According to the Daily Treasury Statement for July 26, which the Treasury released this afternoon, the federal debt has been stuck at exactly $16,699,396,000,000.00 for 70 straight days.
That is approximately $25 million below the legal limit of $16,699,421,095,673.60 that Congress has imposed on the debt.
The portion of the federal debt subject to the legal limit set by Congress first hit $16,699,396,000,000.00 at the close of business on May 17. At the close of every business day since then, it has also been $16,699,396,000,000.00, according to the official accounting published by the Treasury Department.
If the debt had increased by even $30 million at any time during those 70 days, it would have exceeded the statutory limit. But, according to the Treasury, the debt did not do that. Instead, it remained precisely $16,699,396,000,000.00.
Even though the government’s official accounting of the debt has not budged for 70 days, the Treasury has continued to sell bills, notes and bonds at a value that exceeds the value of the bills, notes and bonds it was redeeming.
WASHINGTON, July 24 (Reuters) – Nearly half of the mortgages modified in 2009 under the Obama administration’s signature homeowner rescue effort are in default again, according to a report on Wednesday that raised concerns about the program’s effectiveness. The report from the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP), the watchdog for the aid effort, said 46 percent of the struggling homeowners who received loan modifications in 2009 under the Home Affordable Modification Program had redefaulted. The Obama administration launched HAMP in 2009 to aid struggling homeowners impacted by the housing boom and bust. The program, extended in May by two years to help more struggling borrowers keep their homes, draws from the Treasury Department’s financial bailout fund and pays lenders and servicers to rewrite loan terms for borrowers who can’t make their current mortgage payments. “This is a program where there’s not enough people being helped,” Christy Romero, special inspector general for SIGTARP, told Reuters. “Ultimately, the Treasury needs to make good on its promise that TARP is not just a bailout for the largest financial institutions but it will also help bailout homeowners.” While HAMP has helped about 865,100 homeowners avoid foreclosure over the lifetime of the program through permanent loan modifications, more than 306,000 homeowners had redefaulted on their modified mortgages as of the end of April, the report stated. According to the inspector general, of the 865,100 homeowners in an active permanent HAMP modification, about 10 percent have missed one to two monthly mortgage payments and are at risk of continuing the default trend. The administration has refined the HAMP program since its inception to broaden its reach, including by expanding eligibility and increasing payments to mortgage companies that lower borrowers’ monthly payments. When it was unveiled, the administration estimated that the foreclosure prevention program would offer a lifeline to as many as 4 million homeowners. The inspector general urged the Treasury to try to determine why borrowers were going off track and said it should require mortgage servicers to look for early warning signals. “Exactly why people are falling …read more
MIAMI — American Express has reached a settlement with the U.S. Treasury Department over more than 14,000 tickets that were issued for travel between Cuba and countries outside the U.S., officials announced Monday.
American Express Travel Related Services, Inc. has agreed to pay $5.2 million to settle potential civil liability for apparent federal violations. The Treasury Department found that foreign branch offices and subsidiaries of American Express issued about 14,487 tickets for travel to and from the island between December 2005 and November 2011.
Terrorism charges were unsealed Friday in New York against a purported al-Qaida-linked leader in Africa accused of leading a January attack at a gas plant in Algeria that killed more than 35 hostages, including three Americans.
The charges against Mokhtar Belmokhtar were announced by federal law enforcement officials in Manhattan. They include conspiring to support al-Qaida, use a weapon of mass destruction, discharge a firearm and use and carry an explosive. Additional charges of conspiring to take hostages and discharging a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence carry a maximum penalty of death.
Authorities also said a $5 million reward was being offered for information leading to the arrest of Belmokhtar, who’s also been known as “the one-eyed sheik” since he lost an eye in combat. Belmokhtar left al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, the North African offshoot of the terrorist group, then formed his own spinoff.
He is accused of participating in a Jan. 16 attack on a Western-owned gas processing facility in a remote part of eastern Algeria near the border with Libya.
After a four-day standoff, the Algerian army moved in and killed 29 attackers and captured three others. At least 37 hostages, including one Algerian worker, died in the battle. Three Americans and scores of Algerian and foreign nationals were killed.
