Specifically Ed Whitacre, the CEO of SBC, now AT&T, is quoted as stating (see DSL Reports and Business Week):
"Now what they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain't going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it," says Whitacre. "So there's going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion they're using. Why should they be allowed to use my pipes?".......“The Internet can't be free in that sense, because we and the cable companies have made an investment and for a Google or Yahoo! or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes [for] free is nuts!”.... Whitacre leans forward in his chair and raises his voice. "They don't have any fiber out there. They don't have any wires. They don't have anything," he argues. "They use my lines for free -- and that's bull. For a Google (GOOG ) or a Yahoo! (YHOO ) or a Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes for free is nuts!"
You see ATT was not his, the lines were not HIS. they belong to the shareholders, and now the same person alleges he paid us the taxpayers all our money back. Again a twist of the facts and an attitude which belies the truth in a self serving manner. In the case of GM the shareholders are the taxpayers and the Unions of course, always the Unions.
As Forbes has superbly stated:
Uncle Sam gave GM $49.5 billion last summer in aid to finance its bankruptcy. (If it hadn't, the company, which couldn't raise this kind of money from private lenders, would have been forced into liquidation, its assets sold for scrap.) So when Mr. Whitacre publishes a column with the headline, "The GM Bailout: Paid Back in Full," most ordinary mortals unfamiliar with bailout minutia would assume that he is alluding to the entire $49.5 billion. That, however, is far from the case.
Because a loan of such a huge amount would have been politically controversial, the Obama administration handed GM only $6.7 billion as a pure loan. (It asked for only a 7% interest rate--a very sweet deal considering that GM bonds at that time were trading below junk level.) The vast bulk of the bailout money was transferred to GM through the purchase of 60.8% equity stake in the company--arguably an even worse deal for taxpayers than the loan, given that the equity position requires them to bear the risk of the investment without any guaranteed return. (The Canadian government likewise gave GM $1.4 billion as a pure loan, and another $8.1 billion for an 11.7% equity stake. The U.S. and Canadian government together own 72.5% of the company.)
But when Mr. Whitacre says GM has paid back the bailout money in full, he means not the entire $49.5 billion--the loan and the equity. In fact, he avoids all mention of that figure in his column. He means only the $6.7 billion loan amount.
In fact it was not Uncle Sam, it was the taxpayers and our children, grand children and great grand children. Facts seem to be something this man has problems with. Where is all of our money? Forbes details it quite well. Are we all fools? No we just have another Administration appointee who seems to twist the facts to his aggrandizement, but fortunately we have that :fact" and then the truth from Forbes.
One wonders why he needed to make this statement at all. Why not just tell the truth, they borrowed more money to pay back the old money. Anyone looking at GM would have seen that they lost money the past quarter as they had stated but if that were the case any logical person would have asked where the got the money to pay back the loan. And we think we have problems with Wall Street!
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