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Monday, the U.S. Treasury Department sold off its remaining shares in General Motors (NYSE: GM), closing a chapter of the auto industry bailout with a cringe-worthy $10.5 billion loss of taxpayer dollars.
The federal government spent $49.5 billion to save the doomed auto-making giant in 2008. It took on about 912 million GM shares (a 60% stake) in exchange for cash.
In 2009, GM went through bankruptcy, and stockholders' investments disintegrated.
Over the course of the last five years, the government recovered $39 billion on the GM bailout - culminating in a loss to the tune of $10.5 billion.
The numbers are being reported as a success by the administration and media outlets. Michigan-based think tank The Center for Automotive Research issued a report on Monday indicating that if GM had been allowed to go under, almost 1.9 million jobs would have been lost in 2009 and 2010, along with billions in tax revenue going toward unemployment benefits and food stamps.
"The government should never have bailed out GM in the first place. Any other investor would consider that a 21.21% loss," Money Morning's Chief Investment Strategist Keith Fitz-Gerald said.
The sad state of the matter is, taxpayers are given no option to "opt out" of giving their hard-earned money to a policy - or a company - they might not believe in.
Remember in 2008 when the "Big 3" chief executive officers of GM, Chrysler, and Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) went to Washington to ask for billions in bailout money, each flying in on big corporate jets? That didn't exactly inspire sympathy or confidence from U.S. taxpayers.
Nonetheless, taxpayers had no choice. Five years later, the government has spent $80 billion on bailing out the automotive industry.
It wants people to believe the bailout was a success, but this is a political success - and an economic failure.
"Any company can be kept on life support with enough taxpayer backing," Fitz-Gerald pointed out. "Ultimately, it hurts taxpayers and our economy."
The Bailout Era
Historically, private industry has meant private gains and private losses.
The United States has seen failed institutions that made shoddy products, or overextended themselves, or had incompetent management, in abundance through its history. And the government was not in the business of creating jobs; instead, it created a healthy private sector environment which, in turn, created jobs.
Not so anymore...
10 Billion chump change for the government. Wars are a terrible waste of money, fact of the matter is GM/Chrysler bailout was a huge success and is creating more tax revenue than 10 billion dollars. BTW I am in the auto industry and the way the Bankruptcy was managed could not have been better. GM cutting brands and Chrysler merging with Fiat could not have been more brilliant. The person in charge of these decisions knew the industry perfectly and could not have made wiser decisions.