{"id":4871,"date":"2009-06-02T06:13:56","date_gmt":"2009-06-02T11:13:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4871"},"modified":"2009-06-02T06:13:56","modified_gmt":"2009-06-02T11:13:56","slug":"not-your-fathers-bankruptcy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4871","title":{"rendered":"Not Your Father’s Bankruptcy"},"content":{"rendered":"

GM should have been allowed to go bankrupt months if not years ago, and without the “help” of Congress or the Obama administration. Now that it has finally come, an analysis of the distribution of the spoils reveals both method and motive.<\/p>\n

GM’s bankruptcy pushes bondholders<\/a> aside in favor of the U.S. government and the UAW. Though bondholders hold $27 billion in debt, they’ll get just 10% of stock.<\/p>\n

How’s that compare with the other “stakeholders?” For spending $50 billion to bail out GM, the government will get 60% of the equity in the new GM; the UAW, which along with other unions gave millions to Democrats, will be repaid for its loyalty with 17.5% of the stock for $10 billion of unsecured debts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Not unlike our nation’s financial crisis, those that caused the crisis employ more of the same and escape with the plunder.<\/p>\n

They call it “restructuring.” We call it theft. Never in our memory has there been a more thorough, systematic effort to disenfranchise the shareholders and bondholders of a major American firm.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Has this happened before? Yes – well, almost. But these are different times – and a different judicial climate.<\/p>\n

\n

…in 1952, when President Harry S. Truman tried to seize control of the U.S. steel industry during a debilitating strike, the Supreme Court made him back down. And Truman had a real emergency on his hands: the Korean War.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

By what authority is the Obama administration orchestrating this expedited bankruptcy and government takeover of a global corporate enterprise?<\/p>\n

We pored over Article II of the Constitution, known as the Executive Powers Clause. Nowhere is the White House granted the right to override the time-tested bankruptcy process, to use Treasury money raised by taxing Americans to buy or bail out companies, to fire CEOs, to micromanage corporate policy, or to abrogate lawful contracts made by private parties.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Arrogance and incompetence have taken the place of justice and precedent. Where’s the outrage now?<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

GM should have been allowed to go bankrupt months if not years ago, and without the “help” of Congress or the Obama administration. Now that it has finally come, an analysis of the distribution of the spoils reveals both method and motive. GM’s bankruptcy pushes bondholders aside in favor of the U.S. government and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":228,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,64,69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy-and-the-market","category-president-obama","category-socialism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/228"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4871\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}