GM Paid Back Their Loan With Your Money

Not the money you may have given them by buying one of their cars, but the money you gave the government in taxes:

General Motors chairman Ed Whitacre made news last week with a series of national television advertising spots in which he claimed the company has repaid its government bailout loans in full, ahead of schedule and with interest.

Unfortunately, according to Neil Barofsky, the Inspector-General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) under which the federal loans were made to GM, the repayments cited by Whitacre were simply made with other tax dollars made available to the automaker in its bailout deal with the government.

So in effect GM was repaying one government loan with another government loan.

Now Whitacre is not a dumb guy, nor are there any ethics scandals in his previous record as a very successful CEO at AT&T. He was even the national head of the Boy Scouts of America, so why all of a sudden is he making a transparently false statement in a GM TV spot?

A lot of people smelled a rat as soon as the GM announcement was made, and some suspect the Obama administration made GM an offer they couldn't refuse. Tell people you paid your bills and we won't take your company apart.

Several GOP representatives are now hot after this matter.  It may take the GOP regaining  control of the House before a thorough investigation can be done.