What Romney Wants You (and Ohio) to Forget About the GM Rescue (Jonathan Cohn)

[swag]

http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/109008/romney-obama-debate-auto-detroit-bailout-gm-chrysler-taxpayer-government-loans

. . .

Did Romney support Obama’s decision? Did he support putting taxpayer dollars on the line? You can’t really tell from the Times column. In it, Romney wrote of providing “government guarantees,” but that’s not the same thing as government loaning the money directly. You have to look to later statements for clarification. When Obama first made his decision, Romney implied that he supported the rescue plan. But later, as he began seeking the Republican presidential nomination, he became more critical of it—referring to it repeatedly as a “bailout” and criticizing the use of taxpayer dollars. One of the clearest statements on this specific issue came in late 2011, during a CNBC debate of Republican presidential contenders:

My view with regards to the bailout was that whether it was by President Bush or by President Obama, it was the wrong way to go. I said from the very beginning they should go through a managed bankruptcy process, a private bankruptcy process. We have capital markets and bankruptcy... My plan, we would have had a private sector bailout with the private sector restructuring and bankruptcy with the private sector guiding the direction as opposed to what we had with government playing its heavy hand.

Later in Republican primaries, when Romney was more concerned about winning support in Michigan and less concerned with alienating conservatives, he changed his tone again. In particular, he began emphasizing, as he did on Monday evening, that he hoped the companies would survive and reorganize.

The most generous interpretation of these and other statements is that Romney has been inconsistent and politically craven. The least generous? That he was against using government money to save GM and Chrysler, a decision by Obama that saved many hundreds of thousands, and maybe more than a million.

[patrice]

1. And what was the availability of that kind of private money at the time??? Either little or none ...

OR - Romney's heavy player-buddies in the 1% could just agree, off the record, that the credit is not available, so they could liquidate strategic holdings as the shit storm THEY created overwhelmed their houses of cards.

[notadmblnd]

2. He also wants us to forget that at the time, there were no private investors willing to help.

[modrepub]

3. Privatizing the Profits

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the government guaranteeing the loan putting the US government on the hook if the loan goes bad but allowing the creditor to keep any profits if the loan is actually paid off? Sorry, if I'm cynical here but if the government is on the hook for a default shouldn't we get a share of the profit if the loan is paid off?!? What kind of crappy businessman suggests we (the government) take on all the losses without a chance to turn a profit?

[Blue Meany]

4. He wanted them to go bankrupt so that they could get out of their pension obligations and

union contracts. Tax-payers would still have to bail them out for the pension obligations, but they wouldn't have been paid back. And there would have been lower wages for the remaining workers. That's the Romney way.

The way Obama did it, the money was paid back and the workers are in better shape. Romney doesn't like that.