INTEGRITY

I’d like to offer some thoughts on integrity. Have you seen the General Motors commercial where their Chairman Ed Whitacre walks toward the camera on the assembly line and proclaims that GM has repaid their government bailout loan?

He says they paid it back with interest and five years ahead of schedule.

What he says is true, to an extent. But a press release from GM says the payback was possible because more people are buying GM cars and trucks.

Whoops! Nor true! We are in the spin zone here.

Neil Barofsky, the government’s top watchdog who oversees the bailouts of GM, the banks and of Chrysler recently testified to a congressional committee that the $4.7 billion used to repay the loan did not come from operating earnings, but from taxpayers.

It was in the form of a special escrow account set up to hold taxpayer bailout funds in case GM needed them for extraordinary reasons. Seems like a fiscal shell game to me. Put the 4.7 billion dollar pea under a shell, move it quickly around, lift it up and lo and behold GM paid back their bailout money with bailout money.

I guess Whitacre forgot to mention that in his commercial.

Also not mentioned in the commercial was that the bailout leaves Uncle San (taxpayers) with nearly $50-billion invested in the car company. The taxpayer might get some of that back when GM issues new stock perhaps later this year. Maybe!

We the people need to reeducate ourselves in the discernment of commercial and political speak. Do not believe everything you see and hear. Check it out! The recipients of bailout money and all of congress should be made to memorize the meaning of INTEGRITY.