Roughly the cost of 1 month of middle east war.

At 300 million per day... From an old article:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/art…

Why did they cash out at a loss now?

And GM cars are currently pretty damn good right now.

I wonder how much federal tax revenue those 1 million jobs will generate over time? Even if GM was sold at a loss, was there a long term gain?

Hell, I'll bet you'd be hard-pressed to find a Conservative today who even remembers there WAS a recession just a few years ago; and even if they do, they'll still claim it was all Obama's fault.

That's $10K per job. If all if those jobs were lost I'm sure it would have cost the government and the economy much, much more for each unemployed individual.

@7 - I hope somewhere the Obama administration has done the math to counter the inevitable claim that $10B loss proves the bailout was a "waste" of taxpayer money. Remember that if GM failed, it wasn't just GM jobs that would have gone away, there would have been massive losses in their supplier and dealer networks as well, on top of the general economic impact to regions where their manufacturing bases are.

Well, if you believe that the WA state legislature did the right thing to offer up $8.7 billion in tax incentives and other investments to keep 1 Boeing project here, "saving" 76k jobs at Boeing and companies around the state. Then $10 billion for 1 million jobs is a deal.

@10 those are not really equivalent things. So, whatever, dude.

Fucking conservatives. They were bitching and moaning about the U.S. owning shares of an automaker. "Socialism! Communism! The government shouldn't use our taxes to make cars! What do bureaucrats know about manufacturing? Obama has car czars now?! Who does he think he is, Stalin?"

So, we cashed out of the position at a loss. Now the conservatives will bitch and moan about the loss.

Fuck them. Seriously.

Simply put, the American people paid for the FAILURE of the republican party to run this country properly. In addition to the Iraq war, the housing debacle and the banks going under, the short term memory of the republicans will probably blame Obama, as #5 pointed out. I hope the American people remember in 2014 and 2016 what caused the biggest recession in American history.

@13: Sure: Obama.

@11, how are they not similar programs? Both are saving jobs, however the GM deal saved far more jobs at far less a cost. Whatever, dude.

@10 nothing is preventing Boeing from staying here except corporate greed, plain and simple. We would be throwing away $8b in tax revenue just to ensure McNerney's $750K/month pension.

GM was faced with going out of business. Not relocating to someplace sunnier, warmer, and with a low-cost labor force (they already did that in the 90's, see NAFTA).

If Boeing does move to Savannah, the shock to our economy will occur over a longer period of time and we have enough of a cushion of other heavy-hitters (MS, Amazon, etc) that the effects will not destroy Seattle (or Washington).

Had GM gone tits up, the effect would have coursed through the economy like a tsunami, wiping out a large swath of the supply chain. And it's not just GM that depends on those suppliers, either. Delphi, for example, makes the best weatherproof electrical connectors for the automotive industry and they sell to all sorts of other, smaller markets.

If, say, PACCAR and Ingersoll-Rand, and SullAir, and a host of other, smaller players that you've never heard of but that employ workers and keep industrial process going can no longer get parts they depend on, the ripple effect will be huge.

Boeing would still be building jetliners, just somewhere else.

GM and all its suppliers would be gone.

So yes, they are different things. You can try to boil them down to their simplest part, but like all economics the devil is in the details.

They aren't whining about this bailout because they think the economy was just fine - they are whining about it because a unionized shop stayed in business. Basically they wanted to break/destroy the UAW and pensions. That would make it easier to offer even lesser deals to labor in right-to-work states. Higher UE means lower wages and benefits - a more malleable (weaker) workforce. Nothing more.

@14 bush cheney boner and mcconnell

basically, we paid $1000 to save each job at GM. Even if each of those jobs only earns $8000 in the next year, we'll recoup more in tax money. If you include interest from 2009 (i'll put at 4%), however, we paid the equivalent of $20,000 per job. Meaning that each worker will need to generate $100,000 in wages - pretty likely, since they would only need to earn about $25k a year on average for that to mean we break even RIGHT NOW.