Are GM Bailout Funds Being Spent Overseas?

Mark Noonan

Because whenever the government steps in, its always a good thing, right?

Here is a question: You, as a taxpayer, now own a stake in General Motors. 50 billion dollars of taxpayer money was invested in the company. Now, if the company decides it is in the best interest of their bottom line to invest some of that money overseas, would you be upset?

That’s a question being asked of GM today. GM is using some of the money floated to them by the US government to bolster its operations overseas. The upset is that part of the justification for investing tax dollars in GM was to create (or save) jobs here in America.

The company argues that they are necessarily global and boosting sales overseas helps the taxpayer, helps investors, and creates jobs. Everyone benefits from a stronger company.

Don’t work on building better cars. Don’t work on lowering domestic production costs. For cripes sake don’t even think about lowering bloated union payrolls and benefits! Just move the production overseas and generate “increased” profits by virtue of paying foreigners starvation wages. Its the story of corporate America over the last 20 years – stupidly destroying itself at home in order to make the quarterly results look good in time to pass out the bonuses.

This is what comes of both corporate and government stupidity – GM and the UAW drove GM in to bankruptcy, so along comes Uncle Sam to bail out the failed corporation…and off goes the failed corporation to look after itself rather than do something useful for the US. And don’t think the UAW will squawk much about this – as long as the generous pension benefits keep coming in and union members in the US keep the donations flowing to the Democrat party, you’ll hear nary a peep out of the UAW. There might be come pro-forma complaints, but they won’t amount to anything in reality.

Government can’t do business. Large corporations can’t do business. What we need is to encourage new, small and mid-sized companies which are in the making, mining and growing industries and then get the heck out of the way.