It's a little hard to imagine that we now live in a country where ordinary investors are randomly sacrificed by the federal government to pay off union favors, but that's what's happening with the GM restructuring under the tutelage of the Obama administration.
As part of this deal, the United Auto Workers are going to be awarded a share of ownership in General Motors, the surprising thing is that while they have a $10 billion investment in the company the Obama administration is proposing to give them over 38% of its ownership and value.
Meanwhile, those investors that placed their money in the company's corporate bonds, which includes many retirees and those hoping to retire on a "safe" bond investment rather than stock, are being treated very differently. Although bondholders account for about $27 billion in General Motors -- it is proposed that they receive only 10% ownership and value in the company.
As they have created a bit of a fuss about this,the spokespeople for what is ever more clearly the socialist wing of the Democratic Party have been trying to brand them as a business types who took their chances and are complaining about the company going under. Some of these surrogates had even been suggesting that the bondholders somehow contributed to the company's demise as being "part of the problem", which has become some new catch phrase used to demonize those that disagree with the new leftist agenda.
This treatment of individuals who have given hard earned money in the expectation that they would receive some kind of fair treatment in return for a lower rate of return on bonds than they might make in the stock market is appalling and just about as anti-capitalism as you see -- so far
