this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2026
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Well, it was $79.7B to be exact. And what the US government did with that was not cut checks, but rather, purchased stock in the companies.
When it sold the stock it bought from manufacturers, it sold for around $70B. When they sold the approximately $2.4B invested into Ally (an auto financing firm), it sold for $17.2B.
So the money spent in 2008 actually made a profit. It was not distributed to the manufacturers or finance companies at all. Just used to shore up their value to prevent them from going out of business – and more importantly, probably, make sure investors didn't lose money, or at least not too much.
oh, touche! but that was only after 2008, and not including previous bailouts to Ford. Then, every state, everywhere is paying to either get or keep assembly plants but that does not factor into your selective math.
When you take into account inflation and the overall market gains over that time, they absolutely did not make their money back.
When you take into account that the original assertion was tht eighty billion was given to the auto manufacturers, I don't think my comment deserves the reaction it got, not a reply like yours.
Would you rather they ended up with zero dollars?
Yes.
The only terms under which I could potential accept tax money being used to save a company from a collapse leading to massive layoffs, is if the resulting company is also made entirely employee owned.
Well, that's not how it would happen and you know it.