The Price of Saving Two of America’s Big Three? $14 Billion, but it Could have Been Worse

Here’s a fun little activity for our readership: check out the U.S. National Debt Clock website and take a gander at the figure under, “U.S. National Debt”.

That number is a little over US$14 trillion (€9.67 trillion), and is probably one of the reasons President Obama is having trouble sleeping at night. Around 0.1% of that is the loss the U.S. Treasury suffered by bailing out two of America’s big three automakers: General Motors and Chrysler.

At the height of the Global Financial Crisis in 2008, the U.S. government spent $80 billion (€55.2 billion) to save the auto-industry. Of that amount, US$14.6 billion (€10.08 billion) has been lost, never to be reclaimed. It comes as sobering news given the current state of the U.S.’s ever-growing national debt.

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