GM Repaid The Government Loans?

They wish.

I received the following email from GM on Friday.

Dear Thomas,


We are proud to announce we have repaid our government loan – in full, with interest, five years ahead of the original schedule. We realize we still have more to do. Our goal is to exceed every expectation you've set for us. We're designing, building and selling the best cars and trucks in the world. Like the award-winning Chevy Malibu, the all-new Buick LaCrosse, the versatile Cadillac CTS Sport Wagon and the innovative GMC Terrain, just to name a few. We invite you to learn more about the new GM and join our community, by visiting gm.com.




Susan E. Docherty
Vice President, U.S. Marketing 

I thought to myself, wow good for them. I still wouldn't buy one of their cars built by marxist labor unions especially from Canada or Mexico but good for them. I even emailed the story to my Dad to let him know. I thought wow that Camaro must be selling like hotcakes.

Today though while perusing the internets I come across this story and I find that what little faith that had been newly restored in GM squashed like the EV1.



Courtesy of Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge 

We are too busy maxing out our credit cards buying AAPL shares after hours into the parabolic blow out (using Sigma X of course, how else could we subpenny front run our own orders?), stacks of Kindles, 7th vacation homes with negative equity, and LBOing zero EBITDA companies to comment on this, suffice to say that if you ever needed confirmation that America is a banana republic in which fraud, corruption and lies are now the norm, here you go: Government Motors is now blatantly lying to its existing and future buyers, and everyone in the administration is complicit.
From Fox News:

General Motors is running ads on all the major networks this week claiming it has repaid its bailout from the taxpayers "in full." But the claim isn’t standing up to scrutiny from lawmakers and government watchdogs who have found that the automaker was able to repay the bailout money only by dipping into a separate pot of bailout funds.

Uhm, what’s wrong with that? That’s precisely the reason why the market is now on for an 8th straight up week. In order to make the rich infinitely rich (before there is revolution, hyperinflation or dollar devaluation), the Obama people must resort to anything and everything.

General Motors is running ads on all the major networks this week claiming it has repaid its bailout from the taxpayers "in full." But the claim isn’t standing up to scrutiny from lawmakers and government watchdogs who have found that the automaker was able to repay the bailout money only by dipping into a separate pot of bailout funds.

The TV spot may land GM in hot water with the Federal Trade Commission over its truth-in-advertising laws, which prohibit ads that are "likely to mislead consumers."
"We have repaid our government loans in full — with interest — five years ahead of the original schedule," says Ed Whitacre, chairman and CEO of General Motors Company, asking Americans to give the bankrupt company another look.
But a top Senate Republican has accused GM of misleading taxpayers about the loan repayment, saying the struggling auto giant was able to repay a $6.7 billion bailout loan only by using other bailout funds in a special escrow account.
Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley’s charge was backed up by the inspector general for the bailout — also known as the Trouble Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Watchdog Neil Barofsky told Fox News, as well as the Senate Finance Committee, that General Motors used bailout money to pay back the federal government.
"It appears to be nothing more than an elaborate TARP money shuffle," Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said in a letter Thursday to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.
You Decide: Did GM Try to Pull a PR Fast One?
The FTC said it could not provide any comment on the ad or whether it had received any complaints or inquiries about GM’s claims from the public or from government officials.
The FTC has a division of advertising practices that investigates possible false claims, but specific investigations are not made public. If the FTC determines that truth-in-advertising laws have been violated, the agency files complaints against the organizations in violation.
GM announced Wednesday that it had paid back the $8.1 billion in loans it received from the U.S. and Canadian governments in 2009. Of that, $6.7 billion went to the U.S. Treasury.

Again. Banana. Now go ahead and buy whatever you can. The administration will soon make it illegal to not be in debt. Might as well have a head start.