Did You Know...

**Written by Doug Powers

The first of our competing headlines today comes from November of 2010:

If you can’t read the text in the story, it says “‘American taxpayers are now positioned to recover more than my administration invested in GM, and that’s a good thing,’ Obama said.”

The dueling headline is from this morning’s Drudge Report:

The link went to this story at the Detroit News:

The Treasury sold nearly 20 percent of its remaining shares in General Motors Co. in the first three months of the year, the Detroit automaker disclosed Thursday.

The Treasury, which initially held 60.8 percent of GM as part of the U.S. $49.5 billion bailout, now owns just 16.4 percent, or 241.7 million shares. In December, the Treasury sold GM 200 million shares of its stake for $5.5 billion to reduce its stake to 300 million shares.

In total, Treasury has recouped $30.6 billion. At current trading prices, Treasury would lose around $10 billion on its GM bailout.

Your definition of what a “policy success” is will mostly depend on whether you were on the paying end with no potential upside, or on the receiving end with no potential downside.

Bonus fright points: Obama has stated that he wants to repeat that kind of “success” in every other American manufacturing industry.

Dueling Headlines archive here.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe