Workers Didn’t Wreck GM—Execs and Bankers Did!

Apr 6, 2009

Don’t try to tell us GM didn’t make money producing cars. The money was stolen by all those parasites who live off the productive economy.

Just look at a few examples.

For 8 years, from 2000 through 2007, GM was shifting profits out of production over to its finance unit, GMAC. While claiming to lose 14.4 billion dollars on production, it pretended it made 21.6 billion on its finance operations.

In fact, it was draining profit out of production in order to speculate, buying up more than 20 mortgage companies during those years. Its bankers–Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch, which all had representatives on GM’s board of directors–pushed GMAC to grind out sub-prime mortgages. Those same bankers specialized in spewing out all those mortgage-backed securities, the so-called “toxic assets” that finally brought down the financial markets.

Where did GM get the money to buy or enlarge its holdings in Daewoo, Isuzu, Suzuki, Subaru and Saab? It borrowed it, of course, enlarging its debt load, eventually crushing itself under ballooning interest payments.

And when GM started losing money, how did it keep paying out bonuses–220 million dollars to just five top five executives–in seven years, not counting the hundreds of millions more to the lesser execs? How did it pay out 8.2 billion dollars in dividends to big investors? It borrowed more money, running up even bigger debts.

GM may have big debts, but it also has big money. If not, what did it put into all those offshore banks–blowfish? GM has subsidiaries in eleven tax havens like the Cayman Islands–where they don’t make cars, but certainly can hide money.

Now, the same thieves that wrecked GM are pushing to tear down the workers’ standard of living.

No way! No more money to the thieves, no more letting them living high off our hog!