Chrysler To Repay Loans; Geithner Says Feds Will Lose Money on Bailout

The dimwits that inhabit this administration are stunning in their incompetence. Good for Chrysler for paying off its loans.........GM was just money flushed down the UAW toilet.

He should be more clear, the loss on the deal is from GM not Chrysler. GM went public with a percentage government owned. So now they are stuck to the government because if they dump the remaining stock the price drops, company does worse. Chrysler is paying the government out now, then going public later. That means will have paid back everything it was loaned + interest.

"The dimwits that inhabit this administration are stunning in their incompetence"

But have you ever known a government that was better?

It may have been a bad idea to bail them out but it would have been a worse idea to let them fail.

And at least they didn't waste any money buying good safety glasses.

BB....The bailouts were proposed and started under Bush. Lets not have partisan amnesia.

BTW - perfect caption contest.

"It may have been a bad idea to bail them out but it would have been a worse idea to let them fail."

+1000

At least they didn't botch it up like British Leyland.

so the government 'lost' billions. How is that different from when they throw away trillions on stupid stuff? Oh, wait keeping them in business kept the economy from going all the way down the toilet so it had an upside.

Spending 'unemployment' on an idiot with tattoos on his face that for some reason "can't get a job" is a much better use of my tax dollars so that isn't a 'loss'.

These are just like TARP funds being used to pay off the national dept. There going to take money from someone else (private investors here TARP on the national level) and use it to pay off their dept.

This is just like the TARP funds (which where tallied onto the dept) being used to pay off the Fed. dept. They're going to take money from one group (private investors here TARP for the fed.) and use it to "pay off" their dept. The dept stays the same God d****.

@bmw__m5, except they will get a market competitive interest rate and they will get rid of the governments partial ownership of the company. If you read my post, GM waited to get rid of the government and now they are strapped to them for a longer period.

"BB....The bailouts were proposed and started under Bush. Lets not have partisan amnesia."

Give that man a prize.

And unlike the financial bailout, there was never any real expectation that they were going to make money on this. Initially they thought they would lose tens of billions. No one can project how much they will lose because much of it depends on when they sell GM's stock. If they rush to sell (which seems likely) they will lose billions on the GM deal, but less than many folks suspected when this first started. Let's not forget several prominent republicans said they would lose all of it and GM/Chrysler couldnt be saved under any circumstances.

The government loses billions every year supporting the bloated defense industry paying for weapons designed to win a Cold War that ended over 20 years ago. In terms of government investments, this is actually a pretty successful example. What's the ROI for the billion dollar carriers and subs we pay for that are designed to win a standoff with the USSR?

You can stick safety glasses on a bureaucrat and photo-op him in front of an assembly line, but he will still look like a bureaucrat.

The taxpayers losing billions? That's not good. But it's not the only number. Here is a PhD dissertation for some young ambitious economist: figure out how much money we spent on the bailout, and then factor in the money saved by these car companies and their parts manufacturers not going out of business, their employees keeping their jobs and therefore not having to take state and federal unemployment benefits (or losing their homes and further damaging the housing market once benefits run out), local communities not having to absorb the financial impact of shuttered manufacturing plants, and local restaurants, retailers, etc, not having to close their doors too because there are still employed autoworkers that can spend money.

I don't have any idea what that number would be, but it is a better indicator of whether the bailout was a good idea than the flat number Geithner will give us.

"In terms of government investments, this is actually a pretty successful example. What's the ROI for the billion dollar carriers and subs we pay for that are designed to win a standoff with the USSR?"

wow 1487 you just won the prize for most lost commenter of the month. Since when do we expect defense spending to produce a yield in dollars and cents (besides oil treaties)? Try calculating your safety in terms of dollars? Sure I'd like to spend less on defense, maybe keep out of other nations and deal with just our own issues, but you picked the wrong example.

good point emajor, the real cost is much more complicated than simply looking at unrepaid bailout dollars. .

Inlinesix:

LOL, I hope you aren't being serious. The defense budget is the biggest form of corporate welfare in the history of the world. Every year many billions are spent on obsolete weapons/programs that have nothing to do with keeping us safe from an invasion of angry Canadians. And you are right, there is no ROI, money just goes in and no one expects any results. New weapons systems tend to be some of the most over budget and late programs the government funds. Defense contractors over promise, under deliver and then come back and get more money to correct the problems they created in the first place.

1487:

Listen up. Bailing out executives that were having a major problem with running their own companies is not comparable to spending money on advances in national defense. We should be able to hold business managers accountable for wasteful spending in both industries but if you dont make any investments in weaponry you're behind the other guy. You suggest its wasted spending on old, outdated equipment, but you obviously don't know. The old equipment in 1950's ships is beyond your comprehension. Talk about "old" weapons on ships made in 2005 or later... you're lost.

How many billions are lost in pharmaceutical research? What kind of market is there for funding missiles? What do you expect private weaponry engineers to do...sell weapons to you and me to get funding for further development? Where is the revenue going to come from? If the government wants advanced weaponry they HAVE to spend some money and if a lot is lost in development its not unlike any other research-based industry.

Stick to backing up car companies because education in defense weaponry is not your area.

