In Chrysler Bailout, Taxpayers Likely To Lose Up To $1.3 Billion: Treasury

[MrDiaz]

Source: Huffington post

DETROIT (Deepa Seetharaman) - The U.S. and Canadian governments exited their investments in Chrysler Group LLC on Thursday, allowing Italy's Fiat SpA (FIA.MI) to become the automaker's majority stakeholder.

Fiat now owns 53.5 percent of Chrysler on a fully diluted basis, the Auburn Hills, Michigan-based company said in a regulatory filing on Thursday. Fiat is on track to hold 58.5 percent of Chrysler by the end of the year.

Fiat also now has the right to appoint a majority of the company's board, Chrysler said in the filing.

A health care trust affiliated with the United Auto Workers and known as the VEBA holds the remaining shares of Chrysler. The company and the union plan to begin negotiations on a new four-year contract on Monday.



Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/21/chrysler-bailout-taxpayers-treasury_n_905999.html

[Autumn]

1. Color me shocked

and surprised. Not really, it's just about par for the course.

[demosincebirth]

2. But, how many jobs did it save?

[karynnj]

4. That would be tough to even estimate

The number at Chrysler itself would be part of it, but so would some of the people working for their suppliers and the people in various service jobs in the area that all of these people work.

One reason Ford pushed the bailout of its two competitors was that they share suppliers and they could have ended up having problem as some went out of business.

[Purveyor]

7. Living in Michigan, I've heard estimates of up to 100k jobs would have been lost had

GM and Chrysler both been allowed to fold.

Using crude figures and allowing $300 per week for 99 weeks of unemployment, the unemployment payments alone would have been nearly $3 billion.

Of course that isn't even taking into consideration the payroll taxes that would have been lost from having these workers unemployed.

[russspeakeasy]

10. More than 2, less than 4.

[Blue_Tires]

3. It was still worth doing at the time and better than the alternative, imo

I think Chrysler will find their Italian masters strange bedfellows..

[rfranklin]

5. Geez, we could have bombed Iran for two days with that money!

We could have paid for one-quarter of an aircraft carrier!

[Kolesar]

6. I'm sure we saved $1.3 billion in unemployment benefit payouts

Beast/Cheney used to spend billions in one week in Iraq.

[rfranklin]

8. Exactly!

It's all about what we value most.

[chelsea0011]

9. Isn't that the monthly payout for the wars?

[Dont_Bogart_the_Pretzel]

11. Fiat-Ram?

or how about PT-Fiat