(Geoffrey Lawrence/NPRI) – President Obama has remained proud of his purported success in bailing out General Motors. In fact, he’s so proud that, just days ago, he told supporters in Colorado that he wanted to bail out “every industry” just like he did with the automotive industry.
And now, after this stunning pronouncement, it’s becoming clear that GM is again headed toward bankruptcy. This time, however, American taxpayers will be left holding around 500,000,000 shares. As reported by Forbes, the price of a GM share closed at $20.21 this week as consumers continue to favor GM’s competitors in the automotive industry.
In order for taxpayers to break even on the 2009 bailout, the government would need to get $53.00 per share. It is now sitting on an unrealized loss of $16.4 billion.
To put this another way, GM is now worth 39 percent lessthan it was just two years ago. Its share of the U.S. car and truck market has fallen to 18.0 percent in 2012, down from 20.0 percent last year and 48.3 percent in the 1960s.
This is the type of success that the Obama Administration wants to expand to “every industry?”
What’s truly scary is that the Administration likely wouldn’t tolerate the political fallout of allowing GM to fail after its 2009 bailout and, therefore, is likely to offer the company a second bailout package if still in office.
Public bailouts are quickly becoming the gift that keeps on giving for GM.
At some point, don’t we have to consider that America’s largest rent-seekers are just “too big to bail out?”
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