Bailed-out Chrysler and GM washed away billions in debt during bankruptcy, but Ford is honoring its obligations and making more money, and arguably has the best lineup in Detroit.
The United States is the worlds only Super Power, what's that worth to you?

Imagine an alternate bailout where the federal government bypassed both the car companies and the UAW and simply made GM and Chrysler retirees into federal government retirees with the benefit package government workers of that pay grade. The government would stay within it's core competence in direct income redistribution, the car companies would build cars without the overhead of retired workers or interference from the government, and the UAW would focus on current workers. Not sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if giving billions of dollars directly to the retired worker is more efficient than passing the money through GM, Chrysler, and the UAW.

defense contracts are handed out based on how many jobs they generate in a particular district. Don't attempt to lecture me about how defense works and how it's funded. It is a boondoggle that no one can control because no congressman is going to allow cuts that would put people in his district out of work. Congress funds weapons programs that the Pentagon doesn't even ask for simply to protect jobs. Its nothing but corporate welfare. The days of massive sea battles or huge squadrons of planes battling in the skies is OVER. Russia is a shell of its former self and China is more concerned with economic superiority than anything else. Much of what the military budget pays for is simply to create and sustain jobs and nothing more. When you spend billions to update or replace equipment that is already unrivaled in the world you are wasting money. The amount of money that may be lost on the auto bailout is a fraction of what's wasted in the defense budget each and every year.

Defense contractors are infamous for cost overruns and poor final products that need years and billions of additional dollars to meet operational specs. They fail and yet get more and more work each year. Read up on the Osprey for an example, its been mired in problems for decades and yet the military is still committed to using it. Since they are so few players in the defense industry there is no reason to worry about accountability- each firm knows they are guaranteed work.

1487: China is still very concerned with it's military might. They are currently trying to develop stealth fighters to combat the F-22 and F-35's, and they are definitely working on their submarine and naval forces as well. The reason you don't see massive sea battles or huge squadrons of planes is because of our big military. All that defense spending is letting us fight our battles from a distance and only target a few individuals or targets with pinpoint precision. Could we have ended the war in Afghanistan with sheer force? No sweat. Our investment is paying off in the lives of the hundreds of thousands of innocent people that aren't being killed in collatoral damage. And that help we're providing in Africa, yeah, those misilles came from our outdated submarines. Now sure they are expensive, but it's nice to know that we acieved our objectives without losing any of our sailors or soldiers. How much are their lives worth to you?

"Bailed-out Chrysler and GM washed away billions in debt during bankruptcy,"

Thats how bankruptcy works and for the record several prominent GOP pols were clamoring for them to go bankrupt to solve their problems long before Obama steered them in that direction. The BR code wasn't invented just to save GM/Chrysler, numerous largre corporations have done the same thing and survived.

@csu:

Nothing you said justifies the current level of military spending. The nature of weaponry has changes drastically over the decades and thus its possible to damage specific targets in ways that weren't imaginable in the past. There is still no need for a massive military full of tanks (who uses tanks anymore?), ships and planes in the 21st century. What you are repeating to me is standard issue propaganda used by politicians and Pentagon employees. They are scare tactics to prevent anyone from looking under the skirt of the Pentagon- its utter nonsene. The defense industry allocates money based on lobbying and promises of jobs to various parts of the country. What the military needs is only part of the equation and Gates himself has chided congress for spending money on things the military doesn't even need. What China spends on the military is a fraction of what we spend and they are still far behind according to US military experts. No other country comes close to dedicating a similar portion of their spending to the military. The US has about 700 military installations around the world- many of them are in former cold war allied territory and totally uneccessary. The pentagon is in the business of self-justification- they dont want their empire to shrink.

@1487

Give it up already. Write your congressman about spending less on the military..comparing it to stupid executive auto makers makes you look like a dumbass.

""BB....The bailouts were proposed and started under Bush. Lets not have partisan amnesia."

Give that man a prize.

Both of you dont realize that just because I am smarter than 1487 and did not vote for "Dear Leader obama" that I think that everything Bush did was the right thing. Only the dumbasses in both parties echo their parties talking points at every turn like overbrook does.

"What you are repeating to me is standard issue propaganda used by politicians and Pentagon employees. They are scare tactics to prevent anyone from looking under the skirt of the Pentagon- its utter nonsene"

Yep, scare tactics....just like Churchill in the UK and Roosevelt were accused of in the 30s by the idiots that said that being strong would just make Hitler mad and he would attack them if they were strong. Only a complete liberal HACK would think like you do, 1487. You are an incredible fool and frankly I dont understand how you can even tie your shoes. A strong defense keeps us safe. Our Aircraft carriers keep the worlds oceans safe for world commerce (something we took over from the British)...what do you think would be going on in the Persian Gulf if not for US making sure the oil gets to Japan AND China and America.....do you think the economy would be even as good as it is? Have your read about the increasing amounts the Chinese and Russian Republic are spending on defense....do you know that Pakistan and India are spending more to increase their nuclear programs? Do you know that Iran is a heartbeat from have a Nuke? Shut up and go home to your Regal. You should really not talk at all.....you look like the dumb hack you really are.