Found yet another underreported news item, on yet another White House failure in dealing with private enterprise:
Automakers GM and Chrysler were pressured to quickly close hundreds of dealerships by the Treasury department without regard for the job losses that would result, according to a government watchdog report out Sunday.
Treasury was charged with helping the car companies out of bankruptcy through the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Together they’ve received over $80 billion in government funding.
“Treasury made a series of decisions that may have substantially contributed to the accelerated shuttering of thousands of small businesses … potentially adding tens of thousands of workers to the already lengthy unemployment rolls,” said the report, released by the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP), Neil Barofsky.
If only there were some kind of orderly, legal means for fixing broken corporations, rather than ham-fisted political wrangling.
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