When the USG bailed out banks via TARP during the 2008 financial crisis, it did so by buying shares in those companies. It later sold those shares for a $30.5 billion profit.

If GMC had been “publically owned” it would have been gutted for profits (kickbacks) by its bureaucracy and politicians and been long dead by at least a decade. Bureaucrats are not good at running companies and private companies should not be providing public services (prisons, toll roads). I don't know why Americans have become so unpragmatic and either all in on “government doing everything” or “private corps doing everything” when life is never ever that simple.