Grand Theft Auto: How Stevie the Rat bankrupted GM
by Greg Palast
Monday, June 1, 2009
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Screw the autoworkers.
They may be crying about General Motors' bankruptcy today. But dumping 40,000 of the last 60,000 union jobs into a mass grave won't spoil Jamie Dimon's day.
Dimon is the CEO of JP Morgan Chase bank. While GM workers are losing their retirement health benefits, their jobs, their life savings; while shareholders are getting zilch and many creditors getting hosed, a few privileged GM lenders - led by Morgan and Citibank - expect to get back 100% of their loans to GM, a stunning $6 billion.
The way these banks are getting their $6 billion bonanza is stone cold illegal.
I smell a rat.
Stevie the Rat, to be precise. Steven Rattner, Barack Obama's 'Car Czar' - the man who essentially ordered GM into bankruptcy this morning.
When a company goes bankrupt, everyone takes a hit: fair or not, workers lose some contract wages, stockholders get wiped out and creditors get fragments of what's left. That's the law. What workers don't lose are their pensions (including old-age health funds) already taken from their wages and held in their name.
But not this time. Stevie the Rat has a different plan for GM: grab the pension funds to pay off Morgan and Citi.
Here's the scheme: Rattner is demanding the bankruptcy court simply wipe away the money GM owes workers for their retirement health insurance. Cash in the insurance fund would be replace by GM stock. The percentage may be 17% of GM's stock - or 25%. Whatever, 17% or 25% is worth, well ... just try paying for your dialysis with 50 shares of bankrupt auto stock.
Yet Citibank and Morgan, says Rattner, should get their whole enchilada - $6 billion right now and in cash - from a company that can't pay for auto parts or worker eye exams.
Preventive Detention for Pensions
So what's wrong with seizing workers' pension fund money in a bankruptcy? The answer, Mr. Obama, Mr. Law Professor, is that it's illegal.
In 1974, after a series of scandalous take-downs of pension and retirement funds during the Nixon era, Congress passed the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. ERISA says you can't seize workers' pension funds (whether monthly payments or health insurance) any more than you can seize their private bank accounts. And that's because they are the same thing: workers give up wages in return for retirement benefits.
The law is darn explicit that grabbing pension money is a no-no. Company executives must hold these retirement funds as "fiduciaries." Here's the law, Professor Obama, as described on the government's own web site under the heading, "Health Plans and Benefits."
"The primary responsibility of fiduciaries is to run the plan solely in the interest of participants and beneficiaries and for the exclusive purpose of providing benefits."
Every business in America that runs short of cash would love to dip into retirement kitties, but it's not their money any more than a banker can seize your account when the bank's a little short. A plan's assets are for the plan's members only, not for Mr. Dimon nor Mr. Rubin.
Yet, in effect, the Obama Administration is demanding that money for an elderly auto worker's spleen should be siphoned off to feed the TARP babies. Workers go without lung transplants so Dimon and Rubin can pimp out their ride. This is another "Guantanamo" moment for the Obama Administration - channeling Nixon to endorse the preventive detention of retiree health insurance.
Filching GM's pension assets doesn't become legal because the cash due the fund is replaced with GM stock. Congress saw through that switch-a-roo by requiring that companies, as fiduciaries, must
"...act prudently and must diversify the plan's investments in order to minimize the risk of large losses."
By "diversify" for safety, the law does not mean put 100% of worker funds into a single busted company's stock.
This is dangerous business: The Rattner plan opens the floodgate to every politically-connected or down-on-their-luck company seeking to drain health care retirement funds.
House of Rubin
Pensions are wiped away and two connected banks don't even get a haircut? How come Citi and Morgan aren't asked, like workers and other creditors, to take stock in GM?
As Butch said to Sundance, who ARE these guys? You remember Morgan and Citi. These are the corporate Welfare Queens who've already sucked up over a third of a trillion dollars in aid from the US Treasury and Federal Reserve. Not coincidentally, Citi, the big winner, has paid over $100 million to Robert Rubin, the former US Treasury Secretary. Rubin was Obama's point-man in winning banks' endorsement and campaign donations (by far, his largest source of his corporate funding).
With GM's last dying dimes about to fall into one pocket, and the Obama Treasury in his other pocket, Morgan's Jamie Dimon is correct in saying that the last twelve months will prove to be the bank's "finest year ever."
Which leaves us to ask the question: is the forced bankruptcy of GM, the elimination of tens of thousands of jobs, just a collection action for favored financiers?
