Mitt Romney—Predator Class

Being a quintessential Producer Class business, automaking has been a target of the Predators since day one.  So when the GM and Chrysler got into trouble during the economic meltdown of 2008, the vultures smelled blood.  For example, John Paulson stole more money during the months that followed than a 1000 "bailed-out" line workers could make during their entire working lives.  Naturally, the "investors" are trying to get Bain Raider Mitt Romney elected so their rackets will be blessed from above.

REVEALED: Romney's Top Funders Made Billions on Auto Bailout
Greg Palast
Published: Thursday 23 February 2012

“John Paulson of Paulson & Co and Paul Singer of Elliott International, known on Wall Street as ‘vulture’ investors, have each written checks for one million dollars to Restore Our Future, the Super PAC supporting Romney’s candidacy.”

Re­pub­li­can Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Mitt Rom­ney called the fed­eral gov­ern­ment’s 2009 bail-out of the auto in­dus­try, “noth­ing more than crony cap­i­tal­ism, Obama style... a re­ward for his big donors to his cam­paign." In fact, the biggest re­wards ­­– a wind­fall of more than two bil­lion dol­lars care of U.S. tax­pay­ers ­­­–– went to Rom­ney's two top con­trib­u­tors.

John Paul­son of Paul­son & Co and Paul Singer of El­liott In­ter­na­tional, known on Wall Street as “vul­ture” in­vestors, have each writ­ten checks for one mil­lion dol­lars to Re­store Our Fu­ture, the Super PAC sup­port­ing Rom­ney’s can­di­dacy.

Gov. Rom­ney last week as­serted that the Obama Ad­min­is­tra­tion’s sup­port for Gen­eral Mo­tors was a, “pay­off for the auto work­ers union.” How­ever, union work­ers in GM’s for­mer auto parts di­vi­sion, Del­phi, the unit taken over by Rom­ney’s fun­ders, did not fair so well. The spec­u­la­tors elim­i­nated every sin­gle union job from the parts fac­to­ries once manned by 25,200 UAW mem­bers.

The two hedge fund op­er­a­tors turned a breath­tak­ing three-thou­sand per­cent profit on a rel­a­tively neg­li­gi­ble in­vest­ment by using hard­ball tac­tics against the U.S. Trea­sury and their own em­ploy­ees.

Under the con­trol of the spec­u­la­tors, Del­phi, which had 45 plants in the U.S. and Canada, is now re­duced to just four fac­to­ries with only 1,500 hourly work­ers, none of them UAW mem­bers, de­spite the union agree­ing to cut con­tract wages by two thirds.

It wasn’t sup­posed to be quite so bad. The Obama Ad­min­is­tra­tion and GM had arranged for a pri­vate eq­uity in­vestor to pro­vide half a bil­lion dol­lars in new cap­i­tal for Del­phi, but that would have cut the pay-out to Singer and Paul­son. The spec­u­la­tors blocked the Obama-GM plan, tak­ing the en­tire gov­ern­ment bail-out hostage. Even the Wall Street Jour­nal’s Deal­maker col­umn was out­raged, ac­cus­ing Paul Singer of treat­ing the auto com­pany, “like a third world coun­try.”

But it worked. Singer and Paul­son got what they de­manded. Using U.S. Trea­sury funds:

• GM agreed to pay off $1.1 bil­lion of Del­phi’s debts,
• For­gave $2.15 bil­lion owed GM by Del­phi (which had been spun off as an in­de­pen­dent com­pany)
• Pumped $1.75 bil­lion into Del­phi op­er­a­tions, and
• Took over four money-los­ing plants that the spec­u­la­tors didn’t want.

If those plants had been closed, GM fac­to­ries would have shut down cold for lack of parts.

Then there was the big one: The U.S. gov­ern­ment agreed to take over $6.2 bil­lion in pen­sion ben­e­fits due Del­phi work­ers under U.S. labor law. more

Just a reminder, Obama was in charge during all this.  John Pilger discusses his bankster backing.