The three-headed dog that ate America or (Buy a Chrysler and help support child sex slavery)?

Cerberus (ˈsɜːbərəs)
— n
1. Greek myth a dog, usually represented as having three heads, that guarded the entrance to Hades
2. a sop to Cerberus a bribe or something given to propitiate a potential source of danger or problems
3. a private investment firm headquarted at 299 Park Avenue, New York City.

Most of us have heard of this three headed dog guarding the gates of hell before. He obviously isn't there to keep souls from entering through the gates. He is there of course to keep them from escaping. Some may have even heard the phrase of "giving a sop to Cerberus" before; meaning, to bribe. What a great symbol and name for an investment company, don't ya think? Well, somebody did.

Cerberus Capital Management, L.P. was founded in 1992 by Steve Feinberg, has John W. Snow (aka-73rd U.S. Secretary of the Treasury) as chairman and uses Dan (I can't spell potato) Quayle (aka- 44th VP of U.S.) as it's mouth piece. According to BusinessWeek, in 2005 Cerberus controlled companies earning over $30 billion in annual sales, making it bigger than Coke, McDonalds and Cisco with a larger payroll than Exxon.

John W. Snow is a person of great interest here. Snow became CEO of CSX Transportation in 1985 which just posted (Oct 12, 2010) record 3rd quarter earnings of $414 million. I'm sure Snow could have nothing to do with this record though, because in December of 2002 he sold CSX to another private equity firm, the Carlyle Group for $300 million. In hindsight, the Carlyle Group made a pretty decent bit of change on that one. It probably didn't hurt that former president George H. W. Bush was a Senior Advisor for Carlyle, former Secretary of the State- James Baker III  was a Senior Counselor for Carlyle, former British Prime Minister- John Major was a Chairman for Carlyle, and that former secretary of the defense- Frank Carlucci was Chairman and Chairman Emeritus at Carlyle at the time of the sale. So less than a month after selling his company to the president's dad's company, John W. Snow resigned as chairman at CSX so that the president could make him our new Secretary of the Treasury in January of 2003. Fishy? Nah, just business as usual, right?

I'm sure that John W. Snow did some wonderful things as Secretary of Treasury from 2003 to 2006 but that is not really the point of my story. I'm more interested in what he did after his position there. Snow resigned as Treasury Secretary on July 3, 2006 and was replaced by Henry Paulson, ex-CEO of another private equity firm- Goldman Sachs. Snow wasn't out of work for long. On October 19, 2006 Snow became chairman of Cerberus.

In April of 2006 Cerberus purchased majority shares of General Motors Acceptance Corp (GMAC) for $14 billion. Oh, the irony. Yes, the same GMAC you may have heard of recently due to their questionable mortgage foreclosure practices. The same GMAC that is being investigated for mortgage fraud. That's right, the mortgage holder, not the borrower is being investigated. What an automotive company needs its own bank for & what that bank is doing messing with people's mortgages is beyond my simple perspective on things I guess. Yes, the same GMAC that provided financing to GM auto dealers and customers. The same GMAC that was part of GM that was bailed out by Bush & Paulson in 2008. The same GMAC that has recently changed it's name to Ally Financial and is now majority owned by the U.S. Government. Confusing isn't it? It's meant to be.

With John Snow as Chairman, Cerberus returned the control of Chrysler to American soil by purchasing 80% of DaimlerChrysler in May of 2007. God bless Amerika. Did anyone know that one private equity firm owned the majority of the both American icons of industry at the time they were bailed out, against our will by us, we the people? As was GM, Chrysler was on the verge of bankruptcy and rescued by their savior, the 3-headed dog keeping us all trapped in hell, Cerberus.

Why would they purchase these collapsing giants you might ask? Well it seems it worked out pretty well for them. GM & Chrysler & therefore, actually Cerberus got handed quite a bit of tax payer money at the end of 2008 and early 2009 to puff these giants back up. And we all thought we were bailing out the auto industry. It turns out, it was just another bank bailout. Man we are suckers. Speaking of which, I love how Obama gets blamed for the auto industry bailout, I am pretty sure Bush & Cheney were still desecrating the White House in December of 2008 when it all actually started.

Cerberus has since gone on to purchase another icon of American industry, DynCorp in April of 2010. No?  Trust me they are an icon of one of Americas greatest industries- raping, killing and blowing shit up. Don't ring any bells, huh? Remember the American mercenaries raided by the 48th Military Police Detachment in Bosnia back in 1999 and charged with using 12-15 year olds as sex slaves? Yes, working for us, the tax payers. DynCorp gets 96% of its business from us. DynCorp, Halliburton's KBR & many others have a powerful lobby and have fought hard to allow us to keep up the human trafficking and child-sex slavery. Yes us. We pay for it, we just don't know it evidently. Heck, they just made a movie about it called The Whistleblower. It's not surprising if you haven't heard of them though.

“We try to hide religiously...If anyone at Cerberus has his picture in the paper and a picture of his apartment, we will do more than fire that person. We will kill him. The jail sentence will be worth it.” -Steve Feinberg

So what are we to make of all this? Just more business as usual, right? Boys will be boys. Corporate & government corruption is nothing new, right? Seriously, it is disgusting what We The People pay for every day with our tax dollars. It is just as disgusting to bury our heads in the sand like the three monkeys that can hear, see and speak no evil while the three headed dog laughs like a hyena and steals our souls. But, in reality what can we do? Aren't we just slaves too; Forced to find a way to keep up our payments to the likes of GMAC or they will rip away our homes? I don't know. But, I think we first need to unplug our ears, open our eyes and open our mouths if we are ever to escape. Maybe then we can find Orpheus.