The truth behind the Chrysler bailout

To the editor:

In your Monday editorial, “What’s good for GM …” you wrote: “Chrysler is now majority-owned by Italy’s Fiat, which didn’t have to put up a single euro to benefit from that massive giveaway.”

Let’s set the record straight.

Fiat S.p.A. has paid almost $2 billion to increase its equity stake in Chrysler Group LLC.

Two billion dollars is the sum of: $1.268 billion incremental equity call option (16 percent); $500 million for 6 percent U.S. Treasury; $125 million 1.5 percent EDC (Canada); $75 million equity recapture agreement.

To the above almost $2 billion, Fiat contributed to Chrysler technology, architectures, powertrains (including a 1.4-liter engine built at our Trenton, Mich., facility), dealer networks –especially in Europe and Latin America — and management. It has been estimated by third parties the total value of that (both in terms of investments and time necessary to gain expertise in segments where Chrysler was not historically strong — i.e. mid and small segments — and access to overseas markets) could amount to between $6 billion and $8 billion.

Moreover, last May 24, Chrysler Group LLC (the new company created on June 10, 2009) did repay in full the loans it was given, six years early. In fact, the $6.6 billion payment provided an annual rate of return on the funds lent to Chrysler Group of almost 20 percent, which is a pretty attractive return.

“When Chrysler, the new company, says: We paid back every penny we borrowed — that is 100 percent correct,” said Ron Bloom, formerly a special assistant to President Obama, in an interview with Detroit radio personality Paul W. Smith.

The $1.3 billion “loss” most comments are referring to belongs to Old Carco (i.e. the Chrysler before June 10, 2009). It’s Old Carco that is responsible to pay, and not the “new” Chrysler Group LLC.

Since it was formed, Chrysler Group LLC has announced investments of more than $4.5 billion in the United States and Canada; added more than 9,400 jobs; launched 16 new or significantly refreshed vehicles in our first 19 months; and launched production of the all-new, C-segment Dodge Dart, which is being built in the United States using a Fiat-based architecture and fuel-efficient technology. Chrysler Group U.S. sales increased 26 percent, the largest percentage sales gain of any full-line manufacturer.

This is the truth in plain sight. All the rest is fiction, with a flavor of intellectual dishonesty.

Gualberto Ranieri

Auburn Hills, Mich.

The writer is head of communications for Chrysler Group LLC.

Wynn lose

To the editor:

I’ve been following the ongoing Wynn v. Okada dispute. It seems ironic that Steve Wynn is now questioning Mr. Okada about “misdeeds” when Mr. Wynn himself made a $135 million “donation” to a Macau school district.

While Mr. Wynn can certainly do what he wants with his money, he owes his billionaire status to Las Vegas and is enabled by its favorable tax climate. I think he showed poor judgment in giving an absurd amount of wealth to a foreign country’s school system instead of giving it to our own Clark County School District or UNLV.

Speaking of education, it makes one wonder if Mr. Wynn spells philanthropy “g-r-e-a-s-e.”

Ron Moers

Henderson

Good people

To the editor:

Over recent weeks, members of the Henderson Police Department have been crucified for the incident involving a man who was thought to be drunk but later found to be having a diabetic episode. Since I wasn’t there, I don’t have all the information, and neither do members of the media and the community as a whole. So I can’t speak to the events before, during and after the traffic stop.

What I can say is that I work with the men and women of the Henderson Police Department, and these individuals, including all of our officers on scene that night, are ordinary men and women doing an extraordinary job. They go to work and are expected to perform perfectly in imperfect situations. The decisions that they make are under a microscope and criticized down to the smallest detail — shoulda, coulda, woulda.

Yet, even in the face of the harshest critics, they still put on that badge every day and go out and perform a service knowing that the shift they are working could be their last.

I am proud to be a member of the Henderson Police Department, and I am proud to work with these fine people, both patrol and corrections officers.

Kim Kirwan

Henderson

Deadly penmanship

To the editor:

Monday’s Review-Journal included a column by Paul Harasim headlined “Doctors’ scrawling prompts fed action.” Mr. Harasim quotes a report by the Institute of Medicine which concluded that “around 98,000 people a year die of medical mistakes, many dying because pharmacists misread doctors’ scrawls and handed out the wrong medicine.”

Are they serious?

The much ballyhooed H1N1 influenza killed around 14,286 people worldwide, and it was categorized as a pandemic. Yet 98,000 people in the United States alone were killed by medical mistakes? With “many dying” because pharmacists couldn’t read a doctor’s handwriting? Would you guess 15 percent were due to bad penmanship?

That would be about the same number that H1N1 influenza killed worldwide. Wouldn’t that constitute a pandemic?

Sometimes, I think that people who publish “studies” make up the numbers. Don’t you agree?

David Adams

Las Vegas