On December 20, 2012, Jim Puzznghera and Jerry Hirsch write in the Los Angeles Times that the U.S. Treasury plans to sell its remaining 500 million shares back to General Motors for $5.5 billion. And Treasury officials said Tuesday that they planned to sell the government’s stake in about two-thirds of the 218 mostly small banks that still have not repaid their bailout money. The banks owe a combined $8 billion.
This is a shame that President Obama is not leading with the approach to sell the United States government holdings in GM and banks to its employees via an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP)! President Obama indirectly with this move is supporting the further concentration of ownership of productive capital assets rather than leading our society to become an OWNERSHIP CULTURE, whereby EVERY child, woman, and man builds toward owning a viable income-inproducing capital estate, resulting in less dependence on taxpayer-supported government welfare, open and concealed. It was taxpayer money that was used to “bail-out” and save General Motors. The people should get a better deal!
At the same time GM is investing heavily in China.
In a YouTube video report published by vincewadeusa1 Vince Wade raises serious issues.
“General Motors is becoming China Motors. Forget the spin. The evidence is clear and convincing. Did U.S. taxpayers save GM for China? Listen to the candid comments of GM’s CEO.”
Why don’t our leaders insist on America FIRST policies and programs that broaden private, individual ownership of productive capital assets , such as GM, instead of opening the door to ownership opportunities in U.S. companies by state-owned Chinese interests (SAIC and FAW)? This should have been a stipulation by the Obama Administration and ALL future administrations.
General Motors has been shrinking its U.S. operations while aggressively expanding and investing in the Peoples Republic of China. The shit to China investment includes research and development (R&D) and automotive design––the heart and soul of a car company. Since the American taxpayer bailout, seven out of 10 GM vehicles (70 percent of total production) is being out-sourced (made outside the United States). GM is engaged in 11 joint ventures with Chinese government-owned companies involving vehicle manufacturing, sales, distribution, and engineering design. GM operates 11 assembly plants in China, four power train plants in eight cities across China, and more than 2,700 dealerships and sales outlets throughout China. According to GM CEO Dan Akerson:
“We regard our 11 joint ventures as 11 keys to success, not just in China but globally. Our commitment to working in China, with China, for China remains strong and focused on the future. We are now building out the advanced technology center, which will diversify our research and development that is centered largely in the United States more into China because we think this market is so critically important to the success of our company. GM is a company well established for the future of China. We continue to invest heavily in China to ensure our long-term success.”
This raises the serious question of “Will American GM vehicles be built in China but assembled in the U.S.?
While the U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Industry and Security has documented (1999) how communist China has played and manipulated U.S. business corporations and detailed how the Chinese extort U.S. technology and industrial knowhow from American manufacturers with a vague promise of big profits that are to be made from China’s 1.3 billion people. This translates to a transfer of American state-of-the-art technology.
What also is troubling is that Chinese “State-owned” corporations of the communist government of China are buying key segments, such as energy resources and industrial plants, of the U.S. economy. The former General Motors’ Nexteer plant in Saginaw, Michigan is one of China’s important acquisitions. Yet who are the leaders questioning this?
What we are experiencing is the spread of plutocracy. Everyone who views this video and/or chooses to debate the GM bailout should look up the word plutocracy. That’s what we live in. That’s why things won’t change until we, the people, demand real change from both parties. For the dictionary-challenged, a plutocracy is a government run by and for the wealthy class.
President Obama argued in his State of the Union address that there were a few things the U.S. needed to do in order to recover from the economic recession. One of them was to export more of our goods around the world.
“The more products we make and sell to other countries, the more jobs we support right here in America,” Obama said.
That night, the president unveiled a new goal: to double U.S. exports over the next five years. It would be an increase that the president said would “support two million jobs in America.”
While reportedly American exports are up 34 percent since the president gave that speech, and the number continues to rise, the GM actions are the reverse.
Another short-term action, to reinvigorate “Make It In America” and “Made In America,” is the government should create financial incentives and tax provisions to reward American companies that bring manufacturing back to the United States from abroad, promote manufacturing investment, and incentivize more investment by foreign companies, all with the condition that the employees will share in the ownership benefits generated by the new capital formation projects. The result will be more broadened employee ownership and in-sourcing of jobs created by the new capital formation projects, and make America self-reliant. This should have been the condition upon which GM receive American tax-payer bailout support.
The government should impose robust import levies and tariffs (tax) on particular classes of imports that are determined to be manufactured outside the United States and exported back to the United States that do not qualify as “Fair Trade” and unfairly undercut an American-make equivalent. At present, American business corporations are increasingly abandoning the United States and its communities to invest in productive capital formation outside the United States, particularly in China, Mexico, India, and other parts of Asia. General Motors is a major American business corporation instigating this trend. As a result, America is experiencing the deindustrialization of America.
This is forcing policy makers to adopt a redistributive socialist solution rather than a democratic capitalist one whereby democratic economic growth of the earning power of the citizens would flourish simultaneously with new, broadly-owned productive capital formation investments in United States business corporations. Such overseas operations have the advantage of “sweat-shop” slave labor rates relative to American standards, low or no taxation, supportive infrastructure provisions, currency manipulation, and few if any environmental regulations––which translate to lower-cost production, as well as country state-owned venture investment benefiting those in power. Thus, producing the same product or service in the United States would be far more expensive.
For most people, economic globalization means a growing gap between rich and poor, technological alienation of the labor worker from the means of production, and the phenomenon of global corporations and strategic alliances forcing labor workers in high-cost wage markets, such as the United States, to compete with labor-saving capital tools and lower-paid foreign workers. Unemployment is high and there is an accelerating displacement of labor workers by technology and cheaper foreign labor, resulting in greater economic uncertainty and unstable retirement incomes for the average American citizen––causing the average citizen to become increasingly dependent on government wealth redistribution programs.
We need a policy change, which assures truly “Fair Trade” and that exponentially reduces the exodus of our manufacturing prowess and invigorates America’s entrepreneurial exceptionalism and competitive spirit to create products and services in the spirit of “the best that they can be.” We need policies that will de-incentivize American multinational corporations and others from undercutting “American Made,” while simultaneously competitively lowering the cost of production through expanded capital worker ownership in our business corporations. At present, the various incentives in place do not broaden capital ownership but instead further concentrate ownership––supported by American taxpayers. This is unjust and plain WRONG!!
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-tarp-gm-shares-20121220,0,774892.story
