I was tempted to just ignore the newest massive waste of your and my hard-earned money. The U.S. government—beginning in the last three months of the George W. Bush (R) presidency and continuing apace under Barack Obama (D)—seems intent on throwing our dollars down the crapper into countless failed banks, manufacturing, and insurance firms in the face of broad, vocal public opposition. It is obvious that the government will continue to engage in these shenanigans until we throw the perpetrators—Republican and Democrat alike—out of office. The next Congressional election is just over 10 months away.
Regardless, I will at least mention that the federal government—which has already ‘invested’ well over $12.5 billion in failed lender GMAC—has just dumped another $3.8 billion into the company and is now its majority owner. I’m still trying to find the clause in the U.S. Constitution that authorizes federal ownership of banks, car companies, insurance companies, etc. Maybe it’s penciled into the margins (in Bush’s handwriting) on the copy down at the National Archives, right above where Obama penciled in a new federal authority to operate our health care system.
For those who aren’t familiar with GMAC, it was founded as General Motors Acceptance Corporation—a wholly-owned subsidiary of the now federally-owned General Motors (GM) car company. It also owns home lender Ditech.com, which you may remember from their annoying ads that graced our televisions for most of the last decade. In 2006 GM sold much of its interest in GMAC, and the company eventually ended up being majority-owned by Cerberus Capital Management. Cerberus was also the majority owner of Chrysler, which also got tons of your money to keep it afloat and then got sold off to Italian automaker Fiat.
As you might expect, the government has been silent on how it expects to recoup any of that $16,300,000,000.00+ you have unwillingly invested into a company that seems incapable of maintaining its solvency.