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A comment on For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earned-Now They Want Bailout. Parent comment

Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by LanceH on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @11:11AM (#22617487)
According to "The Balance" - https://www.thebalance.com/auto-industry-bailout-gm-ford-chr...

Taxpayers lost $10.2 billion. Are those the bailouts you're talking about.

There was a brief period where loans were paid back profitably but everyone crowing about profits was ignoring that the rest of the loans were booked against stock which was heavily underwater and later liquidated at substantial losses.

I don't know who The Balance is but these numbers seem consistent from other sources I just looked at.

Please correct me if I have this wrong (not being snarky) -- what I think I know is comprised of varied articles spread across years.

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Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by NickM on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @01:04PM (#22618813)
The auto industry bailout was a loss, but that was smaller than many of the other bailouts, and most of the bailouts were profitable. In net, taxpayers came out substantially ahead in the end.

Not that making a direct profit was even the goal of the bailouts, but it sure is nice that we made money off of them on top of saving the economy.

https://money.usnews.com/investing/articles/2017-01-19/finan...

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