Belmokhtar “unleashed a reign of terror years ago, in furtherance of his self-proclaimed goal of waging bloody jihad against the West,” U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a release. “His efforts culminated in a five-day siege that left dozens dead.”
The court papers said Belmokhtar appeared in an online video the day after the siege ended, claiming responsibility for the attack on behalf of al-Qaida.
The charges “describe a fanatical jihadist leading an extremist vanguard of an extremist ideology,” said George Venizelos, head of the FBI’s New York office.
He added: “As alleged, he kidnapped diplomats, formed his own terrorist organization that pledged fealty to al-Qaida, and masterminded the murderous siege of a civilian plant in Algeria that resulted in the deaths of dozens of hostages, including three Americans.”
Belmokhtar was designated a foreign terrorist by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2003. Prosecutors said he was a key leader of al-Qaida’s efforts in North Africa starting in 2008 as he led attacks that resulted in the kidnapping …read more
With the housing market collapsing in July 2008, President George W. Bush signed the Housing and Economic Recovery Act into law, 260 pages aimed at bolstering mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and overhauling the regulations of these government-sponsored entities that were crashing. The law created the Federal Housing Finance Agency and gave it the authority to place Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship and regulate the GSEs. A few weeks after Bush signed the law, the FHFA placed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship and the Treasury Department started to inject $188 billion into the GSEs in return for senior preferred stock. …read more
* Delay will give foreign banks more time to comply -Treasury * FATCA law has drawn complaints from many foreign banks * Agreements reached with UK, Switzerland, Germany other countries (Adds details of postponement, background) By Patrick Temple-West July 12 (Reuters) – The U.S. Treasury Department said on Friday it will postpone enforcement of a new law that cracks down on offshore tax avoidance by Americans by six months until July 1, 2014, giving foreign banks more time to determine how to comply. The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or FATCA, requires foreign banks and other institutions to supply information to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service about Americans’ offshore accounts worth more than $50,000. The law, approved by Congress in 2010, stipulates that foreign financial institutions that fail to comply can effectively by frozen out of U.S. capital markets. Since the law was passed, foreign banks and other businesses have complained about the costs of FATCA and its scope, saying in some cases that it conflicts with home-country banking laws that shield account holder information. To help banks in countries with legal issues, Treasury and the IRS have been working on agreements that will let the home-country governments of foreign banks act as information-disclosing intermediaries to deal with the IRS. “We are providing an additional six months to complete agreements with countries and jurisdictions across the globe,” said Robert Stack, Treasury deputy assistant secretary for international tax affairs, in a statement. The United States has finalized intergovernmental agreements for FATCA compliance with Germany, Spain, Norway, Switzerland, Ireland, Mexico, Denmark and the United Kingdom. Dozens more of these pacts are in negotiation. A new registration website for banks to sign up with the IRS and ensure they are complying with FATCA is now set to open on Aug. 19, Treasury said in its statement. The portal …read more
Stephen Chernin/Getty ImagesFinancier Bernard Madoff arrives at Manhattan Federal court in March 2009 for a sentencing hearing.
By Brett Wolf and Aruna Viswanatha
U.S. regulators plan to fault JPMorgan Chase, which served as Bernie Madoff‘s main bank for two decades, for failing to conduct adequate due diligence and report suspicious activity, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is expected to issue a cease-and-desist order against JPMorgan, which will require the largest U.S. bank to put an end to the alleged failures in its anti-money laundering practices.
The timing of the order is uncertain but could come later this year, the source said. A fine isn’t expected. If the OCC isn’t satisfied with JPMorgan’s response, it can take harsher action against the bank, including financial penalties.
OCC spokesman Bryan Hubbard declined comment, as did JPMorgan spokeswoman Jennifer Zuccarelli.
Madoff was arrested in December 2008, pleaded guilty in 2009 to running a massive, decades-long Ponzi scheme, and is serving a 150-year prison sentence.
Irving Picard, a trustee for Madoff’s victims, has accused JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) of ignoring warning signs that Madoff’s business was a fraud and has attempted to sue the bank. A judge has tossed out all but $425 million of Picard’s $19.9 billion lawsuit against JPMorgan. Picard is in the process of appealing the ruling.
