Cerberus

Jun 3, 2007

If the sale of Chrysler to Cerberus goes through, it will add to Cerberus’ growing portfolio in auto companies. It already owns several auto parts companies, including Tower Automotive and Peguform in Germany. On top of that Cerberus has a 51% stake in GM’s huge financing arm, GMAC.

Cerberus also owns a lot of other companies. Among them are Mervyn’s Department stores, Albertson’s supermarkets, several rent-a-car companies, Aegis Mortgage, and important stakes in big banks in Japan, Austria and Israel, which help provide Cerberus with ready supplies of capital to buy even more companies.

Cerberus is also a completely private company. So as opposed to companies like GM or Ford, it doesn’t even have to issue faked-up reports to stockholders, and no federal or state agency pretends to regulate it. So it operates under even greater secrecy than those other companies do.

Of course, Cerberus claims that this allows it to invest for the long term without interference from “troublesome” stockholders. But in fact, it also opens up more possibilities to loot what the workers produce for wealthy private investors under the cover of secrecy.

Among those wealthy investors happen to be former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who bought into Cerberus early on and former Vice-president Dan Quayle, who was put in charge of the company’s foreign operations–former political figures not exactly known for their honesty.

Cerberus doesn’t actually produce anything. Nor does it provide any services. In fact, Cerberus exists for only one purpose: to buy and sell. In other words, Cerberus is a financial company which does nothing but suck ever more wealth from what the workers produce in other companies, for the benefit of a handful of very, very wealthy people.