RALPH NADER
Consumer advocate Nader first came onto the national scene with his book Unsafe at Any Speed about GM and its Chevrolet Corvair. He said today: “We have to recognize the total autocratic, secretive way this bankruptcy was initiated. Congress, which in 1979 had thorough public hearings on the Chrysler bailout and a few years later on the structuring of the Conrail system, completely abdicated its role to the White House, [which] then allocated the role to a secret task force run by Wall Streeters and overseen by Timothy Geithner, Secretary of Treasury, and Larry Summers. And this is the predictable result of an autocratic, secretive process.

“Obama has made the American taxpayer responsible for saving GM, to a level which will eventually reach $70 billion, but then he makes his government irresponsible by saying he doesn’t want to run GM. Well, what if GM management continues to ship its production to China, which is the grand China strategy of GM from several years back — and unemployed workers and closed factories and, by consequence, closed dealers? Is Obama going to step aside?

“Are the China assets and unrepatriated profits of GM going to be included in the bankruptcy procedure, or are they going to be excluded? What about the act of closing dealers? Dealers donate cost manufacturers anything. The franchise agreement makes certain of that. So why are we further inconveniencing motorists, rupturing their relationship over the years with dealers that are closer to home and making them travel more and more? The answer is, the fewer dealers, the more likely the price of cars go up. So there are all kinds of reasons why this should go back to Congress for thorough House and Senate hearings, if Congress wanted to adhere to its constitutional duties.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167