epitome

On December 19, 2008, a week after Republicans in the Senate had killed a bailout bill proposed by Democrats, saying it didn’t impose big enough wage cuts on the U.A.W., Bush unilaterally agreed to lend $17.4 billion of taxpayers’ money to General Motors and Chrysler, of which $13.4 billion was to be extended immediately. He had to twist the law to get the money. Deprived of congressional funding, he diverted cash from the loathed TARP program, which Congress had already passed, but which was supposed to be restricted to rescuing the banks. “I didn’t want there to twenty-one-per-cent unemployment,” he said to a meeting of the National Automobile Dealers Association in Las Vegas last month, explaining why he acted as he did. “I didn’t want history to look back and say, ‘Bush could have done something but chose not to do it.’ ”

Whoops

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blog...to-makers.html

So risk $17.4 billion already out there or get them back on their feet and work on getting that money back?

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-me...-says-auto-co/

GM still has about a $25 billion liability to taxpayers and our equity in the company is worth half that right now. GM was number 1 in the world in auto sales in 2011 though... some of that thanks to the earthquake in Japan, but the company is still strong again.

So the rough math in my head says that if we liquidated our GM holdings out of close to $90 billion about $15 billion or so would be lost if we backed out today. Meanwhile 2 of the 3 companies in the largest manufacturing segment in our economy didn't go under.