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Automaker loans to be part of bailout

WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 (UPI) -- Billions of dollars in loans slated for U.S. automakers seem likely to go through as Congress moves to bail out the banking industry, industry players say.

Lobbyists for the auto industry, including the chief executives of General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co., fanned out across Washington this week as the White House and congressional leaders crafted a plan to rescue teetering Wall Street institutions caught in a liquidity crisis, The Detroit News reported Saturday.

Their efforts appear to have paid off, with industry analysts telling the News it now seems likely the $25 billion in low-cost loans promised to the auto industry as part of last year's Energy Independence and Security Act will be funded as part of a massive bailout planned for the banking industry.

That belief helped buoy GM stock, which on Friday soared nearly 15 percent to $13.08.

"What's $25 billion when you've got $500 billion on the line?" analyst Joe Phillippi of AutoTrends Consulting Inc. told the newspaper. "The automakers were in line first. This is going to tend to increase the pressure on Congress to get cracking."

Three men dominate U.S. bailout plan

WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 (UPI) -- A dealmaker, a professor and a veteran public servant together are making the decisions in a high-stakes Wall Street bailout plan, a newspaper analysis says.

The close collaboration between dealmaker Henry Paulson, the U.S. Treasury secretary, professor Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, and civil servant Timothy Geithner, president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, is unusual, The Washington Post reported Saturday.

The three have spent most of their careers in entirely different worlds and hardly knew each other before beginning their current jobs. Now they are working together to produce a massive plan to rescue the U.S. financial establishment from its biggest crisis since the 1930s.

"The biggest thing is we are not competing with each other, we are working together," Paulson told the Post. "I would say they have done so much to help me, and I would do anything to help them."

Their close partnership, which has drawn the independent Fed into unprecedented collaboration with political authorities while exposing tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to risk, represents a dangerous concentration of power into a few hands, congressional critics say.

Ford must pay $75K in disability case

NASHVILLE, Sept. 20 (UPI) -- Ford Motor Credit Co. must pay a disabled Tennessee employee $75,000 for disclosing private medical information about the worker, a federal judge has ruled.

The unnamed Nashville employee sued the company under the provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act, saying a supervisor revealed private medical information that resulted in workplace chatter about the worker, The Nashville Tennessean reported Saturday.

According to the lawsuit, the Ford supervisor disclosed the information to co-workers, and the employee learned in April 2005 that news about his health had been spread around the company, the newspaper said.

Report: Chrysler to unveil electric car

AUBURN HILLS, Mich., Sept. 20 (UPI) -- Detroit automaker Chrysler, facing bankruptcy speculation and criticism for a lack of exciting products, will unveil an electric car next week, sources say.

Chrysler dealers from around the United States plan to flock to movie theaters Tuesday to watch a presentation from the company's Auburn Hills, Mich., headquarters that will include a new electric car, The Detroit Free Press reported Saturday.

The newspaper said the surprise move seems designed to generate a buzz of hope around Chrysler, which, after going private last year, has drawn a veil of secrecy around its finances and its product development.

"I think what they want to do is be able to sort of give a state of the state and a confidence-building message," Bill Golling of Golling Chrysler Jeep Dodge in Bloomfield Hills told the Free Press.

Industry sources say the automaker began showing select dealers three "post-prototype" electric cars recently. The move comes one week after General Motors Corp. revealed its electric-drive Chevrolet Volt, which is expected to be ready by late 2010.