Friday, 16 September 2011

In Passing

Today’s Crony Capitalist update


Michelle Malkin:

In a normal, free-market environment, of course, business executives take their cue from customers — not from the East Wing. [link added - O.G.]

But this is no normal, free-market environment.

And, I might add, Darden Restaurants is no normal restaurant chain.

At a time when most food service providers are struggling under the weight of increased taxes, health care mandates, and regulations, Darden Restaurants just happens to be one of the few and fortunate businesses to obtain one of those coveted Obamacare waivers.
(The Darden brands, just in case you’re interested: Olive Garden, Red Lobster, LongHorn Steakhouse, The Capital Grille, Bahama Breeze and Seasons 52.)

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal quotes Jeff Immelt:
Speaking at an event in New York, GE Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt said he sees "good, decent economic growth everywhere.”
As to whether Mr. Immelt expects any of that "growing” to include GE’s operations in the U.S... the article doesn’t say.

Oh, guess which well-connected Wall Street insider firm was there "helping” now-bankrupt Solyndra get that $535 million DOE loan guarantee?

And guess how much of that $535 mill the taxpayers aren’t likely to recover:
...bankrupt Solyndra will retain Imperial Capital at the cost of $150,000 per month (this is cash that is immediately leaving the estate, thus minimizing recoveries to US taxpayers), a $1 million confirmation fee, a $1 million sale fee (the two are not exclusive), a 1%/3%/5% financing fee (i.e., Imperial arranges follow through financing, although good luck with that), and so on. In other news, should this bankruptcy stretch for more than the usual 1 year period from filing to emergence, US taxpayers will be on the hook for another roughly $3 million, in order to hire a banker whose ultimate value added will be an "orderly" liquidation of the company.
You know what they say: A million here, a million there, and sooner or later there’s no money left...

(Malkin via DP, Goldman via Glenn)

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 16:53:37 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 320 words, total size 5 kb.

Comments are disabled. Post is locked.
71kb generated in CPU 0.041, elapsed 0.3241 seconds.
51 queries taking 0.3118 seconds, 207 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.