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General Motors agreed to buy back $5 billion in stock by the end of next year as part of a plan to return more cash to shareholders. In return, an activist shareholder decided to drop a potentially divisive bid for a seat on the company’s board. The move, announced Monday, is part of a deal with Harry Wilson, a former member of the government task force that restructured GM coming out of its 2009 bankruptcy.Wilson, who represents four hedge funds which own about 2 percent of the company, had previously accused GM of hoarding cash to the detriment of shareholders...

Peter Flaherty, president of the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC), today posed key questions to the General Motors leadership at a National Press Club press conference, including whether the company will repay to taxpayers the $10 billion direct cost of the GM bailout. News that the U.S. Treasury Department has sold its remaining stake and that Mary Barra will take over as GM's new CEO have put the spotlight on the company and its future. GM executives have pointed to GM's $26.8 billion in cash as evidence of its improved financial position. Analysts have raised the possibility that the...

Washington’s $49.5 billion bailout of General Motors saved at least 1.2 million jobs, protected hundreds of thousands of pensions and earned about $40 billion in tax collections, turning what some have dubbed a poor investment into a whopping bang for Uncle Sam, according to a new report. The bottom line, according to the Center for Automotive Research study heralded by GM: When the full picture of what was at stake is considered, including the potential for millions to be put out of work, the government actually made out big time. And when bailed-out Chrysler is included, the study found that...

A government watchdog says U.S. taxpayers stand to lose $27 billion from the 2008 financial bailout, up from an estimate of $22 billion made in the fall. A report issued Wednesday by the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program says the estimate is higher because of increased losses for the Treasury Department on sales of shares in bailed-out companies. Ally Financial, the former financial arm for General Motors, still owes $14.6 billion of the $17.2 billion in aid it received. The report says taxpayers can expect to lose $5.5 billion on that investment because of the company's...

Administration puts an expensive end to a disgraceful episodeGeneral Motors will no longer be “Government Motors.” The Treasury Department on Wednesday announced its intention to liquidate federal holdings in the automobile company over the next 15 months. The final tally will show this policy has been a disaster for taxpayers. Under the best case scenario, the public will wind up shelling out more than $13 billion by the close of this unfortunate episode. Though President Obama has portrayed the GM bailout as saving Detroit, it was really a reward for the auto unions. It was a celebration of bad management...

From the “how’s that for irony” file comes a report that the judge that signed off on the GM bailout has been having second thoughts, because — surprise, surprise, surprise — he wasn’t informed about part of the deal. The Washington Free Beacon reports: As GM teetered on the edge of bankruptcy in June 2009, it cut a $367 million “lock-up agreement” with several major creditors in order to prevent its Canadian subsidiary from going under. The move spared the subsidiary from fulfilling the $1 billion debt it owed the creditors—major hedge funds—ensuring that GM would not have to face...

As the Obama campaign continues to tout the GM bailout as an industrial policy success, the Treasury Department continues to revise upward the staggering losses inflicted on U.S. taxpayers. On the day Government Motors, aka GM, announced it was recalling at least 38,000 of its vehicles — Impalas used by police nationwide and in Canada — due to a crash risk, a new Treasury report said it now expects to lose $25 billion on the bailout, $3.3 billion more than forecast earlier. As the Detroit News reported, this loss was based on GM's stock price at the time of the...

Mitt Romney maintains that "President Barack Obama is holding on to the government's stake in General Motors to avoid an embarrassing financial loss before the election, and says he'd sell the stock quickly if he wins the White House," according to the Detroit News, which recently interviewed the Republican presidential candidate. "There is no reason for the government to continue to hold (its GM stake)," Romney tells the news outlet. "The president is delaying the sale of the shares to try and avoid the story that the taxpayer took another loss. I would get the company independent from the government...

Would you hire President Obama as your financial adviser? Three years ago his administration invested more than $100 billion in taxpayer money to bail out General Motors. On Tuesday, the entire company, not just what the government owns, was worth less than $34 billion. By anyone’s definition, that investment is a glaring failure. Yet over the last few days the Obama campaign, in a $25 million marketing blitz, has flooded the airwaves with ads in battleground states, claiming the bailout should be counted a rousing success. Unfortunately, assertions that “all loans have been repaid to the federal government,” that the...

GM announced plans to build the new 2013 Cadillac XTS luxury sedan [in China].

Obama: 'U.S. auto industry is back' By: Donovan Slack January 31, 2012 04:24 PM EST President Barack Obama took a victory lap of sorts at the Washington Auto Show Tuesday, hitting what is sure to be a key issue in his reelection bid: the auto industry bailout. The president viewed more than a dozen new electric and hybrid models from Ford, Dodge and General Motors, and even sat in the drivers seat of a few, checking out the interiors. “When you look at all these cars, it is a testimony to the outstanding work that’s been done by workers, American...

