Ed Whitacre as Lee Iacocca

[Chuck]

Hey, they still owe more than $50-billion!

Derek Decloet - THEGLOBEANDMAIL - Apr 23, 2010

Only sustained success will stop the scrutiny of GM --Ed.

Ed Whitacre as pitchman for GM:

“A lot of Canadians didn’t agree with giving GM a second chance. Quite frankly, I can respect that,” he says. “We want to make this a company all Canadians can be proud of again. That’s why I’m here to announce we have repaid our government loans, in full, with interest – five years ahead of the original schedule.” (The American version of the ad is nearly identical.)

From there, it descends into standard auto-advertising fare – forklifts gliding around the factory floor, a pretty young woman on the assembly line, a pickup slicing its way through a shallow river in a test run.... [Read More]

[Butterfly Mage]

Did GM *really* repay the loans or was it "settled" through the use of credits, promises, and other smoke-and-mirrors?

[Chuck]

GM did pay $5.8 billion to the US and Canadian governments.

They paid some of the loans, but not all of them.

Guessing out aloud: could it be the "new GM" was obligated to pay back the $5.8B, but not all the other loans in the tens of billions when they were the "old GM?"