Least surprising news of the week:
Taxpayers are naturally eager for news about bailout repayments. But what neither G.M. nor the Treasury disclosed was that the company simply used other funds held by the Treasury to pay off its original loan.
Neil M. Barofsky, the inspector general overseeing the troubled asset program, revealed this detail when he spoke before the Senate Finance Committee on April 20.
“So it’s good news in that they’re reducing their debt,” Mr. Barofsky said of G.M. But he went on to note that G.M. was using other taxpayer money to make the loan repayment, according to the transcript of his testimony.
Armed with this information, Mr. Grassley fired off a letter to Mr. Geithner on April 22, asking for details of the transaction. “I am concerned … that this announcement is not what it seems,” he wrote. “In fact, it appears to be nothing more than an elaborate TARP money shuffle.”
Mr. Grassley heard back from the Treasury last Tuesday. Herbert M. Allison Jr., assistant secretary for financial stability, confirmed that the money G.M. used to repay its bailout loan had come from a taxpayer-financed escrow account held for the automaker at the Treasury.
GM and Treasury are still trying to spin this in a positive manner, but the cat is very much out of the bag. GM used one bit of taxpayer supplied funds to pay back another bit of taxpayer supplied funds. And as Treasury is involved, this is probably a move by the Obama Administration to make people feel better in advance of the November elections.
This is all we’re getting with Stimulus, TARP and all the rest of the nonsense: fake economic growth, fake debt repayment, fake “investment” in America. And its all done via ever more debt piled up on the productive class of the United States of America – already overburdened and increasingly impoverished.
When the crash comes, it will be quite devastating – and I think that people will have pointed and uncomfortable questions for those who sold this bill of goods.
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