Here is a new GM ad featuring chairman Ed Whiteacre, who proudly announces,

We have repaid our government loan in full, with interest five years ahead of the original schedule.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports,

Treasury and GM officials don’t dispute that the money to repay the loan is coming from TARP funds. But they said that’s been clearly disclosed.

A GM spokesman said the company is paying back the loan early “because we’re making great progress and we have a great line up of vehicles that are selling very well.”

H/T Mitch P.

Another excellent installment of “Afterburner,” in which Bill Whittle wistfully recalls his visit to GM’s Futurama exhibit at the World’s Fair in New York City in 1964.

I feel something similar for Disney’s Tomorrowland (probably heir to Futurama), but the nostalgia is balanced out to some degree by a sense of parallel-world eeriness.

(I’m still looking for a great word for “nostalgia for a future envisioned in the past,” but I enjoyed this piece from the Atlantic’s Word Fugitives from a few years back– October 2001, as it turns out– curiously apropos.)

Today the last chance for the continued existence of the Saturn brand of car fell apart.  We’ve given fifty billion dollars to GM, and they are still so unsuccessful that they have to shut down an entire brand and its dealership network?  Isn’t this clearly enough evidence that GM sucks and capitalism is working exactly as intended?  Of course before capitalism had a chance to work its corrective magic, Obama decided that the failure of GM sounded really dramatic and scary so he started throwing money at the problem.  Hey, it’s worked for the education system, right? 

That sound coming from Detroit is our taxpayer dollars being flushed down the toilet of government-sponsored corporate mediocrity.  Once again, the invisible hand preempted by the government’s clumsy claw.  “Capitalists with government help…the worst of all economic phenomenon.” – Ayn Rand (again)

The response of a public perpetually underwhelmed by Saturn’s shitty, uninspired cars remains to be seen.

GM’s bright new idea to pull their company out of bankruptcy?  Forcing unknown, possibly disastrous depreciation losses down the throat of their dealership network, with their new “may the best car win” policy.  Seriously, am I missing something?  Seems like GM just opened themselves up to be the stupidest car rental company in human history.  Good luck, guys…and remember, if your terrible ideas and shitty brands don’t work out, you can always go back to the government well for more taxpayer money.