Who will win the 2012 US Presidential Election?

[zahratustra]

You are kidding right? We have whole Republican party doing nothing but fighting the president. They are ready to impeach him if uses wrong handkerchief! Why didn't they jump at the chance?

 

[blatantninja]

Because they don't want to lose votes. Pissing off the union is great way to do that. If you doubt me, just look up bankruptcy law and compare it to what was done. You can't bypass senior or secured debt holders and give the chunks of the company to the union, while leaving the debt holders with just the bad assets. It was a blatant violation. Google 'absolute priority rule'.

 

[dteowner]

Occasionally, Z, I actually know what I'm talking about. I know that's hard for you to accept in this case since it means your leftie saint is wrong, but life is hard and sometimes you just have to suck it up, little camper. When it comes to the auto industry, you can pretty well take what I say to the bank.

The reason the repubs couldn't make too big a stink (beyond the vote thing bn points out) is that you can't say someone broke the rules when step one was throwing the rule book in shitter. There was no legal roadmap for the government taking over a corporation with no defined exit plan (unlike FDIC seizures) so Barack pretty much made it up as he went along.

 

[zahratustra]

I did BN. This is one of the results:

"Part of the debate about the GM and Chrysler cases has turned on the putative violation of the Absolute Priority Rule. I've previously argued that the actual deal structure in both cases contains no such violation, because the value going to the unions is not the debtors' and the senior lenders have no claim on it.

But there is also a good deal of unreality in the notion that the Absolute Priority Rule is a hard and fast rule, never to be violated. Professor Epstein snidely notes that President Obama is "no bankruptcy lawyer." Well neither is Professor Epstein, and one of the key problems with much of the debate about these cases is that the most vocal commentators have failed to acknowledge that the Absolute Priority Rule is routinely violated in modern chapter 11 practice…"
http://www.creditslips.org/creditslips/2009/06/the-absolute-priority-rule.html
Apparently not such "a blatant violation" as you and dte want us to believe, is it?

 

[dteowner]

One of the many scams they played was dividing the company. That's how your source can say the unions got different value. Unfortunately, it's not legal to split a company into two parts, give the "good" part to your union buddies, and leave the "broke ass broke" part for the senior creditors. But, that's exactly what Barack did.

 

[dteowner]

If you want another interesting scam, look up what Barack did with pensions. All the union pensions were upheld and backed by the government. A few thousand salaried pension holders working for Delphi (a GM subsidiary) had their pensions dissolved. Illegal as hell, but white collar guys don't vote democrat.

 

[blatantninja]

I did BN. This is one of the results:

"Part of the debate about the GM and Chrysler cases has turned on the putative violation of the Absolute Priority Rule. I've previously argued that the actual deal structure in both cases contains no such violation, because the value going to the unions is not the debtors' and the senior lenders have no claim on it.

But there is also a good deal of unreality in the notion that the Absolute Priority Rule is a hard and fast rule, never to be violated. Professor Epstein snidely notes that President Obama is "no bankruptcy lawyer." Well neither is Professor Epstein, and one of the key problems with much of the debate about these cases is that the most vocal commentators have failed to acknowledge that the Absolute Priority Rule is routinely violated in modern chapter 11 practice…"
http://www.creditslips.org/creditslips/2009/06/the-absolute-priority-rule.html
Apparently not such "a blatant violation" as you and dte want us to believe, is it?

One professor at Seton Hall doesn't mean a lot. He's also quite wrong that Absolute Priority is routinely violated.

If you want to get into the nitty gritty of it, secured debt comes before under funded pension obligations. Basic bankruptcy law. Yet, the under funded pension obligations got 40 cents on the dollar while the secured debt only got 29 cents. I can't find a prior bankruptcy where secured debt got less than under funded pensions.

 

[blatantninja]

One of the many scams they played was dividing the company. That's how your source can say the unions got different value. Unfortunately, it's not legal to split a company into two parts, give the "good" part to your union buddies, and leave the "broke ass broke" part for the senior creditors. But, that's exactly what Barack did.

Yeah, the division of assets was at best highly irregular and at worst outright theft. But since the holders of most of the secured debt were TARP recipients, they pretty much had the Treasury and Fed telling them to just go along with it. Government intrusion at its finest.

 

[dteowner]

The senior creditors were buffaloed thru the entire process with the threat of "take what we give you or you'll get nothing" and since the bankruptcy rulebook was safely in the shitter from the beginning, that was a very convincing threat.

 

[Thrasher]

Well the point was to save the company, not the creditors. Somehow the righties always lose the forest for the trees. Typical tunnel vision.

BTW, companies divide up quite often with the non-profitable businesses spun off into their own corporations. It's terrible when the government does it to save a company, but fine when corporations do it to maximize already bloated CEO stock options compensation? Nice set of screwed up principles...

 

[BillSeurer]

"Discussions" like this always make me laugh. It's always illegal/immoral/ilwhatever when the other party does it but perfectly fine when your party does it.

 

[blatantninja]

Well the point was to save the company, not the creditors. Somehow the righties always lose the forest for the trees. Typical tunnel vision.

I don't disagree, but again that is not how bankruptcy works. Bankruptcies are organized for the benefit of the creditors, and to a much lesser extend the shareholders. Now if you want to go and rewrite bankruptcy law, that's a whole different discussion.

BTW, companies divide up quite often with the non-profitable businesses spun off into their own corporations. It's terrible when the government does it to save a company, but fine when corporations do it to maximize already bloated CEO stock options compensation? Nice set of screwed up principles…

You're not incorrect, but you leave out the point where the creditors (or shareholders in the case of a non-bankruptcy) are given parts of BOTH companies.

 

[Thrasher]

Why are you crying about the creditors and following bankruptcy laws, when bankruptcy was being purposely avoided?

 

[zahratustra]

Because that's the only way that Obama's actions can be portrayed as "blatant violation" of something or other.

 

[dteowner]

It's called the law. Give it a try from time to time.

 

[Ovenall]

Wow what a failure:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/10/us-usautos-outlook-idUSTRE8070OK20120110

http://beaconnews.suntimes.com/busi...kely-to-recapture-global-auto-sales-lead.html

These are companies that employ people in the united states.

 

[Ovenall]

"Akerson pointed out that GM has increased its share of the U.S. market two straight years, the first time it has done that since 1977."

"I don't know if we ever set out a goal to achieve being the largest manufacturer in the world," Akerson told reporters.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/09/us-gm-usshare-idUSTRE8081MU20120109

The right wing wants the US economy to fail so they can regain the white house. Then they'll proceed to explode the debt and the size of the government, just like they did from 2000-2008. It ain't ancient history.

 

[Ovenall]

John Boehner: "What is proposed is even worse than bankruptcy–it would make GM the living dead."

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/181102/bad-worse/mitt-romney

What happened in reality, outside the orange crybaby's fever dreams:

http://www.insideline.com/chevrolet/gm-reports-first-quarter-profits-of-32-billion.html

 

[Grimlorn]

Obama will likely win once he starts campaigning. The Republican party won't unite behind any of these candidates. Romney was the best shot to win but the party has gone after him so much in the past and present that if he's the nominee people won't unite behind him.

4 more years of Obama and filibustering. Awesome.

 

[Ovenall]

At this point, Obama doesn't even need to campaign. The republicans are a farce. Romney is the textbook definition of an empty suit. All they have is old people who hate blacks, hispanics and gays, plus some loonies supporting ron paul.

Pass the popcorn.