Piggie At The Trough

I found this little item on a site called The Economic Populist. General Motors plans to use a billion dollars of their bailout money to upgrade their operations in Brazil. The Economic Populist folks don't identify the source of the quotation as a whole, though part of it is cited as coming from a Brazilian business daily. It has the ring of truth though, given the shenanigans on the part of others who have received bailout money. I have a feeling this is all going to end very badly. I read Paul Krugman's column in the New York Times on Monday, and he seems genuinely worried that Obama's stimulus is not going to be sufficient. It's a bad sign that Obama wants a tax cut for businesses. Most economists agree that such a tax cut would have little stimulus effect. But, what the hell, here it is Inauguration Day, and the media is playing it like it's the second fucking coming of Christ. More likely it is, as one commentator I read on the CounterPunch site said, the return of Clintonian triangulation. Welcome the new boss. He's the same as the old boss, or at least the one before Bush.

"General Motors plans to invest $1 billion in Brazil to avoid the kind of problems the U.S. automaker is facing in its home market, said the beleaguered car maker.

"According to the president of GM Brazil-Mercosur, Jaime Ardila, the funding will come from the package of financial aid that the manufacturer will receive from the U.S. government and will be used to 'complete the renovation of the line of products up to 2012.'

"'It wouldn't be logical to withdraw the investment from where we're growing, and our goal is to protect investments in emerging markets,' he said in a statement published by the business daily Gazeta Mercantil."