JPMorgan has said there was no evidence showing that anyone at the bank knew of Madoff’s elaborate scheme. The bank did file a suspicious activity report in London two months before Madoff was arrested, describing his investment performance as “too good to be true,” according to Picard’s lawsuit.
The OCC will fault JPMorgan for treating Madoff and his related entities as low-risk customers, and find that the bank failed to heed red flags, such as funds being shuffled between accounts without clear business purpose, said the person familiar with the matter. As a result, “suspicious” transactions weren’t reported to authorities, said the source, who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly about the matter.
The OCC in January ordered JPMorgan to tighten its risk controls and improve its anti-money laundering compliance. But the regulator separated that order from any action related to Madoff’s accounts, in a dispute with the bank over which documents it had to turn over as part of the inquiry.
The inspector general of the Treasury Department, which houses the OCC, has since ordered JPMorgan to work with regulators in the Madoff inquiry and rejected the bank’s argument that certain documents were protected by attorney-client privilege.
“The matter is still pending,” said Richard Delmar, counsel to the Treasury’s watchdog office.
JPMorgan has a recent history of tense relations with the OCC. A report released last month by a Senate investigative panel revealed
“It is our understanding that the travelers in question travelled to Cuba pursuant to an educational exchange trip organized by a group,” the letter said, according to the Herald.
MIAMI, April 8 (Reuters) – American pop star Beyonce and rapper husband Jay Z visited Havana last week on a cultural trip that was fully licensed by the United States Treasury Department, according to a source familiar with the trip. Beyonce and Jay Z celebrated their fifth wedding anniversary in the Cuban capital, where big crowds greeted them as they strolled hand in hand through the city and posed for pictures with admiring Cubans. The longstanding U.S. trade embargo against Cuba prevents most Americans from traveling to the island without a license granted by the U.S. government, though President Barack Obama‘s administration has eased restrictions on travel to Cuba for academic, religious or cultural programs. (Reporting by David Adams; Editing by Leslie Gevirtz)
Complaining that “some wealthy individuals are able to accumulate many millions of dollars in these accounts,” the Obama administration announced a plan to cap the total sum of any individual’s retirement accounts at $3 million. Stashing cash beyond that point, the administration insists, builds sums “substantially more than is needed to fund reasonable levels of retirement saving.” The administration’s argument seems to be based on the use of the word “million,” implying that only nasty rich people would want to accumulate such a hoard. But is that true? How much is enough for “reasonable levels of retirement saving.”
As it turns out, that’s one of the toughest questions to answer for retirement planning. Many advisors suggest you base your retirement savings on something like 70 percent of your pre-retirement income, multiplied by how many years you expect to live. So … Just when do you plan to kick off? As one article on retirement planning puts it, “basing your retirement needs on income is like basing your fuel needs on the size of your car’s gas tank. What really matters is how far you have to go and what kind of gas mileage you get.” Part of that “gas mileage” for retirement planning includes inflation. By the time you retire, will $3 million buy luxury? Or a sandwich?
I once had a boss who was independently rich, and when I asked him for a raise, he turned me down, adding that he, too, had forsaken a raise that year. A surge of anger, resentment and sheer hatred welled up in me, and were it not that I needed the job, I would have gone for his throat. His unthinking and unthinkable attempt to make common cause with me brought to mind Anatole France’s observation that “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.” Now it brings to mind Barack Obama.
The president yesterday announced that he would return 5 percent of his salary to the Treasury Department. This is an effort to make common cause with federal employees who may have to take a similar paycut. This is the way this tone-deaf White House put it:
The president has decided that to share in the sacrifice being made by public servants across the federal government that are affected by the sequester, he will contribute a portion of his salary back to the Treasury.
As the effects of sequestration ripple through communities nationwide, Rep. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) announced Wednesday that she has returned a portion of her salary to the Treasury Department and will continue to do so until Congress reaches a solution to reducing the national deficit.
The suburban Chicago Daily Herald reported that Duckworth told constituents at a roundtable discussion on Wednesday morning that she had written a $1,218 check to the Treasury and would be sending it later that day.
According to Duckworth’s staff, $1,218 constitutes 8.4 percent of the congresswoman’s monthly pay. She specifically chose the 8.4 percent rate to reflect the average percentage cut that most discretionary programs are facing due to the sequester.
