[Brokinarrow]

Originally Posted by 8cd03gro

There are no retained earnings when you declare chapter 11 and follow up with consistent losses. They're paying back with loan money because things are looking up and GM COULD be profitable this year, which is good.

Listen guys, like someone pointed out, I live in Michigan. I would love to see GM be successful again and recent news shows hope, but my point is this: You guys seem to think yesterday and today's news means GM is back, profitable again and growing to what it used to be. Realistically, these "lesser" loans could have been paid off right away with TARP money and GM would still be out $60 Billion. Even in one of the articles someone posted, GM said they are still years away from a full return and that all depends on if they are profitable this year. GM is making the right moves to look good in the public eye (very important) and they seem to be doing better, but thinking they're off the hook and ready to go is a far-cry from the truth. There's still a loooonnnng road ahead for GM to even break even on taxpayer money. This payment is a good thing and I'm very happy, but it's not even close, NOT EVEN CLOSE to even for GM. To get there, they still need to post profits and they need to do it for an extended period of time. I'm just debating to make it clear that the statements your seeing of, "GM has payed back all of it's loans" does not mean the taxpayers aren't still owed billions of dollars and GM isn't still a money pit of tens of billions of dollars. Anyway, GM looks to be on the right track and hopefully within 4-5 years we will see General Motors again as opposed to government motors.

My understanding was that a very large chunk of the 'loan' that GM received was in the form of the government buying a large portion of their shares. This will be bought back once GM starts offering their shares to the public again. I'll admit I'm not sure how this part will be handled, but unless they only release a certain amount of shares to the public, won't the 'break even' point be limited to how quickly the government sells its' shares?