What happened to all of the doom and gloom economic threads?

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Neglecting to mention, of course, in your blind hatred of our President.... That GM is not a government entity and that they repaid TARP bailout money long ago..

Not to inject reality into your little hatefest... again.. :rolleyes:

Not to inject real reality in to this cess pool of ignorance called a thread, but:


"GM filings with the SEC reveal that GM was paying 7 percent interest on a $6.7 billion TARP debt. The filings also confirm that the source of funds for GM’s debt repayments was a multibillion-dollar TARP-funded escrow account at Treasury; that means it was taxpayer money — not earnings."

:rolleyes:
 
U_D demands, "SHOW ME THE INFLATION!"

Stores are trying everything they can think of to disguise the fact that you're going to pay more for clothes this fall.

Some are using less fabric and calling it the new look. Others are adding cheap stitching and trumpeting it as a redesign. And the buttons on that blouse? Chances are you're not going to think it's worth paying several dollars more for the shirt just to have them.

Retailers are raising prices on merchandise an average of 10 percent across-the-board this fall in an effort to offset their rising costs for materials and labor. But merchants are worried that cash-strapped customers who are weighed down by economic woes will balk at price hikes. So, retailers are trying to raise prices without tipping off unsuspecting customers.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie...ME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-08-19-10-27-42

Hey, U_D who's the CAFE green President dictating what kind of cares we will be allowed to drive, spending green stimulus money on failed projects and giving illegal workers amnesty?
 
Neglecting to mention, of course, in your blind hatred of our President.... That GM is not a government entity and that they repaid TARP bailout money long ago..

Not to inject reality into your little hatefest... again.. :rolleyes:

Seek counseling, really. You'll bust a vein when Perry takes office.
 
Q: Did General Motors repay its TARP loan from the Treasury with other TARP money?

A: Yes. GM repaid the loan portion of the automaker bailout ahead of schedule, with interest. It used TARP money it had already received but hadn’t spent. And taxpayers are still stuck with GM stock that isn’t worth what was paid for it.

FULL QUESTION

There are GM commercials and mass mailings that say they’ve paid back their "government loans" ahead of schedule with interest. Didn’t the government take a 71% ownership in the company? Was that a loan or is the loan a smoke screen for the actual government ownership?

Has GM repaid its bailout loan in full with interest, 5 years ahead of schedule?

GM is running advertisements claiming the above statement is true, and the President seemed to reaffirm that claim in his most recent radio address. However, Sen. Grassely (R) claims that GM is using other bailout funds in order to pay off the aforementioned bailout funds and their claim is simply an accounting trick.

FULL ANSWER

Many readers have asked us about the White House-touted news that General Motors, and Chrysler, repaid loan money from the Treasury Department, with interest, ahead of schedule. GM launched an ad boasting of the news, and President Obama talked about it in his weekly address on April 24.

We wrote about this, too, on April 26 in a review of the Sunday political talk shows. Here’s the deal for those who missed that post:

Yes, it’s true that GM paid back its loan from the Treasury Department, in full, ahead of schedule.

But the debt was only part of the automaker bailout package. Through the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the Treasury gave GM $49.5 billion, most of which was converted into an ownership stake in the form of stock. Through this equity stake, the government still owns 61 percent of GM.

Some Republicans, including Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa have pointed out that GM used TARP money to pay back its TARP debt. That’s true, but GM simply handed back TARP money it had been lent and hadn’t used. Those funds had been sitting in an escrow account, should the automaker need them. (The company didn’t borrow new money to pay back an older loan.)

Grassley has argued that this wasn’t a "meaningful" repayment of a loan, since it didn’t come from earnings. That’s an opinion, and we’ll leave it to readers to agree or disagree with the senator. The TARP special inspector general, Neil Barofsky, has said the repayment was "good news," since it meant the automaker didn’t need to use those funds held in escrow. In testimony before the Senate Finance Committee on April 20, Barofksy made it clear GM still was operating with government help:

Barofsky, April 20: G.M. has paid $1 billion, and I think they’ve announced that they’re going to be paying back the debt portion, which is about — I think there’s about $6 billion left in its entirety very shortly. But we should be a little — we need to be a little bit cautious about that because the way that that payment’s going to be made is drawing down an equity facility of other TARP money.
So it’s good news in that they’re reducing their debt, but they’re using it by taking other available TARP money to repay the TARP. It’s good news because it means that money, which was going to be available for future problems with G.M., that there’s a determination that they don’t need it, but we should caution that it’s not necessarily being generated out of earnings, but out of other TARP funds.

In an April 21 interview with Fox News’ Neil Cavuto, Barofsky repeated his assessment that the repayment was "good news" but should be taken with a grain of salt. "I mean, the good news is, that money — they already have that money that’s in that escrow account, so it does lower the total amount of money that they owe to the government, so that’s somewhat good news," Barofsky said. "But I don’t think we should exaggerate it too much, when we remember where — the source of this money is just other TARP money."

The president’s and GM’s statements may have given some the false impression that taxpayers have gotten back all the bailout money loaned to or invested in GM. Strictly speaking, Obama was accurate when he said: "GM announced that it paid back its loans to taxpayers with interest, fully five years ahead of schedule." But he alluded only vaguely to other bailout money, which taxpayers may never get back, adding: "It won’t be too long before the stock the Treasury is holding in GM can be sold, helping to reimburse the American people for their investment." Those statements might have confused anyone who wasn’t familiar with the details of GM’s stock-and-loan debt to the Treasury.