Back during the days of General Motors' bankruptcy proceedings, media reports cited the many "sacrifices" made by the politically favored UAW. I have long wondered what these many sacrifices were, as UAW members seem to be doing pretty well since the GM bankruptcy. One such "sacrifice" was a supposed agreement that the UAW could not go on strike at GM until after 2015, as mentioned in this Bloomberg piece, and accepted as fact by all media sources. I questioned this assertion in a piece I wrote in December of 2010 , but as has been the case with much...

New emails obtained by The Daily Caller contradict claims by the Obama administration that the Treasury Department would avoid “intervening in the day-to-day management” of General Motors post-auto bailout. These messages reveal that Treasury officials were involved in decision-making that led to more than 20,000 non-union workers losing their pensions. (General Motors not eager to be political talking point in 2012) Republican Reps. Dan Burton and Mike Turner say that during the GM bailout, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner decided to cut pensions for salaried non-union employees at Delphi, a GM spinoff, to expedite GM’s emergence from bankruptcy. At a Wednesday...

DETROIT, Nov 20 (Reuters) - United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger said on Thursday that lawmakers need to take immediate action on a $25 billion bridge loan bill to support the U.S. automakers or one or more could fail. Gettelfinger, who testified on Tuesday and Wednesday to U.S. congressional committees in support of the loans, said he would not comment on a possible compromise bill reached by Democratic and Republican senators until details were known. When told that one detail might be that the automakers would have to provide a strategic plan to get access to the money, Gettelfinger said...

<p>Dec. 19 (Bloomberg) -- General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC will get $13.4 billion in government loans to keep operating in exchange for a restructuring under a rescue plan that President George W. Bush will announce this morning.</p> <p>The money will be drawn from the Troubled Asset Relief Program and the automakers will get an additional $4 billion from the fund in February, according to a statement from the Bush administration. The money would allow GM and Chrysler to keep operating until March.</p>

ReasonTV — April 30, 2010 — General Motors CEO Ed Whitacre has bragged in TV commercials and newspaper columns that GM has paid back its bailout "in full and ahead of schedule." As with the Pontiac Aztek, an ugly exterior masks an ever darker problem: Whitacre is being fanciful to the point of deceit. GM received $50 billion in TARP funds (never mind that TARP was only supposed to cover financial institutions). About $7 billion of that came in the form of a straight-up, low-interest loan. And about $13 billion came in the form of an escrow account. So how...

Obama says auto bailouts have paid off Photo 6:09am EDT By Steve Holland ASHEVILLE, North Carolina (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Saturday taxpayer-funded bailouts of the auto industry that he approved had paid off, in what amounted to a rejection of conservative arguments against such government help. In his weekly radio and Web address, Obama kept up the pressure for an overhaul of U.S. financial regulations, saying the promising news from the auto industry had not reduced the need for Wall Street changes. Government bailouts of Wall Street, begun by then-President George W. Bush in 2008 and continued...

The ads are running at least once per hour on all of the major network, cable, and satellite TV outlets. General Motors claims it has repaid its bailout from the taxpayers in full. Only one big problem stands in the way of this grand announcement being taken seriously. It is simply not true. Through a deft sleight of hand technique, the automaker used taxpayer bailout funds it had stored in a separate account to repay its loan from the taxpayers. Simply put, GM used bailout money to pay back bailout money, and then claimed it had 'repaid its loan from...

GM Summary: GM is still Government Motors. The US Government converted $45.3 billion in loans to a 70% ownership position. The Canadian Government converted an $8.1 billion stake into 12% ownership. GM lost $3.4 billion in the 4th quarter of 2009. GM still has $15 billion in debt. GM has $27 billion in unfunded pension liabilities. Until GM IPOs we will not know an approximation of taxpayer losses. Moreover, those losses do not include the pension time bomb. With GM still losing money on top of all those issues why did GM repay TARP? The likely answer is to get...

If you want to drive something dependable and long-lasting, steer clear of these vehicles. With a 22% improvement in sales last month, and despite the six-month, $4.3 billion loss it announced Wednesday, General Motors is likely to have its strongest spring and summer in years. Plus, the automaker had critically acclaimed new products at the recent New York Auto Show and the much-anticipated Chevrolet Volt is due out this fall. More from Forbes.com: • In Depth: Worst-Made Cars On The Road • Navigating Your Way Through Traffic • Cars With the Best Gas Mileage Year-over-year sales of GM's Cadillac division...