Lance Armstrong and Barry Bonds have got nothing on Colombia’s America de Cali soccer team.
EPO and human growth hormones are child’s play compared to the Cali squad, which has been on the United State’s list of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN List) since 1999, after the U.S. claimed the team was under the ownership of Cali drug cartel leaders Miguel and Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela.
While Toronto Blue Jays’ outfielder Melky Cabrera’s suspension and redemption only lasted 50 games, America de Cali had to wait 14 seasons for their chance, as the U.S. Treasury Department finally removed Wednesday the team from SDN list.
A debate is raging among free market advocates regarding the proper posture to take with respect to Too Big to Fail (TBTF) banks. This has become an increasingly important issue as the financial sector has grown to take up an unprecedented share of our economy. While cleaving to tried-and-true libertarian defenses of finance as vital to the economy, some of us fear that the machinations of the crony capitalists running the TBTF banks—in cahoots with their allies in the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve—will result in not only another global financial collapse, but a populist anti-capitalist backlash that could destroy what’s left of our free enterprise system. …read more Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
MR. EARNEST: Bienvenidos aboard Air Force One as we make our way to Miami today. Typically, at the beginning of gaggles like this, I’ll have a little presentation to preview for you the remarks of the President and give you a sense of the argument and the case the President will be making. Rather than doing that myself today, I’ve actually brought along an expert, Alan Krueger, who is the President’s chief economist.
Prior to working at the White House, Alan worked at the Treasury Department, where he was instrumental in putting together some of the administrations’ proposals related to the infrastructure bank and to the Build America Bonds that have proven to be so popular and helpful in stimulating economic growth and creating jobs all across the country. So I want to give Alan the opportunity to give you a sense of the case the President will make today about the infrastructure proposals that the President will be laying out, and the impact it would have on the economy and creating jobs. Alan can then take your questions about the event, and then we’ll open it up to other questions you may have on other topics today.
All right. So, Alan, do you want to give us a little opener here?
MR. KRUEGER: Sure. So why don’t I say a few words at 30,000 feet about how infrastructure is the right thing to invest in in the economy right now.
The U.S. is underinvested in our infrastructure. If we invest more in infrastructure, we’ll be more competitive — businesses tell us that. Businesses tell us, and the President cites this in his speech, that if we improve our infrastructure, that will bring more jobs back home to the U.S. Other countries that we compete with economically have been investing quite heavily in infrastructure.
On top of that, now is a particularly good time to invest in our infrastructure. No industry was harder hit by the downturn than construction. Fully 20 percent of the jobs that were lost from the end of 2007 to the end of 2009 were in the construction sector. The unemployment rate for construction has come down, but it still remains over 15 percent. So we have resources that we could put back to work today to improve our competitiveness tomorrow. It makes a great deal of economic sense.
The President today in Miami is going to discuss three proposals to make smarter, more leveraged investments in our infrastructure. And this builds on his previous announcement for the Fix it First initiative, and a good deal of research suggests that maintaining our existing infrastructure has a very high payoff.
One area where we do a very poor job in terms of infrastructure, given the siloed nature in which we …read more Source: White House Press Office
I keep waiting for someone who knows what they are doing to investigate, look at the numbers and do some simple math. Since no one has, here is what I have been able to come up with based on “what has been reported thus far”. Most government contracting includes statements like, up to, which means that they can request more of an item over the period of the contract, but not the full amount if they don’t need that many. Most of the purchases are for a five year period, which means that they are not getting it all right away.
Since 2004, the number of Federal Agents has increased by about 30-40% to somewhere around 120,000 agents employed under about 70 Federal Departments. It is estimated that about 90,000 of these are under DHS. These are Law Enforcement Officers (LEOs) and include NOAA, SS, FWP, ICE, FPS, ATF, and just about all the alphabet soup entities of the federal government whose primary purpose is enforcement. It is a lot. However, 1.6 Billion rounds divided by 120,000 agents it is still 13,333 rounds per LEO.
Each LEO has to “qualify” at the range with any weapon that they carry on duty, twice a year. The standard qualification includes various shooting positions, magazine changes, and reloads, and hitting targets at various distances. Standard run of the mill street cops carry a side arm, rifle, and shotgun.
