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U.S. Lost $11.2 Billion in GM Bailout, TARP Report Says
The U.S. Treasury’s bailout fund lost $11.2 billion on the rescue of General Motors Co. with the government’s exit of the largest U.S. automaker, a report said. (Daniel Acker/Bloomberg)
(Bloomberg) — The U.S. Treasury’s bailout fund lost $11.2 billion on the rescue of General Motors Co. (GM) with the government’s exit of the largest U.S. automaker, a report said.
The total includes $826 million that the Treasury wrote off in March for its remaining claim in old GM, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program said in a report to Congress yesterday. In December, the government had put the loss at about $10.5 billion on its $49.5 billion investment.
The Treasury sold its remaining shares in GM in December, signaling the end of Government Motors, as the Detroit-based automaker was derisively labeled by some critics after the U.S. government stepped in with emergency funding in 2008. Bailouts from the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations helped GM avoid liquidation and reorganize in a 2009 bankruptcy that has given new life to the company.
“The goal of Treasury’s investment in GM was never to make a profit, but to help save the American auto industry, and by any measure that effort was successful,” Adam Hodge, a Treasury spokesman, said in an e-mail yesterday.
