No one goes into business to lose money. So when Mitt Romney promised to quickly sell the remaining shares of GM if he becomes president, it makes the average business person wonder just how keen Romney’s business skills are, and why would he want to sell the shares now even if it means the American Taxpayer suffers a $16 billion loss.
In an interview with The Detroit News, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee vowed to quickly sever ties between the U.S. government and GM, which was bailed out with about $50 billion in taxpayer funding.
“The president is delaying the sale of the shares to try and avoid the story that the taxpayer took another loss. I would get the company independent from the government and run for the interests of the consumer and the enterprise and its workers — not for the political considerations of government officials,” Romney said.
The U.S. government still holds a 26% stake in GM. The automaker is currently trading at around $21 a share. If the government sold its remaining 500 million shares now, it would lose about $16 billion of its investment, The News says.
GM reported first quarter profit of $1 billion in May, aided by strong numbers in North America.
Mitt Romney has obviously made a lot of money in the business sector, but selling shares at a $16 billion loss when GM is reporting record profits is just dumb. As long as the profits keep coming in from GM, the shares the government American Tax payer has in the company increases in value.
Or maybe Mitt Romney know he’s not gambling his own money. Maybe he knows that it is the Tax Payer’s investment at stake, and selling 500 million shares of GM now at a $16 billion loss would be another opportunity for him to point to President Obama and say, see, he made a bad investment in GM. This $16 billion loss is all because President Obama chose to bail out the auto industry instead of letting Detroit go bankrupt… like I suggested in the first place!
