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please oh please,lets KEEP THROWING BILLONS OF DOLLARS AT CORPORATIONS,AND LETTING our citizens die,FOR LACK OF healthcare
How GE made billions from the bank bailout
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By ProPublica
Published: June 29, 2009
Updated 1 hour agoGE has long straddled the fence between banking and commerce — allowing it to profit from the federal bank bailout without falling under banking regulations. But as the Obama administration seeks to tighten financial regulation, the world’s largest industrial company will have to make a choice.
General Electric, the world’s largest industrial company, has quietly become the biggest beneficiary of one of the government’s key rescue programs for banks.
At the same time, GE has avoided many of the restrictions facing other financial giants getting help from the government.
The company did not initially qualify for the program, under which the government sought to unfreeze credit markets by guaranteeing debt sold by banking firms. But regulators soon loosened the eligibility requirements, in part because of behind-the-scenes appeals from GE.
As a result, GE has joined major banks collectively saving billions of dollars by raising money for their operations at lower interest rates. Public records show that GE Capital, the company’s massive financing arm, has issued nearly a quarter of the $340 billion in debt backed by the program, which is known as the Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program, or TLGP. The government’s actions have been “powerful and helpful” to the company, GE chief executive Jeffrey Immelt acknowledged in December.
GE’s finance arm is not classified as a bank. Rather, it worked its way into the rescue program by owning two relatively small Utah banking institutions, illustrating how the loopholes in the U.S. regulatory system are manifest in the government’s historic intervention in the financial crisis.
The Obama administration now wants to close such loopholes as it works to overhaul the financial system. The plan would reaffirm and strengthen the wall between banking and commerce, forcing companies like GE to essentially choose one or the other.
4 Comments
Who wrote this article? I did a search and there’s 10 listings for the name of this article in quotes.
http://www.google.com/search?q…..38;oe=utf8
I don’t know any thing about GE other than they make wind turbine parts and the republican stock channel CNBC doesn’t like them. If the GOP stock channel doesn’t like you that usually means you lean Democratic or have union workers.
And during the financial crisis last fall the republian stock channel CNBC announced there would not be any money for green loans.
And as long as the banks aren’t giving loans… the economy doesn’t move forward. And if the economy doesn’t move forward it doesn’t look good for BO. So who’s running things? Whose holding the economy back?
This was co-written by Jeff Gerth and a WaPo writer. I included a link to that item in this diary entry.