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The no-strings-attached auto bailout used taxpayer $ to enrich hedgefund billionaires & auto exec
Accounting for recouped funds, the auto bailout cost taxpayers more than $9 billion. In 2013, an auto industry-linked think tank projected that the government’s move to bail out car manufacturers did rescue up to 2.6 million jobs. Many of those jobs, however, do not pay as well as they once did. A report by the National Employment Law Project concluded that “new jobs created in the auto sector are worse than the ones we lost.” At auto-parts maker Delphi, which also received bailout funds, 20,000 non-union retirees saw pension cuts.
Those cuts contrast with the giant profits made by billionaire hedge fund managers who turned the Delphi bailout into a lucrative investment strategy. After taxpayer cash and pension cuts helped stabilize the company, hedge funds that had obtained equity in the company at a reduced price hit the jackpot when the firm went public. Bloomberg News later reported that the Obama administration authorized the bailout of Delphi even as the company engaged in so-called “inversion,” shifting its headquarters to Britain and reducing its American tax bill by up to $110 million annually.
Meanwhile, as workers’ wages were cut, executives at one of the bailed-out firms continued reaping huge compensation packages. In 2011 — just a few years after the bailout — GM’s CEO was paid $7.7 million, and another four company executives were each paid a combined total of more than $22 million, according to USA Today. Three years later, the government’s inspector general overseeing bailout money released a report finding that federal regulators “significantly loosened executive pay limits, resulting in excessive pay” at GM and its affiliated lender, Ally, even though “the companies were not repaying TARP in full and taxpayers were suffering billions of dollars in losses.”
Those cuts contrast with the giant profits made by billionaire hedge fund managers who turned the Delphi bailout into a lucrative investment strategy. After taxpayer cash and pension cuts helped stabilize the company, hedge funds that had obtained equity in the company at a reduced price hit the jackpot when the firm went public. Bloomberg News later reported that the Obama administration authorized the bailout of Delphi even as the company engaged in so-called “inversion,” shifting its headquarters to Britain and reducing its American tax bill by up to $110 million annually.
Meanwhile, as workers’ wages were cut, executives at one of the bailed-out firms continued reaping huge compensation packages. In 2011 — just a few years after the bailout — GM’s CEO was paid $7.7 million, and another four company executives were each paid a combined total of more than $22 million, according to USA Today. Three years later, the government’s inspector general overseeing bailout money released a report finding that federal regulators “significantly loosened executive pay limits, resulting in excessive pay” at GM and its affiliated lender, Ally, even though “the companies were not repaying TARP in full and taxpayers were suffering billions of dollars in losses.”
Full article: http://www.ibtimes.com/political-capital/election-2016-hillary-clinton-says-her-vote-wall-street-bailout-shows-her-support
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