WASHINGTON â€" The Treasury Department announced on Monday that the government had sold its remaining shares of General Motors stock.
Taxpayers recouped about $39 billion on the investment, the Treasury Department said, having spent about $50 billion bailing out the automaker.
All in all, the taxpayer has ended up in the black on the crisis-related bailouts, Treasury said: It has recovered $433 billion from the Troubled Asset Relief Program after initially investing about $422 billion.
“The president’s leadership in responding to the financial crisis helped stabilize the auto industry and prevent another Great Depression,†Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew said in a statement. “With the final sale of GM stock, this important chapter in our nation’s history is now closed.â€
The Obama administration has argued that it could not have let the Detroit automakers fail during the worst downturn since the Great Depression and that the costs of the public investment outweighed the risks of letting the firms collapse.
