TARP: Now Protecting Jobs In Brazil!
The American taxpayer is now providing a nice boost to Brazil, thanks to the TARP payment we made to one of the Big Three welfare mothers, uh, automakers. Russ Dalen writes for the Latin-American Herald Trib:

SAO PAULO -- General Motors plans to invest $1 billion in Brazil to avoid the kind of problems the U.S. automaker is facing in its home market, said the beleaguered car maker.

According to the president of GM Brazil-Mercosur, Jaime Ardila, the funding will come from the package of financial aid that the manufacturer will receive from the U.S. government and will be used to "complete the renovation of the line of products up to 2012."

...For Ardila, the injection in Brazil's automobile sector of 8 billion reais ($3.51 billion) recently announced by the federal and state governments of Sao Paulo "has already begun to revive sales," which fell by 12% in October.

Warms the cockles of my heart -- which is great, because pretty soon I'm going to have to keep warm by burning all the letters from American newspapers letting me know they'll soon be closing their doors.

via Robert W