalized, but that's not my call. the car companies restructuring, while devastating, would be more of a domestic issue, so more feasible.

[Jazzcomedian]

President Obama, and his auto task force checked with me last night, before he made the announcment, and I gave him the go ahead. The buck stops with me. So, hold me accountable.

[Yaaawn]

That's fine Obama. Glad to see your thinking of bankruptcy for them instead. That's what you needed to do. Finally you made the right decision and now those 20,000 workers can thank your admin for thier pink slips from GM and Chrysler. Congratulations!

[Yaaawn]

PS...thanks for exporting an american company to a foreign company. You did it!

[TivoliEclipse]

I am happy! No more welfare for the Automobile industry. Noone is buying that junk anyway...

[KluvsO]

It's funny how progressive and conservative idealogues and blog heads throw stones at the president on every issue. No matter what he says or does he is wrong. It must be nice living in a simple world, where every issue and action is black or white, progressive or conservative, my way or the highway. Meanwhile the rest of us have to live and lead in the real world...a world far too complex for the most opinionated and vocal among us to understand.
It's no wonder why intelligent and decent human beings rarely run and win high office.

[Changeizgood]

There's no double standard.
To be or not to be, that is the question? We have been screaming at these big oil guzzling suto makers decade after decade and this last bailout was the straw that broke America's back.
$4.00 gas, still didn't hear us.
Hummers that burn more pollutants, still didn't hear the consumers cry for better mileage.
Soldiers dying for the nasty stuff to keep poisoning our air supplyy and global warming, no answers.

Well Ameri-CANS A told Obama to say "ENOUGH while chanting "YES WE CAN HAVE BETTER MILIEAGE AND CLEANER VEHICLES FOR THE FUTURE, WHETHER THE CEOS WANT IT OR NOT!

The way I see it America, is that we either fix the auto company with the set up still in place for the production of green fleet, or take public transportation or buy foreign cars not supporting our auto work force.

The American Auto that brought our industry and products to the world, still needs the support to bring forth the newer cars that have been sitting in someone's file. Mainly that last CEO DINOSAUR OF THE RICH STATUS QUO FLEET, only they can afford.

[ImagesAndAdjectives]

I'm beginning to think that some of the critics of the first bailout were right. We can't be a nursemaid to this industry forever. Let the chips fall where they may. Let smaller, independent auto makers come on the scene. This is capitalism, people. You want it, then you have to let it work.

BTW, I tried to buy a used truck recently, thinking I would get a great deal now and was agast at the prices - thousands above bluebook here in Denver, Colorado. Forget it! What recession??!

[blackhole2008]

Would be nice to have along with smaller independant gasoline producers, and smaller, independant banks.

[Paul Hackett]

Fine. Are you going to apply the same logic to making payouts to Goldman Sachs derviatives traders via AIG with our public monies also? Because right now Timothy Geithner can't seem to pay Goldman off quick enough - they got $14 billion of our tax money two weeks ago for macking unsecured and purely speculative credit default swap "bets" that the housing market would collapse. Are you happy to know that your tax check is going to be financing the cocaine-and-hooker parties Goldman's traders are going to be holding at their Long Island estates this summer? Just curious.

[ImagesAndAdjectives]

I am not applying the same logic. I agree with David Korten (AGenda for a New Economy). We should have let the chips fall where they may with regard to banks, too.

All my money is in a local credit union.

[Coastalthinker2]

President Obama was raised from the age of 10 with his grandparents. His grandmother was a Vice President for BANK of HAWAII. Is it now a surprise that he would be on the side of the financial institutions?

I live in a town where there were four signs up for Barack Obama during the election (ie. conservative). My home had one of those four signs. However, I am extremely disappointed in the Obama administrations stand on escalating war in the middle east and this neoliberal approach to the economy.

Will this become a situation where David Axelrod is the equivalent to Karl Rove in putting one over on the progressive base?

[PSTEN]

good God, this is an argument! Get a life! And for gods sake he's been in office for all of what, 60 days. Geez, this guy has inherited one of the largest messes from an incompetent president the likes of which I hope WE never see again. It's going to take this president 8 years to dig us out of this mess, settle in, take a breath, get a drink and some popcorn, and while your at it. some patience.

[Paul Hackett]

yeah, he's been in office 60 days and his economic team consists of the poster boys for deregulation that got us into this mess - Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers. You need to educate yourself to what is going on. Nearly all of the top people who have been appointed to supervise the bailout are ex-Goldman Sach executives - the trillion dollar TARP program is being administered by Neel Kashkari for Christ's sakes. Your money is being stolen and funneled to Goldman Sachs and other investment banks and it's Obama who is allowing this to happen.

I'm an Obama supporter also but I have a background in finance and I'm not going to stand back and watch while Goldman Sachs loots our nation's treasury. You need to take your responsibilities as a citizen a little more seriously PSTEN. You sound like the democratic equivalent of a Rush Limbaugh dittohead.

[jadeba]

I have a lot of sympathy for our president. He has been tasked with fixing disaster after disaster that he inherited from 43 and from the administrations before (not just RR and 41 but Clinton, too. I supported Clinton but I'm pretty disappointed in him).

I think of the financial mess as a jigsaw puzzle with a million pieces. Most everyone agrees that we can't afford (nationally and globally) to let the system fail. Our president is juggling a 1,000 balls at once and somehow he has to make sure none of them fall to the floor. It's easy to say, "let them fail" but most of us don't have the foresight to know what will happen. I don't like the idea of rewarding bad behavior but doing nothing to save our economy seems like a very bad idea. Now is not the time to raze the system and start from scratch. We need to stabilize first, then reform. This president is a pragmatist - he thinks, he acts. If things don't look good, he won't continue, he will change course.

As far as the war is concerned - I believe Sec'y Albright who asserts that the worst that could possibly happen would be an Afghan failed state. Our president has reasonable expectations - he doesn't expect Jeffersonian democracy. His goal is stability and his willingness to address economic realities, not just military, is a step in the right direction.