And it's been a good year for Señor Rattner. While the Obama Administration made a big deal out of Rattner's youth spent working for the Steelworkers Union, they tried to sweep under the chassis that Rattner was one of the privileged, select group of investors in Cerberus Capital, the owners of Chrysler. "Owning" is a loose term. Cerberus "owned" Chrysler the way a cannibal "hosts" you for dinner. Cerberus paid nothing for Chrysler - indeed, they were paid billions by Germany's Daimler Corporation to haul it away. Cerberus kept the cash, then dumped Chrysler's bankrupt corpse on the US taxpayer.
("Cerberus," by the way, named itself after the Roman's mythical three-headed dog guarding the gates Hell. Subtle these guys are not.)
While Stevie the Rat sold his interest in the Dog from Hell when he became Car Czar, he never relinquished his post at the shop of vultures called Quadrangle Hedge Fund. Rattner's personal net worth stands at roughly half a billion dollars. This is Obama's working class hero.
If you ran a business and played fast and loose with your workers' funds, you could land in prison. Stevie the Rat's plan is nothing less than Grand Theft Auto Pension.
It doesn't make it any less of a crime if the President drives the getaway car.
******
Economist and journalist Greg Palast, a former trade union contract negotiator, is author of the New York Times bestsellers The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Armed Madhouse. He is a GM bondholder and card-carrying member of United Automobile Workers Local 1981.
Palast's latest reports for BBC Television and Democracy Now! are collected on the newly released DVD, "Palast Investigates: from 8-Mile to the Amazon - on the trail of the financial marauders." Watch the trailer here.
Most investors or businesses would be thrilled to get a 10% or even a 20% "Return on Investment"(ROI). That is, if they invest say $1,000,000, they then make a profit of $100,000 or $200,000. In today's America, the political system has made corruption the best possible investment. In the last election, the "FIRE" (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate) sector gave a bit over $20 million to Obama's campaign.
Today, two of these companies alone just made BILLIONS of dollars. Maybe in a different bankrupcty proceeding, that $6 billion in loans these two banks made to GM might have been paid off at 33% ($2 billion). That's a guess, but a ballpark figure is good enough for this example. So, in one day, these firms just made $4 Billion in return for a portion of $20 Million to fund Obama's campaign. A 'return' of $4 Billion on, lets say $10 Million investment, is an ROI of 40,000%. Yes, you read that right ... for every dollar 'invested' in Obama, they just made $400 in return.
This obviously distorts the economy. Why on earth make regular investments when buying politicians creates such a return? Invest in a company that hires American workers ... these days, that's the sucker play. Wall Street now knows what the mob has known for years. The best business investment is to go buy some politicians. Sounds like Chicago. Wait a minute, where's Obama from again?
Look at the effect that money had. Some of it came in very early in the campaign. Obama was quickly established as the one alternative to Hillary's 'inevitable' campaign in 2007 because of the money he raised. Go read those stories again today on early 2007 fundraising, and Wall Street was the leading contributor. Without that early money, Obama is just some junior Senator running for President in a big primary field.
The 2008 Democratic primaries were always going to be a race between the Hillary vote and the anti-Hillary vote. The early strategic goal of all of the candidates in the race, besides Hillary of course, was to establish themselves as the single alternative to Hillary. Obama did that, and he did it with Wall Street money. Without that money, the line on Obama would have been that he was just running this time to prep himself for 2012. Someone else would have been the choice as the 'anti-Hillary' this time.
Makes one wander what sort of bidding contest went on in the formerly-smoke-filled-rooms as the Democratic candidates went begging to Wall Street for money. Wall Street was going to back someone, and that someone was likely to be President. I wonder what the various Democrats offered to Wall Street to try to get that deal? Well, at least we've got a pretty good idea of what Obama bid. $300 billion in TARP money, a few $Trillion from the Fed, and toss in the auto workers pension and health care funds as a few colored sprinkles on top. Oh, and no prosecutions for Wall Street concerning the fraud games that caused this economic collapse.
The difference between the Obama campaign and the Kucinich campaign last time around was that early money. The difference between the Obama campaign and the Nader campaign was the mountains of cash that Obama had to spend. Do you wonder what a election system that let all candidates talk equally to the voters would look like? Do you wonder why both the Democrats and Republicans constantly oppose such an idea?
I wonder how many of those auto workers who are losing their jobs and the pensions and their retirement health care had Obama stickers on their cars last fall?
Someday, American voters have to learn that the candidates with the money are not their friend. Oh, they'll be able to pay lots of speechwriters and consultants to make it look like they are the voter's friend. But, the sure bet is that the candidates with all the money are going to look out for the people who gave them the money.
We need to make it such in this country that the candidates with the money NEVER win. We need to make is such that the American people automatically look at a candidate with lots of money and say 'No way in h@#% am I electing you." The broke candidate who needs their supporters to give them a ride in from the airport is the much better choice. At least you'll know they aren't bought.
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