Louis Woodhill Writing at Forbes:
President Obama is proud of his bailout of General Motors. That’s good, because, if he wins a second term, he is probably going to have to bail GM out again. The company is once again losing market share, and it seems unable to develop products that are truly competitive in the U.S. market.
Right now, the federal government owns 500,000,000 shares of GM, or about 26% of the company. It would need to get about $53.00/share for these to break even on the bailout, but the stock closed at only $20.21/share on Tuesday. This left the government holding $10.1 billion worth of stock, and sitting on an unrealized loss of $16.4 billion.
I’m shocked — SHOCKED — that the company that was about to go bankrupt and was saved by the unlawful use of taxpayer money would be in this position yet again. The problem (among other things) is they weren’t allowed to fail. A business that can’t stay in business does not deserve to be in business. End of story.