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 10:12 AM, Dec 19, 2012 • By DANIEL HALPERThe American taxpayers stand to lose billions as General Motors today announced a plan to buy back 40 percent of the company owned by the federal government.
"The Detroit automaker said it will purchase 200 million shares of GM stock held by Treasury for $5.5 billion — or $27.50 per share — nearly $2 above the stock's closing price on Tuesday," the Detriot News reports.
However, the break even price — the price that GM would need to pay for each share in order to pay back the money the government put in to the company —was $53 a share. That number has now risen dramatically.
"As a result of GM’s buy back, the government has recovered about $28.6 billion of its $49.5 billion GM bailout, which means it will most likely lose billions when selling its remaining shares," MLive.com reports. "The government would need to sell its remaining shares at a price of $69.72 to break even. That’s up more than $15 from earlier this year, when the U.S. Treasury would have to sell its 500 million remaining shares at about $53 per share."
GM, or "Government Motors" as some critics have called it, has continually been ridiculed due to the government ownership, which was the result of the auto industry bailout that began under President George W. Bush in 2008 and was expanded by President Barack Obama in 2009.
The U.S. Treasury initiallyowned nearly 61 percent of GM as part of the auto bailout, which forced the automaker and crosstown rival Chrysler through a government-backed bankruptcy.
The Obama administration completely exited Chrysler last year after recovering $11.2 billion of its $12.5 billion bailout to the Auburn Hills-based automaker.
And who's footing the cost? The American taxpayer, of course.
9:00 AM, Nov 5, 2012 • By EDWARD NIEDERMEYERThe auto bailout debate, already a triumph of narrative over reality, took another turn for the absurd last week as both presidential campaigns exchanged salvos over what amounted to a misunderstanding about Chrysler's plan to build Jeeps in China.
Read more... 2:07 PM, Sep 4, 2012 • By DANIEL HALPERToday is the first day of the Democratic convention in Charlotte. Coincidentally, GM, the embattled car company that was bailed out by the federal government, has some good news to report.
Read more... Sep 10, 2012, Vol. 17, No. 48 • By STEPHEN F. HAYESIf you missed Paul Ryan’s speech at the Republican National Convention last week and tried to play catch-up the next morning, you could be forgiven for concluding that nothing the Wisconsin congressman said was true.
Twelve hours after the speech, Josh Marshall, editor of the liberal Talking Points Memo, popular among journalists, asked: “Will the Paul Ryan Lying Thing Break Through in the Mainstream Press?”
Um, yes. It would.
Read more... 11:24 AM, Aug 14, 2012 • By GEOFFREY NORMANNot so hot, it seems. First, there is the simple matter of costs.
The Treasury Department says in a new report the government expects to lose more than $25 billion on the $85 billion auto bailout. That's 15 percent higher than its previous forecast.
Read more... 1:27 PM, Jun 5, 2012 • By DANIEL HALPERMitt Romney maintains that "President Barack Obama is holding on to the government's stake in General Motors to avoid an embarrassing financial loss before the election, and says he'd sell the stock quickly if he wins the White House," according to the Detroit News, which recently interviewed the Republican presidential candidate.
Read more... 1:01 PM, May 17, 2012 • By DANIEL HALPERSpeaking in Ohio, Vice President Joe Biden admitted that auto workers lost jobs because of actions taken by the Obama administration:
Read more... 3:00 PM, May 3, 2012 • By DANIEL HALPERThe Detroit Free Press reports that “General Motors made $1 billion in the first quarter, beating analysts’ expectations before being dragged down by a special accounting-related $590-million charge in struggling Europe.”
Read more... 2:56 PM, Aug 18, 2011 • By JONATHAN V. LAST
Just to close the loop on President Obama’s claim that GM is “now making a profit for the first time in decades,” reader D.B. sent along GM profit-loss statements from 1990 to 2000.
Read more... 5:21 PM, Aug 17, 2011 • By JONATHAN V. LAST
Yesterday I pointed to President Obama’s alarmingly statist “reasonable” view of his government’s handling of Chrysler and GM. But in focusing on Obama’s ideology, I missed the bigger story. To refresh, here’s what Obama said:
Read more... 12:15 PM, Jun 28, 2011 • By MARK HEMINGWAYContrary to what you're hearing out of Detroit, the auto manufacturing business in the U.S. isn't so bad. That's because foreign auto company plants, mostly in the South, are thriving. This is largely because such plants are free from the union albatross that hangs around the neck of the big three auto manufacturers.
As it stands now, the American workers in these foreign auto plants are extremely happy with their jobs, observes this Bloomberg report:
Read more... The Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf are selling like . . . electric cars.11:19 AM, Mar 4, 2011 • By JONATHAN V. LASTHey everybody--it's the Age of the Electric Car! Sales numbers for the Chevy Volt are out and you'll never guess how many of these future machines consumers gobbled up in the month of February. Go ahead and try. I'll wait.
Read more... 2:54 PM, Nov 16, 2010 • By MICHAEL WARRENThe automobile magazine Motor Trend has awarded the Obama-approved, government-subsidized Chevrolet Volt its annual "Car of the Year" appellation, reports MSNBC:
Motor Trend says the Volt has some of the most advanced engineering ever seen in an American car. The Volt can run up to 50 miles in pure electric mode before a backup gas engine kicks in to give it more range.
Read more...
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