Clearly, there is something wrong with the motor and finance industries of the world (a.k.a America for this article, because when America sneezes, the world catches a cold).

• We are all acutely aware how their problems affect us.
• We believe that we live in healthy democracies where we vote for the people and systems that we think will best look after our interests.
• We believe that everyone has certain inate freedoms and rights.
• We believe that there is no such thing as the god-given right of royalty.
• We believe that our system has inbuilt controls to eliminate sycophancy, nepotism and corruption.
• We believe that corrupt people and practices will be stopped and punished because of the laws we instigate through our democracy.
• We believe that there are rules to adhere to and rules to be broken.
• We believe, that in spelling, it’s “i before e, except after c” - and it’s always correct…

The last one is interesting.  Interesting that it’s a rule that every (English) child learns at school, and yet, when spelling, we find it’s not really a rule and struggles to be correct for only half the time..

WEIRD eh?  :-?

And so it is with all the other possible “beliefs” I’ve listed.

Without much digging, it’s possible to find out the following.  I leave it to you to determine the levels of nepotism, sycophancy or plain corruption that exist.  Whatever your view, it’s the ordinary person who is paying for these actions when all they did was vote, in good faith, for people and systems that would best represent their interests.

• General Motors (GM), Daimler-Chrysler (Chrysler) and Ford make cars and are going bust fast.
• Cerberus, a Hedge Company, owns Chrysler (51%) and the joint finance company, GMAC that Chrysler owns with GM through which customers are encouraged to purchase their cars.
• John W Snow, former US Treasury Secretary, is chairman of Cerberus.
• Dan Quayle, former US VP is chairman of Cerberus’ International Division.
• Cerberus takes $100 billion per annum according to it’s company website, and is a private company operating trans-nationally with limited liability.
• The US treasury is giving GMAC  $6billion.
• The US treasury has already said it’s giving $17.4billion to GM and Chrysler (not Ford)
• As part of this, the bonuses (for failure) that the car executives will receive has been cut by 40% – i.e. Wagoner’s bonus will be only ~$8million instead of ~$13million!
• The prime mover behind the “rescue packages” is Henry Paulson, US Treasury Secretary.
• Paulson’s previous job was as CEO of Goldmann Sachs.  Current Golmann Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein took home $54million while his company was bailed out with $10billion in US taxpayer money.
• It can be argued that Goldmann Sach’s initial actions of hedging up sub-prime mortgage markets and then gambling on their failure precipitated the “credit crunch”.  All the short-term gains on which bonuses were earned were wiped out by the black-hole-like gravitational collapse of the money markets.
• The bailout total is $700billion, seemingly picked at random by Paulson while having a shit or something (the original proposal was only 3 pages long !!!  :-? ), and then rounded to a nice easily rememberable number.
• So far, from the $700billion bailout, $1.6billion has been frittered on bonuses for failure for greedy executives.  This “trivial” amount looks much more significant when you realise that only 600 people or so, actually get to share the $1,600,000,000.
• All these events happened under George W Bush’s “watch”, as he’s stumblingly fond of telling us.
• All appointents to “public office” were by George W Bush.

My personal opinion on all this is that the phrase “public service” needs re-defining.  Like “military intelligence”, it’s two words that should belong together, but observation and experience demonstrate that this is not so.  The ease with which these people above flit from “public service” to “private venture” beggars belief.  Now consider:

Nepotism? Sycophancy? Corruption?

Postscript

This blogger has picked up on the massive links between the actual car makers as well.  This has been going on for some time as a way to spread development and assembly costs for many, basically identical parts.

But in light of the credit crunch & bailout, and the business links I’ve detailed above, this manufacturing cosiness looks really suspect now, don’t you think?

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