Ford which is smaller than GM and did not get a bailout, is doing almost as good in producing net profit as GM which received a bailout of which the government is still down billions of dollars (certainly when you include the special $45 billion tax write off):
GM Q4 2011 – $N/A = Ford $1.1B
GM Q3 2011 – $1.7B = Ford $1.6B
GM Q2 2011 – $2.5B = Ford $2.4B
GM Q1 2011 – $3.2B = Ford $2.6B
AP Via the Blaze: A government watchdog says U.S. taxpayers are still owed $132.9 billion that companies haven’t repaid from the financial bailout, and some of that will never be recovered.
The bailout launched at the height of the financial crisis in September 2008 will continue to exist for years, says a report issued Thursday by Christy Romero, the acting special inspector general for the $700 billion bailout. Some bailout programs, such as the effort to help homeowners avoid foreclosure by reducing mortgage payments, will last as late as 2017, costing the government an additional $51 billion or so.
The gyrating stock market has slowed the Treasury Department’s efforts to sell off its stakes in 458 bailed-out companies, the report says. They include insurer American International Group Inc., General Motors Co. and Ally Financial Inc.
If Treasury plans to sell its stock in the three companies at or above the price where taxpayers would break even on their investment — $28.73 a share for AIG, $53.98 for GM — it may take a long time for the market to rebound to that level, the report says. AIG’s shares closed Wednesday at $25.31, while GM ended at $24.92. Ally isn’t publicly traded.
Boston Globe Reports: Organizers of the effort to recall Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker from office said Monday they have collected 300,000 signatures, more than half of what is needed to force an election.
The United Wisconsin coalition needs 540,208 signatures by Jan. 17 to force a recall election sometime in 2012. They reported Monday that over half the number needed had been collected in just 12 days, with signatures coming in from all 72 Wisconsin counties.
The recall drive was motivated by anger over Walker’s proposal effectively ending collective bargaining rights for most public workers. The law passed in March despite massive protests and the fleeing of all 14 Democratic state senators to Illinois for three weeks.
Organizers’ signature counts can’t be independently verified. The petitions won’t be submitted for verification before organizers have gathered more than the required total of signatures.
United Wisconsin did not report how many signatures had been collected for the recall of Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, but a spokeswoman for the group said the totals were close.
Walker has already moved into campaign mode assuming the necessary signatures will be collected. He has released two television ads to counter the recall effort. The national conservative group Americans for Prosperity has also hit the airwaves in support.
Walker has defended the collective bargaining changes, and other moves such as cutting public education aid, as necessary to bring the state’s budget back into balance at a time when it faced a $3.6 billion shortfall.
Ben Sparks, a spokesman for the Wisconsin Republican Party, called the recall effort “a baseless partisan power-grab being pushed on Wisconsin families by liberal special interests.”
“We remain focused on Governor Walker’s common-sense reforms that have laid the ground work for economic growth, and our economy only continues to improve,” Sparks said in a written statement.
Anger spurred nine state Senate recall elections this summer targeting six Republican and three Democratic incumbents. Two Republicans lost, leaving them with a slim one-vote majority in the Senate.
Petitions are also circulating against four more Republican incumbents, setting up the possibility of more recall elections next year that could give Democrats control of the Senate.
The earliest a Walker recall could be held, assuming enough petitions have been collected, would be March 27.
Shikha Dalmia at Reason Reports: The Treasury Department yesterday revised its loss estimate for the Government Motors bailout from $14.33 billion to $23.6 billion, thanks to the company’s sinking stock price. GM’s Sept. 30 closing price, on which the new estimate is based, was $20.18, about $13 less than its December IPO price and $35 less than what is needed for taxpayers to break even.
The $23.6 billion represents a 25 percent loss on the feds $60 billion direct “investment” in GM. But that’s not all that taxpayers are on the hook for. As I explained previously, Uncle Sam’s special GM bankruptcy package allowed the company to write off $45 billion in previous losses going forward. This could work out to as much as $15 billion in tax savings that GM wouldn’t have had had it gone through a normal bankruptcy. Why? Because after bankruptcy, the tax liabilities of companies increase since they have no more losses to write off.
This means that the total hit to taxpayers, who still own about a quarter of the company, could add up to $38.6 billion. That’s even more that the $34 billion on the outside I had predicted in May.
Although GM will never, ever make taxpayers whole, taxpayer losses could be mitigated if GM’s stock price rises before the Treasury sells its remaining equity, something it was supposed to do by year-end but has postponed under the circumstances.
Wanting to take credit for bailing out his Union Buddies, em “the auto industry,” Dem Senator and Majority Leader Harry Reid said, “If it had been up to them [Republicans], General Motors would be gone. If it were up to them, Ford Motor Company would probably be gone. Chrysler definitely would be gone.”
Well, oops. Everyone knows Ford didn’t take bailout money, and they still survived. This proves that the Auto Industry could have survived without the bailouts. It was mostly the union contracts, benefits funds and pension plans that needed and got the bailout. Not the Industry to continue, as we see Ford is outsthining GM and Chrysler for the longest time – WITHOUT the huge bailouts.
