>>if you ever met someone who owed their bank a couple million dollars, you would find that the bank will continue to loan them more money, because shutting them off would be bad for the bank as well (for example business loans that allow a company to keep operating).
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>>Oh, you mean like Government Motors? We'll see how that plays out in the end....
>
>I was going to give you a snappy retort that GM repaid its TARP loan in full last year. Looking for a link, I instead found a number of articles reporting that GM paid the U.S. Treasury back with other government controlled money. It is a matter of dispute whether the money really was GM's but by everyone's admission, following questions from Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the repayment was not as straightforward as it was presented in press releases and touted in GM ads. Here is one of the articles. (Gretchen Morgenson is sensational, a consistent thorn in the side of financial malfeasants).
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/business/02gret.html


Whether they paid back any money we loaned them or not is actually a red herring.

The fact is the US Government owns about 86% of GM.

They can "pay back" a "loan", but that's small potatoes compared to the fact that we still own most of their stock, and there aren't very many realistic outcomes where we don't lose our asses over it.

Still, what I was talking about wasn't related to GM at all.