The New York Times is out with a report that the Fed has approved GMAC’s application to become a bank. So you can add several more billion dollars to the Detroit bailout commitment as GMAC will now be able to tap the TARP.

The anomalies just keep getting stranger and stranger as this moves on. Think about it for a minute. Cerberus, a reputedly flush private equity firm, currently has a majority stake in GMAC. So, its going to be on the receiving end of a lot of money from the government but at the same time, as reported in the WSJ, Cerberus has notified its investors that it is suspending their withdrawal requests. The tax payer bails out one of their investments and they stiff their investors. It’s a wonderful, wacky world.

Note: I have been aching to use the Cerberus image. Finally a chance. If you aren’t familiar with the myth, here is a Wikipedia link. According to one Calculated Risk, one of the heads of the dog is used to “make sure that money doesn’t escape from money hell.”