Bailout Funds

Citing its corporate stance that climate change is real, General Motors announced Wednesday that its General Motors Foundation would no longer be funding the Heartland Institute, a free-market think tank that has attacked human-caused global warming as “junk science.” The announcement was not made in a company statement, but rather in communications with Greg Dalton of Climate One, an ongoing dialog about the environment at the Commonwealth Club...

WASHINGTON — The government's watchdog for the $700-billion Troubled Asset Relief Program disputed suggestions the bailout fund would turn a profit for taxpayers and warned that many small banks are still struggling to repay. "It is a widely held misconception that TARP will make a profit," said a report by Christy Romero, the special inspector general for TARP. The Obama administration has said TARP has turned a profit on about $205 billion injected into banks, but still projects losses for the entire fund.

Pasadena's East West Bancorp Inc. has repaid its more than $300-million slice of bailout funds from the U.S. Treasury, but several smaller Southern California banks are struggling even to make dividend payments on their investments from Uncle Sam. East West, the largest bank focused on the Chinese American market, said Wednesday that it used available cash to return the $306.5 million in preferred stock that the Treasury Department had purchased at the height of the financial crisis, along with a final quarterly dividend of $1.8 million.

Citing its corporate stance that climate change is real, General Motors announced Wednesday that its General Motors Foundation would no longer be funding the Heartland Institute, a free-market think tank that has attacked human-caused global warming as “junk science.” The announcement was not made in a company statement, but rather in communications with Greg Dalton of Climate One, an ongoing dialog about the environment at the Commonwealth Club...

Regarding your editorial: The $100 billion question is . . . where did the money go? STEVE WEATHERWAX Los Angeles

The House, under pressure to keep the savings and loan bailout under way, reversed itself Wednesday and voted to provide another $30 billion to pay off depositors who had money in failed thrifts. Approval of the politically unpopular measure on votes of 213 to 197 and 192 to 181 came one day after the badly divided House rejected four alternative plans for pumping the $30 billion into the thrift salvage operation.

Will $700 billion be enough? That question emerged Monday as the Bush administration decided to pump more money into insurance giant American International Group Inc. and lawmakers pushed to extend the government's rescue to the ailing automobile industry. The extra money for AIG, part of a major overhaul of the effort to keep the company out of bankruptcy, brings the government's tab to about $150 billion, up from about $123 billion.

The House Ethics Committee is investigating Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), who has come under scrutiny because of her husband's ties to a bank that received federal bailout funds. The panel's chairwoman and ranking member announced the committee was extending by 45 days a determination on whether it would conduct a more thorough review of Waters' conduct, but they declined to say what was being investigated. Waters, one of Los Angeles' most enduring liberal politicians, also declined to comment.

President Bush renewed his demand Wednesday that Congress approve fresh funding for the savings and loan bailout, which has been stalled for months because regulators lack the money to dispose of failed thrifts. While the Senate has already approved the needed funding, Administration officials acknowledge that the House is unlikely to follow suit before the election, leaving the Resolution Trust Corp., the S&L cleanup agency, virtually paralyzed.

An inspector general's audit has found no wrongdoing in the U.S. Treasury Department's $400-million investment of bailout funds in Los Angeles-based City National Bank, according to people familiar with the report. The audit, which is expected to be made public as soon as today, was launched late last year by Treasury Department Inspector General Eric Thorson amid concerns over how and why banks were chosen to receive bailout money. Its focus was whether Treasury officials properly followed the rules established in October when the controversial $250-billion banking bailout was announced as the largest component of the $700-billion federal Troubled Asset Relief Program.

The prospects of an emerging China stepping up to the role of global leader by becoming a major supporter of a planned $1.4-trillion European bailout fund has unsettled many in the Asian country. They don't think China should seal its status as a superpower by shifting its foreign trove of U.S. Treasury bonds and debts of other nations to fund the financial recovery of Greece and some of its troubled Eurozone neighbors, analysts say. The Chinese have shied from flexing their considerable financial muscle to help Greece, where the ruling Socialists and opposition conservatives agreed Sunday to form a unity government — a step seen by many European leaders as necessary for the country to move forward with a massive bailout plan.

In one international crisis after another, the U.S. has long been front and center in leading the way out. But not this time. As countries with economies as small as Australia's stepped up Thursday to pledge money for Europe's bailout fund, President Obama made no such commitment. Instead, at the summit of major world economies here, he maintained that Europe should rely on its own resources to solve the problem. Nor has the president of the world's largest economy said much publicly about the best path forward for the troubled Eurozone.

For those inclined to see the European Union as a hopeless contradiction in terms, the last year and a half has supplied more proof than they could possibly have imagined. An endless series of emergency meetings, each supposedly the last, has generated little more than strategy pronouncements that are obsolete almost as soon as they're made. Europe's leaders have struggled to unite behind a convincing counterattack against a debt crisis that endangers not just the regional but the global economy.

European leaders are closing in on an agreement to fight the region's debt crisis by making their bailout fund worth more than $1.4 trillion, partly through public and private investments they hope will come from fast-growing countries such as China and Brazil, German officials said Monday. Leading members of Germany's Parliament, who were briefed by Chancellor Angela Merkel, told reporters that the bailout fund was likely to be leveraged to more than twice its present size of $600 billion.

Slovakia's parliament approved an expansion of the European Union bailout fund, reversing its course and thereby removing the final barrier to using the money to deal with the Eurozone's debt crisis.  Slovakia's parliament approved an expansion of the European Union bailout fund Thursday, reversing its course and thereby removing the final barrier to using the money to deal with the Eurozone's debt crisis. The plan, which needed the support of all 17 Eurozone nations, had been approved by the other 16 when the Slovak parliament said no Tuesday, causing the collapse of the government led by Prime Minister Iveta Radicova and forcing early elections.

Lawmakers in Slovakia on Tuesday rejected a proposal to beef up Europe's bailout fund for debt-stressed nations, but supporters are hopeful that the measure will pass in a second vote expected to take place within days. The ruling coalition of Prime Minister Iveta Radicova collapsed after failing to gather enough votes from the Slovak parliament in favor of the measure, an outcome she had warned would be tantamount to a vote of no confidence in her government. The plan for a strengthened bailout fund, which is widely seen as imperative for Europe to tame its growing debt crisis, was torpedoed in parliament by a junior party within Radicova's coalition.

A U.S. district judge on Friday ordered the Treasury Department to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Fox Business Network regarding the use of the financial bailout funds. U.S. District Judge Richard J. Holwell of the Southern District of New York gave the Treasury Department 30 days to comply with the cable channel's request for information about how the bailout funds were used to help American International Group, the Bank of New York Mellon and Citigroup.

A plan to beef up Europe's rescue fund for debt-bound nations won a crucial vote of confidence from Germany on Thursday but faced immediate criticism as being too little, too late to contain the spiraling crisis over the euro. Analysts welcomed the move to strengthen the bailout fund to about $600 billion, but they warned that a far larger fund and even a partial default by Greece will almost certainly be necessary to keep the crisis from swallowing up bigger nations such as Italy and Spain.

With several European countries facing key votes this week on a bailout plan for the weakest links in the Eurozone, Greece's prime minister made a high-profile pledge to German industrialists that there would be no letup in his country's reform efforts. But even if the plan is confirmed by skeptical parliaments in Finland on Wednesday and Germany on Thursday, it is likely to be insufficient. And there is no consensus on what to do next. Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou traveled to Germany on Tuesday to urge business leaders in Europe's economic powerhouse not to give up on his country.