Going, going - gone?

Going, going - gone?

The US Supreme Court has cleared the way for the sale of Chrysler to Fiat, allowing the third biggest U.S. automaker to emerge from bankruptcy protection within the next few days.

The Court rejected an appeal by a group of Indiana state pension funds that wanted Chrysler’s sale to the Italians blocked on the grounds it was too hasty.

The move came on the same day a bankruptcy judge approved Chrysler’s plan to terminate 789 of its dealer franchises.

Elsewhere in the United States, ten of the biggest banks were given permission to return government cash that was given to them at the hight of the financial crisis.

This was a remarkably swift judgement by the U.S. Supreme Court.

On Monday three Indiana based pension funds asked the 9 justices to block the sale of Chrysler to Fiat of Italy because they claimed it had been rushed through denying them the chance to maximize returns for their policy holders.

The Indiana state treasurer argued that the Obama administration illegally used federal bailout money from the TARP that had been earmarked for financial institutions to help Chrysler.

The Justices were urged to take their time in assessing the Chrysler sale but in the end they came back with an opinion in just over twenty four hours.

It means the sale of Chrysler to Fiat can take place as early as Wednesday ending months of uncertainty surrounding the company’s future that ended with the firm filing for bankruptcy protection.

And TARP money - the original bank bailout scheme was in the news in another sector of the giant U.S. economy.

The U.S. Treasury has given permission for ten of the biggest banks to hand back almost seventy billion dollars cash given to them at the height of the financial crisis.

The banks were told to take the money as part of last October’s original TARP bank bailout scheme by
President Bush’s Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson …

In accepting TARP money the banks had to face restrictions on lending practices, staff hiring and executive compensation.

Many were angling to give the cash back to free themselves of these restrictions.

Now the Obama administration is giving ten of them permission to do so.

Names like Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Chase, American Express and Goldman Sachs will give back almost 70 billion dollars.

The White House says it would like to see lending return to the kind of level seen before the financial crisis struck.

And President Obama himself was at pains to point out that handing back the TARP does not demonstrate forgiveness for what Wall Street did … nor should it signal a return to the RECKLESS business practices that got us in to what we now know to be a global recession.