These days General Motors’ advertising is obnoxious. In GM’s new ad campaign Ed Whitacre boasts that GM has payed back their loan five years ahead of schedule, with interest! I can only assume that the commercial is aimed at brainless morons because GM’s claim is insulting.
Neither the ad nor the press release mentioned that GM repaid its government loan with other government money, or that U.S. taxpayers could lose money on the roughly $50 billion they still have invested in General Motors.
In a letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner last week, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said the repayment “appears to be nothing more than an elaborate TARP money shuffle.”
Here’s the video of the ad. I want to pull my hair out every time I see it because in a roundabout way the American taxpayer is paying for this stupid thing.
The sheer audacity by GM to run this ad is astounding. The first time I saw it I couldn’t believe my eyes. After watching it I will do everything I can to avoid purchasing or leasing a GM car. I drive a Buick now so it’s not like I need much convincing. The ad reminds of the Saturn campaign from last year.
So much for “we’re still here” because General Motors later announced the end of Saturn, which really doesn’t affect anyone except for Club Soda. At the time it was a bold ad campaign to insist that Saturn was alive and well. What’s going on with Saturn? Let me tell you what’s going on with Saturn. They’re going out of business. The idea that GM is “too big to fail” is ridiculous. The sooner the company goes out of business the better off the American taxpayer will be.
I’m not a conspiracy theory guy. I believe President Kennedy was shot by a communist named Lee Harvey Oswald. I believe President Obama was born in Hawaii. I believe that terrorists carried out the attacks of 9/11 and that it’s not a sinister strategy by the Bilderberg Group to raise gas prices. However, I have to admit that it’s just a little strange that after the U.S. government purchased GM that Toyota is under fire from the government and the press due to recalls.
Toyota isn’t the first car manufacture to issue a recall. The press has been beating up Toyota for week. Every time there’s a wreck involving a Toyota my local news editorializes “could this be because of the accelerator problem?” The public hysteria is fuel by the media. Remember the Swine Flu? Remember the New Orleans cannibals? Theodore Frank has a op-ed in the Washington Examiner titled “I am not afraid of my Toyota Prius.”
Even if one believes all the hype, the reaction so far has been a giant overreaction. Fifty-odd deaths over 10 years and millions of Toyotas is a drop in the bucket compared to the general risk of being on the road at all. It’s entirely possible that more people will be killed driving to the dealer for the recall than lives will be saved from going through the safety theater demanded by the Department of Transportation.
It’s fascinating to me how people are consumed with worry about things that aren’t really dangerous. It’s like the lawmakers in Maine who are worried about cell phones. The most egregious aspect of the Toyota alarmism is when the Toyota executives were dragged before Congress. Or another way to look at it was that the executives were dragged in front of their competitors. Now that the government owns a large portion of GM isn’t it just a little bit of a conflict of interest for them to beat up Toyota?
The auto bailout cost $800 per American taxpaying family. How’s that for stimulus? What would have been better for the American people: giving each family $800 to spend or by giving it to failing auto companies? There’s a new paper by Thomas Hopkins that analyzes the real costs of Auto subsidies.
Every new vehicle sold by GM and Chrysler now is accompanied by a substantial taxpayer subsidy, with little credible evidence that either firm will survive for long, barring further assistance in the future. If survival is only to the end of 2010, the taxpayer bailout burden could amount to some $10,700 per 2009-10 vehicle sold.
The faster these companies die the better. Right now the government is holding up these failures at an enormous cost. It really is amazing how much the government is throwing around these days. Americans are upset about the present course, but they’re not nearly angry enough.
George Orwell, in his seminal novel Animal Farm, floated the proposition that “some animals are more equal than others.” And nowhere is this more obvious than in the dawning of the new era we call the Obama administration and its approach to the economy and certain sectors of it, such as the auto industry and health care.
In our current version of Animal Farm, the fox has been given complete jurisdiction over the hen house. Occasionally, the farmer asks the fox about the alarming number of hens turning up dead in the henhouse.
Though covered in feathers and blood, the fox insists it’s an inside job; the hens are turning on each other, causing hen house mayhem that the fox insists can only be staunched if the farmer would give him more authority.
The farmer relents and the fox then turns over control of the pigpen to the coyote, while the wolf is in charge of the sheep. The hapless pigs, sheep, and hens, meanwhile, wonder why the farmer is so sheepish. Spies are sent to the farmhouse to gain some insight into the farmer’s easy acquiescence.
Peering into the farmer’s window, it all becomes clear. The farmer is asleep in his recliner, iPod in hand, with Family Guy blaring in the background on the television. The surprise gifts given by the fox to the farmer of a hand-held constant Internet connection and a satellite dish have had their desired effect. The pony keg provided by the wolf didn’t hurt either.
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