Here are the raw numbers of the auto industry bailout as of Wednesday May 30 2012:
$79.69 billion was directly outlaid by the government.
$35.18 billion was already returned.
$37.14 is still outstanding.
$7.37 billion was written off as a loss.
$45 billion was a special tax subsidy (aside from the direct bailout) that GM got; a perk that no other firms benefits after filing for bankruptcy.
Add up the written-off money; the outstanding funds and the special subsidy, and tax payers are down by $89.51 billion on the Auto Industry Bailout.
How much or how little is $89 billion in the Auto Industry?
Well…
$41.2 billion is GM’s Market Cap as of Thursday May 31st in the afternoon.
Only $10.4 billion of it (26.5%) is owed by the US Government.
$7.6 billion was GM’s profit for 2011; its best year in over a decade.
So even if you cash-in GM’s full Market Capitalization and it’s confiscated by the Government, taxpayers will still be in a minus on the auto bailout even if you ignore the sweet-heart tax deal that Obama gave for GM.
I am not sure how all those numbers add up to using the term “success” next to the words “auto bailout,” certainly when you consider that the non-Bailed out Ford Motors Co. generated $8.8 billion profit in 2011 without all this hassle.
P.S. the above losses include the $1.3 billion written off in the Chrysler bailout (sorry “investment”),which is another “success” in itself: The firm had only $183M profit in 2011 and lost $763M in 2010.
