Cerberus is no stranger to the Mohawk Valley, having purchased Remington Arms about a year and a half ago . . . and we gave it a 'bailout' of our own. In an OD headline from from this past April: Aid for Remington could reach $4.2 million - Officials cite 100 new jobs as reason for public assistance. Of course, Remington aid won't counter '07 job losses. Read some of the comments following the first OD story -- pretty interesting insights.
Buried on the business page of The New York Times Saturday were the details of Detroit's biggest snow job yet--literally as well as figuratively. Turns out that Cerberus CEO John Snow, who spent three-and-a-half lackluster, and some might say lap-doggish, years as President Bush's second Treasury secretary, is leading a who's who of crony capitalists in a lobbying campaign for a taxpayer bailout to "salvage Cerberus' investment in Chrysler."
That's right. Not to save the jobs of Chrysler employees or America's disappearing manufacturing base, mind you, but to prevent "one of the world's richest and most secretive private investment companies" from having to take a relatively modest financial hit and use some of its own capital to prop up the smallest of the major automakers.
The USA seems to be going the way of New York State, supposedly using taxpayer dollars in desperation to salvage jobs. . . . but in reality simply giving money away to increase someone's profit margin. The results will be the same. The inevitable merely gets delayed. Taxpayer dollars will not change a business model that is no longer viable. . . . but they still can make "connected" people rich.
3 comments:
A local example of what you write is the Hotel Utica. To this day, I don't think there has ever been an accounting of what the owners have put in and what they have taken out.
Again, let me point to “Classical Conditioning.” If government keeps rewarding the failing corporate entities with lucrative taxpayer bailouts, they will keep getting more of the same behavior.
After the financial institutions got their government bailouts, the automakers followed suit. Now, we are beginning to hear rumblings from failing newspapers needing government bailouts. (http://industry.bnet.com/media/1000440/can-a-government-bailout-newspapers/) Soon, we will see more corporations seeking to put their money grabbing heads in the vast government troughs. (http://community.zdnet.co.uk/blog/0,1000000567,10009307o-2000570206b,00.htm) (http://seekingalpha.com/article/96758-the-undisclosed-costs-of-the-u-s-government-bailouts) Why is Chapter Thirteen Bankruptcy not an option? (http://www.heritage.org/research/economy/lm33.cfm)
Wow this is really very scary. Congress seems to disregard our interests and entertains these requests. Where else in history has business been improved by delaying "survival of the fittest"?
The economy collapse is just money's reaction to market realities. A natural paring down. Companies that make substandard products or outdated media just die if they don't change. To go broke giving them life support is just as damaging if not more than just letting them go. Sooner or later the economy will recover and fewer people's heads will be in the clouds.
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