Payoff of Auto Investments Deemed Unlikely

You know those billions of dollars the federal government poured into GM and Chrysler? Forget about ever seeing a good chunk of it.

A new congressional report assessing the automakers' rescue says that $5.4 billion of the $10.5 billion loaned to Chrysler is unlikely to be repaid. Oh, and that $50 billion the taxpayers sank into GM? The company's stock would have to hit unprecedented highs to get all that back, the Washington Post reports.

"Although taxpayers may recover some portion of their investment in Chrysler and GM, it is unlikely they will recover the entire amount," the Post quotes from the report.

The government has poured $74 billion into the auto industry. That includes $12.5 billion to auto-financing firm GMAC and $3.5 billion for smaller suppliers.

Still, payback is in the eye of the beholder, as the report points out. A failure to rescue the auto industry could have been even costlier—an economic catastrophe affecting an industry that represents 6.5 percent of the nation's manufacturing jobs.

"Preserving portions of Chrysler and General Motors might have resulted in savings for the government in other ways," according to the report.

GM, though, argues that it will pay the government back, thanks to its restructuring.

"We are confident that we will repay our nation's support because we are a company with less debt, a stronger balance sheet, a winning product portfolio, and the right size to match today's market realities," it said in a statement to the Post.

The panel also recommended that the government's shares in the companies—taxpayers own 60 percent of GM and 8 percent of Chrysler—in trust to avoid political interference in the two companies, Reuters reports.