Chrysler’s Future, Chevron in Ecuador and Flex-Fuel Cars on the Road
A bankruptcy judge approves Chrysler’s request to start spending $4.5 billion in government loans.
Ecuador sues Chevron for $27 billion over alleged environmental damage from oil drilling operations.
The Senate considers legislation to require the production of more flex-fuel vehicles.
For more news, listen to the LibertyWeek podcast here.
1. BUSINESS
A bankruptcy judge approves Chrysler’s request to start spending $4.5 billion in government loans.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Director of the Center for Investors and Entrepreneurs John Berlau on the best way to resolve the Chrysler bankruptcy:
“The Obama administration should lift any antitrust barriers to effective reorganization — and suspend planned increases in the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards that would be detrimental to Chrysler and other carmakers – but otherwise stay neutral as to the form the reorganization takes. The relatively smooth process of recent large Chapter 11 bankruptcies, such as that of mall owner General Growth Properties, shows that far from being “disorderly,” judicial bankruptcies are far more orderly than taxpayer bailouts in unwinding and reorganizing insolvent companies. The judicial bankruptcy process should be given a chance to work in the case of Chrysler and any other companies that follow suit.”
2. ENVIRONMENT
Ecuador sues Chevron for $27 billion over alleged environmental damage from oil drilling operations.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Journalism Fellow Silvia Santacruz on how Ecuador’s president is going after the company:
“In 2007, [President Rafael] Correa raised Ecuador’s 50 percent windfall profits tax to 99 percent, though he later lowered it to 70 percent. Some firms are currently seeking redress in international courts for their losses. Mr. Correa has been unrelenting with Chevron, ordering a criminal probe of two Chevron executives and seven former government officials for allegedly falsifying documents that endorsed the Texaco environmental remediation effort described in this article, according to the Associated Press.”
3. LOBBYING
The Senate considers legislation to require the production of more flex-fuel vehicles.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Senior Fellow Marlo Lewis on ethanol industry’s addiction to subsidies:
“Rent-seeking – the whoring after market-rigging rules and subsidies – is a true addiction, an appetite that grows with feeding. For the ethanol lobby, it’s not enough that government props up their product with Soviet-style production quota, protective tariffs, a 45-cent-per-gallon blenders tax credit, R&D handouts, and other support. Like the Johnny Rocco character portrayed by Edward G. Robinson in the Bogart and Becall classic Key Largo, the ethanol lobby always wants ‘more.’”
Listen to LibertyWeek, the CEI podcast, here.