Obama’s A123 Investment Of Taxpayer Money Goes Chinese -- Will Washington Learn It Can't Mandate A Market?
The link below is an editorial written by the former vice-chairman of GM, Bob Lutz. Although it has been years, I have written extensively about the auto industry including their coming bankruptcy and resurgence. I understand this industry quite well. It is, at its core, an engineering business. I worked for GM for a short stint early in my life and have worked with segments of the auto industry over the years in a professional capacity. If I were to start a car company, I would want Bob Lutz on the payroll.
I’ve highlighted the company A123 on here a few times. First, when Obama committed American taxpayer dollars to the firm and I remarked how horrible that investment was; an accurate remark that has now proven to be more true than I would have imagined at the time. And, I noted that the finances were completely upside down and the ROI would never materialize. In fact, the finances behind Obama’s investment were so horrible that it would have been a better use of taxpayer money to go to Las Vegas and put $250 million on the roulette table.
Mitt Romney has a Harvard education. Jamie Dimon has a Harvard education. Barack Obama has a Harvard education. I think we can appreciate Harvard’s reputation appears to be as much about cronyism as it is about actually learning anything useful. Or as Einstein said, “The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.”. I can make the statement quite confidently that the main benefit to getting a Harvard education is the unparalleled alumni network that the school cultivates. In other words, it cultivated the largest cronyism network I am aware of in our nation. That is why you go to Harvard. For the connections you will make that nearly guarantees your success. There’s nothing really unique about a teaching institution that has qualified faculty. The Harvard mystique is built upon cronyism. It’s a club and you’re not in it. Don’t worry. The higher education bubble is going to pop. It’s driven by corporations seeking obedient drones now that they dominate our economy. Even though Obama, as part of that club, tells us we all need to go to college to become obedient drones if we want a living wage or want to create our own economic opportunity.
None of these men are stupid per se. But their actions indicate they most assuredly have little, if any unique qualifications to be granted such great authority in a nation of democracy or equality. They are just people. And, this is a reminder why no person should be given as much authority as these men have granted themselves or that capitalism has granted them in our economy or our lives. The type of authority they have granted themselves was taken from the rest of us. Just like in the Soviet Union. It is a form of control that subverts our own journeys in life. Empowering the lives of our citizens should be the mantra of a free nation. Not an endless stream of Harvard-educated bureaucrats who are going to impress us with their brilliance by telling the rest of us how to lead our lives. Social decisions that affect all of us should be decided by democracy, reason, science and law. Not men.
Obama had no experience in science or business so what is he doing handing out so much of taxpayer money to a science business? Is that a society based on reason? A politician with no experience making decisions about our economy? It’s utter nonsense. The end result? Now China swoops in and when Obama’s investment decision is collapsing, they buy A123 for pennies on the dollar. They buy a taxpayer-funded business for almost nothing and essentially steal taxpayer-funded technology. What’s new? This type of neoliberalism has defined our economy for decades courtesy of the dumbed-down corporate state.
While Obama has no experience in business or science, he does have a very substantial arrogance to spend trillions of dollars of our money the way he thinks it should be spent rather than asking the American people or even giving the American people back their money so they can spend it on what they need to survive in this Orwellian fascist state. Is Obama’s investment in the corrupt corporate-driven healthcare bill really any different than A123? Especially when we already have a working single-payer healthcare system that, while not perfect and in need of tuning, works.
Is democracy granting politicians a blank check on how to spend our money? I thought democracy was self-rule. That doesn’t mean electing a political bureaucrat or political party and then letting them run amok over our lives and our nation. Romney is running an ad where Obama clearly states that his plan would cut the deficit in half in his first four years. That statement was made in 2009. Instead, four years later, he is $10 trillion off that mark; instead of $5 trillion in debt we have $15 trillion. Were that any of us out here in the land of neoliberal economics, where it’s dog eat dog, we would not only be fired for that performance, but we’d be the focus of endless lawsuits and possibly worse. And, we would be labeled as unqualified to even drive a taxi. That is, unless this happened to someone part of the Harvard network or the crony club of the top 1% who is systemically incompetent and pays themselves royally for that incompetence. Is his financial performance any different than that witnessed with the collapse of Wall Street? Seriously? Is his performance any different than Lloyd Blankfein or Dick Fuld. The debt he has built up, which by the way is the only thing keeping our entire financial system and economy from imploding because of endless political meddling and corruption, especially from Reagan on, is about $70,000 per worker in this nation. 85% of Americans don’t even have $70,000. Do you honestly think we are ever going to pay that money back? Or inflate that money away? Or have a massive debt deflation where all of this debt comes tumbling down? We are going to monetize that debt or default on it. If it’s a default, it’s a premeditated act of belligerence. And, that is one of our long term theses on here. 2013 remains my anticipated date for such an event.
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