One of the departments that were folded into DHS is the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. It was originally under the Treasury Department. It operates four training centers in the United States and at least two outside. A statement by FLETC is that they use around 15 million rounds a year. This ammo is for all Federal Agents under DHS and the LEOs that work for say, the IRS or Social Security. FLETC also provides training for state and local LEOs that are outside of the aforementioned. It is unclear whether the 15 million rounds per year statement includes all of the training centers, or just the main one, in Georgia, a 1600 acre complex with multiple ranges and even a small town to simulate urban warfare, I mean urban LEO scenarios.
So if each of the FLETC locations uses 15 million rounds a year, which is a stretch, and there are at least six that we know of, a conservative estimate for all training using all three weapons, could be as high as 450 million rounds. That leaves approximately 1.2 billion rounds to be distributed to 120,000 LEOs in the field of operation. Or around 10,000 rounds per LEO.
So how much ammo is distributed to each LEO to carry in the field and how much is kept in reserve at each local office? Well we all know that every LEO in the field already has ammo, and each field office already has a stockpile, what are the additional 10,000 rounds per LEO for? That is an additional 2,000 rounds per year over the five year period.
Officially speaking, the answer is a pretty clear “no.” GM has satisfied the terms of the $49.5 billion bailout that gave the giant automaker a new lease on life in 2009, paying back the debt as agreed — with a mix of cash and stock.
The U.S. Treasury Department is in the process of selling off the last of its GMstock holdings. Once that’s completed — early next year, most likely — GM‘s bailout repayment will be a done deal.
Officially speaking.
But the truth is, even once all that stock is sold, GM‘s “repayment” will be well short of that $49.5 billion. And that could turn out to be a big problem for General Motors.
Why does GM still owe us? Here’s the problem in a nutshell: Unless GM‘s stock price goes way up, and soon, the amount of money ultimately recouped by the Treasury is likely to fall short of that $49.5 billion — probably about $12 billion short.
$6.7 billion in cash, per the terms of the original bailout. The last of it was paid in April 2010, when then-CEO Ed Whitacre famously declared that GM‘s debt had been “paid in full” — and promptly heard about it from angry taxpayers.
$13 billion to the Treasury in GM’s IPO, in which the government sold about 45% of the GMstock it had received after the bailout.
$2.1 billion when GM bought back some preferred stock from the Treasury in late 2010.
$5.5 billion directly from GM, when the company bought back 200 million of the feds’ remaining 500 million shares last December.
$646.3 million in sales of GMstock on the open market by the Treasury in January and February of this year, part of Treasury’s plan to slowly sell down its remaining shares over the next year or so.
The remainder in interest and dividends on loans and preferred stock.
Plain and simple, that leaves about $20 billion outstanding. As of the end of February, Treasury still had roughly 277 million shares of GM to sell. To make that math work — to make taxpayers whole — Treasury needs to get roughly $72 a share for its remaining GMstock.
As I write this, GMstock is trading for a little over $28. If it sold all of its remaining stock at that price, the Treasury would still be about $12 billion short.
And while GM has done everything it was required to do to pay back the bailout, that shortfall is likely to be a big PR problem.
Value received for the government’s investment Of course, GM would probably argue that it has already made good on the government‘s “investment” in a number of different ways. Speaking to dozens of lawmakers on Capitol Hill Thursday, GM CEO Dan Akerson pointed out that, …read more Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
ST. LOUIS, March 22 – The U.S. Treasury Department plans to hold bankers personally responsible and subject them to fines when their banks help countries such as Iran evade economic sanctions.
The shift is in line with recently declared intentions also to hold individual bankers liable for failures to prevent laundering of drug money and other criminal proceeds, a Treasury spokesman told Reuters.
The shift, which has yet to result in any actual enforcement action, also comes amid mounting pressure to crack down on banks and bankers for a wide range of financial misdeeds, and end their perceived status as “too big to jail.”
MR. CARNEY: Good afternoon. Thanks for being here. Welcome back from what I hope was a fabulous weekend. And I have no announcements to make at the top. I think you probably saw, if you did not attend, the President’s announcement that he made his nomination for Secretary of the Treasury. Beyond that, I got nothing. I’m sorry, Secretary of Labor. There is a Secretary of the Treasury. Thanks. It’s still Sunday.
