During the five-year period of U.S. government ownership of GM, the issue with the faulty ignition switches was known, but the NHTSA and Justice did nothing about it. Why should they? It would have hurt the value of the governments investment, meaning they would have lost even MORE than the $10 billion they failed to recoup on the final share sales. Even though the company had data demonstrating a faulty ignition switch for years, it didn’t initiate a full investigation or recall until February of 2014, two months after the government sold its stake in the company. The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) didn’t initiate a full investigation of the issue until later that month, even though the U.S. government had owned the company for 5 years. The Justice Dept. also showed up late to the party, confirming that same month that it had initiated a criminal probe into the matter. ... Taxpayers, drivers, and investors who assumed the government would never fail to disclose rampant safety problems in a company it owned can rest easy, though. Instead of investigating fatally flawed GM components while the U.S. government was the company’s largest single owner, the NHTSA was busy harassing Toyota — one of GM’s top competitors — for an alleged malfunction that led to “unintended acceleration” in Toyota vehicles. Toyota was fined and eventually bullied into recalling 8 million vehicles over the issue. What the investigations found out about the Toyota problem was that in most cases, folks were stepping on the gas instead of the brake... the exact same finding about the Audis that were demonized during the 80s.
Posted on: Thu, 22 May 2014 15:25:00 +0000