What I Thought I Said

I got some criticism for this post on the NY Times, and answered it, but they didn't post it. So I'll answer here. Here's the offending quote:

"Come on ! How onerous can the terms of TARP be that people who don’t need it are starting to line up to receive it? What more proof do we need that the government negotiated a terrible deal for the taxpayer?

The next thing we know, Google and Apple will be turning themselves into banks. Can I have myself declared to be a bank?"

So, in fairness to my critics, I didn't express myself well. I wasn't comparing GMAC in the post to Apple and Google. That comment was meant to be funny, in the sense that once you made exceptions to the rules of TARP it could lead to this absurdity.

My point about GMAC was that, in a story I read on Bloomberg a month earlier, it seemed to me that GMAC should be able to solve its problems without government money, and that's what and why they didn't need it. I didn't mean to say that they were rolling in cash. I predicted in other posts that if the government terms of TARP were too lenient, businesses that could otherwise do without government funding would come calling at the door of TARP.

Now, obviously I can be wrong about GMAC's situation, but that was my concern. And from my point of view, I am proving correct.