Go ahead.
Q Thank you. What’s the U.S. take on this EU plan with Cyprus that would basically call on Cyprus’s government to raid the personal accounts of its citizens?
MR. CARNEY: Well, I would refer you to the Treasury Department. We’re obviously monitoring the situation right now. Our general proposition is that we believe it’s very important for Europe to take steps necessary, as they have been, to both grow and deal with sovereign debt issues. But as regards this particular situation, I’d refer you to Cyprus — beyond saying that we’re monitoring it — I mean, refer you to Treasury beyond saying that we’re monitoring it.
Q The markets, the global markets have obviously reacted negatively to this. Is there any concern, anything you would say to the American people about whether this might ricochet to the U.S. economy?
MR. CARNEY: Well, again, I’m not going to comment on markets. You might see if Treasury officials will comment on them. I would simply say that we have long said that a strong, stable Europe is in the interest of the United States, and that applies broadly to our approach to all of Europe and to all of the eurozone.
With regards to Cyprus, I would refer you to Treasury except to say that we’re monitoring the situation.
Q And then I’m wondering if the President had any reaction to Hillary Clinton’s announcement today that she publicly backs gay marriage now.
MR. CARNEY: Well, I can tell you that the President believes that any time a public official of stature steps forward to embrace a commitment that he shares to equality for LGBT Americans he thinks it’s a good thing. And I haven’t spoken with him about Secretary Clinton’s announcement, but I know that that’s what he feels in general when major figures in our society make their views known. And it’s testimony to how far this country and how quickly this country has traveled, as he has said.
Q Do you know if she gave the White House any heads-up that she would be making this announcement today?
MR. CARNEY: I’m not aware that she did. She is obviously a private citizen, and her views are in concert with the President’s, so I’m not aware that she gave any heads-up.
Earlier this week, the U.S. Treasury Department disclosed that it had raised $489.9 million from the sale of General Motors shares in February.
The Feds didn’t disclose exactly how many shares they had sold, but given GM‘s share prices in February, it’s a considerable number – at least 17 million shares, possibly 18 million or a bit more.
Clearly, the government is serious about its plan to exit GM, announced last December. And while that seems like good news for the General, it could create some interesting complications.
Will the Feds ever recoup their “investment” in GM? Back in December, Treasury agreed to a deal in which it would sell 200 million of its remaining 500 million shares of General Motors directly to GM, in exchange for $5.5 billion – and would sell its remaining shares gradually, on the open market, over the following 15 months or so.
That deal left the Feds with 300 million shares. Those shares are the last major legacy of GM‘s controversial 2009 “bailout”, in which the government took a stake in GM in exchange for financing the battered auto giant’s high-speed restructuring via bankruptcy.
The financing provided by the Treasury for GM‘s restructuring – its “investment” in GM, as it has been termed on occasion – totaled some $49.5 billion. Of that, GM has now “repaid” – directly or indirectly – a bit less than $30 billion:
$6.7 billion in cash, the last of which was paid in April of 2010 (when then-CEO Ed Whitacre declared that GM‘s debt had been “paid in full”)
$2.1 billion when GM bought back some preferred stock from the Treasury in late 2010
$5.5 billion when GM bought back those 200 million shares from the Treasury in December of 2012
$646.3 million in sales of GMstock by the Treasury in January and February of 2013
The remainder in interest and dividends on loans and preferred stock.
That leaves the Treasury short about $20 billion – and with something like 277 million shares left to sell. The math on that doesn’t work out well for taxpayers: The Feds need to get something like $72 a share in order to break even on their “investment”.
GM is trading at a bit over $28 as I write this on Thursday. Clearly, the Feds aren’t likely to recoup their money any time soon – at least, not by selling their remaining GMstock.
How is that going to work out for GM?
The “Government Motors” stigma still isn’t fading It has been nearly four years since GM emerged from bankruptcy, but the hard feelings over GM‘s taxpayer-funded bailout haven’t yet faded. I hear it from readers all the time: GM will never again compete with old rival Ford in their eyes, because Ford was able to finance its own turnaround without government intervention.
