U.S. Treasury plans to liquidate remaining GM shares for $10 Billion loss
 

Several news reports have detailed the U.S. Treasury's plans to liquidate their remaining equity in General Motors by the end of 2013. Here's a link to CNBC's coverage - click here

Experts indicate that once the U.S. Treasury divests their equity GM will be able to issue dividends and their executives will no longer be subject to compensation caps. Many experts also hope that the use of the term "Government Motors" will slowly fade away as a distant memory.

While most headlines suggest the taxpayers will lose $10 Billion on the GM bailout I'm confident the accounting only extends to the losses incurred on the NEWCO version of GM. The Treasury, White House and the automotive press seem to prefer that the taxpayers forget about the losses incurred on the OLDCO version of GM or the massive tax break that was afforded to the NEWCO version of GM.

This is in hopes that the stock price may finally start to rise?

In my opinion the Government's motivation to liquidate their equity position in General Motors is more politically based than financially based.

I think an argument could be made that it's in the taxpayers' best interest to have the Treasury retain their equity position in GM and not liquidate shares until the stock has risen to a level where the loss is significantly diminished.

That said, from a political standpoint there are a lot of people who oppose the concept of having the Treasury own equity in a private capital company and selling the GM shares by the end of the year allows the Treasury to take one last hit and then attempt to close the book on the whole auto-bailout saga.