As for Treasury’s equity stake, worth $40 billion-plus, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has said the Treasury won’t fully recoup that money. The total automaker bailout, including TARP money given to Chrysler, CBO estimates, will cost taxpayers about $34 billion.

– Lori Robertson

Update, May 3: The CBO doesn’t give a breakdown of how much of its $34 billion cost estimate for the bailout would have gone to General Motors. But most of the automaker bailout funds went to GM. While the Treasury has a 61 percent equity stake in GM, its stake in Chrysler is 9.9 percent.

Factcheck.org

:rolleyes:

U_D, really? Trying to play Jedi mind tricks with the truth?
 
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"A troubled nation wonders: How did we get mired in 9.1 percent unemployment, 0.9 percent growth, and an economic outlook so bad that the Federal Reserve pledges to keep interest rates at zero through mid-2013 — an admission that it sees little hope on the horizon?
Bad luck, explains our president."
Charles Krauthammer
NRO

If they had been reading A_J's partisan rw racist HATE c&p's, they would not at all be WONDERING!

They would KNOW!!!

;) ;)

Bad Pres__ent with NO id, uh...
 
Charlie continues:

In Obama’s recounting, however, luck is only half the story. His economic recovery was ruined not just by acts of God and (foreign) men, but by Americans who care nothing for their country. These people, who inhabit Congress (guess what party?), refuse to set aside “politics” for the good of the nation. They serve special interests and lobbyists, care only about the next election, place party ahead of country. Indeed, they “would rather see their opponents lose than see America win.” The blaggards!

For weeks, these calumnies have been Obama staples. Calumnies, because they give not an iota of credit to the opposition for trying to promote the public good, as presumably Obama does, but from different premises and principles. Calumnies, because they deny legitimacy to those on the other side of the great national debate about the size and scope and reach of government.

Charging one’s opponents with bad faith is the ultimate political ad hominem. It obviates argument, fact, logic, history. Conservatives resist Obama’s social-democratic, avowedly transformational agenda not just on principle but on empirical grounds, as well — the economic and moral unraveling of Europe’s social-democratic experiment, on display today from Athens to the streets of London.

Obama’s answer? He doesn’t even engage. That’s the point of these ugly accusations of bad faith.

Boy that sure sounds like a lot of people here!
__________________
"I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration somehow you're not patriotic. We should stand up and say we are Americans and we have a right to debate and disagree with any administration."
Hillary "Rodham"-Clinton
 
"A troubled nation wonders: How did we get mired in 9.1 percent unemployment, 0.9 percent growth, and an economic outlook so bad that the Federal Reserve pledges to keep interest rates at zero through mid-2013 — an admission that it sees little hope on the horizon?
Bad luck, explains our president."
Charles Krauthammer
NRO

If they had been reading A_J's partisan rw racist HATE c&p's, they would not at all be WONDERING!

They would KNOW!!!

;) ;)

Bad Pres__ent with NO id, uh...

BAD LUCK:

Yeah, the Arab spring and the the Japan tsunami, doncha you know.
 
BAD LUCK:

Yeah, the Arab spring and the the Japan tsunami, doncha you know.

... the invention of the ATM and airport kiosks...


... tornadoes Toto!

Ran out of food stamp ink...

The Buck? I never saw the buck! Go look over on Biden's desk, maybe he got the buck...
 
Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) told KGW News that President Obama's chances of getting re-elected was "very tough" and that Oregon is "very much in play" even though Obama won the state with 57% of the vote in 2008.

Said DeFazio: "I've just done six town hall meetings, have seven to go but people are shaking their head and saying 'I don't know if I'd vote for him again.'"

He added: "One guy asked me... give me 25 words what he's about and what he's done for me. I'm like... 'it could have been worse?"
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2011/08/19/defazio_says_oregon_might_be_in_play.html

THIS is why the artificial deadline was set for the debt man walking ceiling hike...

He didn't want Democrats going home before he got his new credit cards.
 
“over 66 percent expect that the size of their workforce will either stay the same or decrease over the next year”

Those are the findings of a survey of CEO’s by ChiefExecutive.net (h/t @billhobbs):

Unemployment numbers remain consistently high and CEOs are wary of future business conditions. In fact, chief executives are so pessimistic that over 66 percent expect that the size of their workforce will either stay the same or decrease over the next year according to Chief Executive magazine’s CEO Confidence Index for August 2011.

Of those who plan to hire, most will do so in a limited way; 74 percent of hiring CEOs will increase their workforce by less than 10 percent. This does not bode well for the 9.1% of US workers who were unemployed in July.

What’s driving the pessimism? A big part of it is Obamacare:

The ranking of hiring-inducing priorities that were ranked “important to extremely important” were as follows:

1.Backlog of work or increased revenue — 88.2 percent
2.Evidence of economic expansion — 77.2 percent
3.Repeal of Health Care Reform or eliminate uncertainty over its provisions — 71.6 percent
4.Reduction in government regulation of business — 62 percent
5.Government holds line on debt ceiling — 56.3
6.Reduced corporate tax rate to OECD average — 54.3
7.Balanced federal budget — 53.9
8.Gov’t passes all free trade agreements without delay — 48.8
9.Repeal Dodd-Frank or eliminate uncertainty over its provisions — 48.2
Do you see a theme here? It’s not just Obamacare, it is government getting in the way.
 
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