Admitting It

Burt Likko 6 Comments

I said that giving billions of dollars to General Motors was wrong.  I said it was lighting the money on fire, we’d never see it back again, and it was being used to keep a dinosaur alive.

While I’m not quite ready to retract the dinosaur remark, I am very glad to have been proven wrong about getting the money back.  Over eight billion government dollars are being paid back by GM today and GM plans to sell new stock to repurchase the equity currently held by the American and Canadian governments.  Five years ahead of schedule — aided, perhaps, by the fact that GM’s cars, for all their faults, at least have properly-functioning brakes.

TARP money continues to come back in, too — not all of it, but a healthy fraction.  And at a reasonable profit, to boot.  So that’s a more than acceptable result from this cynic’s perspective.

Burt Likko

Pseudonymous Portlander. Homebrewer. Atheist. Recovering litigator. Recovering Republican. Recovering Catholic. Recovering divorcé. Recovering Former Editor-in-Chief of Ordinary Times. House Likko's Words: Scite Verum. Colite Iusticia. Vivere Con Gaudium.

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6 Comments

  1. That's pretty much where I'm at as well at this point. It remains to be seen whether and when GM pays off the remaining elements (which are the lion's share) of its bailout, but it's certainly doing better than I would have expected. As it turns out, I even wound up surprising myself by buying a Chevy this winter when the lease ran out on my Honda. We didn't even want to look at Chevies but stopped in at the dealership to kill a few minutes of time and were shocked by how quickly we fell in love with the Equinox – plenty of cargo space, 32 mpg (and it's not even a hybrid CUV), nice interior, and an even nicer price point (the financing programs left a lot to be desired, unfortunately, but that's a separate issue).None of the other CUVs we looked at came even close. And, like I said, we hadn't even planned on looking at Chevy.

  2. Very cool of you to step up and blurt out the truth that way. I always admire that in you.

  3. That last comment from dinahbee appeared to be spam so I deleted it.

  4. General Motors used bailout money to pay back the federal government.It isn't from earnings. It's actually from another TARP money that they've already received.

  5. So what? We're talking about money the government gave GM, and which GM is now giving back.

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