Well... Well... Well... Looky What I Just Found!

Remember my blog thread post of the other day regarding GM supposedly "paying back" the money it owed the federal government - i.e. "We The Taxpayers"?

Well... looky what I just found!

From: Senator Charles E. Grassley... Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Finance

To: Secretary of the Treasury Timothy F. Geithner... Tax Cheat

Dear Secretary Geithner:

General Motors (GM) yesterday announced that it repaid its TARP loans. I am concerned, however, that this announcement is not what it seems. In fact, it appears to be nothing more than an elaborate TARP money shuffle.

On Tuesday of this week, Mr. Neil Barofsky, the Special Inspector General for TARP, testified before the Senate Finance Committee. During his testimony Mr. Barofsky addressed GM’s recent debt repayment activity, and stated that the funds GM is using to repay its TARP debt are not coming from GM earnings. Instead, GM seems to be using TARP funds from an escrow account at Treasury to make the debt repayments.

The most recent quarterly report from the Office of the Special Inspector General for TARP says “The source of funds for these quarterly [debt] payments will be other TARP funds currently held in an escrow account.”

Folks... did I nail it or what...?!?!

Folks... where's the mainstream media on this one...???

Continuing to excerpt from Senator Grassley's official inquiry...

Therefore, it is unclear how GM and the Administration could have accurately announced yesterday that GM repaid its TARP loans in any meaningful way. In reality, it looks like GM merely used one source of TARP funds to repay another. The taxpayers are still on the hook, and whether TARP funds are ultimately recovered depends entirely on the government’s ability to sell GM stock in the future. Treasury has merely exchanged a legal right to repayment for an uncertain hope of sharing in the future growth of GM. A debt-for-equity swap is not a repayment.

Again, folks... ask yourselves... why is it you're reading of this here - on Bill Barker's blog that on a good day reaches two or three people perhaps - rather than reading about it in your local newspapers or hearing from network news anchors...???

I am also troubled by the timing of this latest maneuver. According to Mr. Barofsky, Treasury had supervisory authority over GM’s use of these TARP escrow funds. Since GM’s exit from bankruptcy court, Treasury had approved the use of the escrow funds for costs such as GM’s obligations to its parts supplier Delphi. According to the GM 8K, GM had planned to use the TARP funds in escrow to pay back the TARP loans on a quarterly basis beginning in the fourth quarter of 2009. But following the April 20, 2010, hearing of the Senate Finance Committee, where Treasury’s decision to exempt GM from the bank TARP excise tax was questioned and GM’s refusal to testify was noted, it is odd that GM suddenly drew down on the TARP escrow and accelerated the repayment of the remaining balance of GM’s outstanding TARP loans.

(*SNORT*)

In other words, folks... yeah... in plain English Grassley is pointing to what certainly appears... er... collusion between Geithner's Treasury and GM's management in a joint attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of the American taxpayers as well as market investors.

(*SHRUG*)

The bottom line seems to be that the TARP loans were “repaid” with other TARP funds in a Treasury escrow account. The TARP loans were not repaid from money GM is earning selling cars, as GM and the Administration have claimed in their speeches, press releases and television commercials.

When these criticisms were put to GM’s Vice Chairman Stephen Girsky in a television interview yesterday, he admitted that the criticisms were valid...Mr. Girsky then said that GM originally planned to pay the loan over the next five years. So the question is why - other than a desire to justify excluding GM from the administration’s TARP tax proposal - would Treasury and GM reduce GM’s TARP debt with TARP equity and then mischaracterize it as a repayment from earnings?

Rhetorical question... but one which goes straight to the point: Obama, Geithner, the Dems, their crony capitalist allies, and their friends in the mainstream media sure do seem to be deliberately engaging in an attempt to fool the public regarding this supposed "repayment" of TARP funds by "Government" (aka: General) Motors.

Folks... this ain't a movie... it's not a screenplay or novel... what I'm posting here is from official correspondence between the Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance and our nation's tax cheat Secretary of the Treasury.

Wake up America...!!!