GM's Profits are Still a Huge Net Loss For Taxpayers
...What lesson, exactly, are we supposed to learn from this "success"? What question did it answer? "Can the government keep companies operating if it is willing to give them a virtually interest free loan of $50 billion, and a tax-free gift of $20 billion or so?" I don't think that this was really in dispute. When all is said and done, we will probably have given them a sum equal to its 2007 market cap and roughly four times GM's 2008 market capitalization.

No, the question was not whether GM could make a profit after a bankruptcy that stiffed most of its creditors and shed the most grotesque burdens of its legacy costs, nor whether giving companies money will make them more profitable. The question is whether it was worth it to the taxpayer to burn $10-20 billion in order to give the company another shot at life. To put that in perspective, GM had about 75,000 hourly workers before the bankruptcy. We could have given each of them a cool $250,000 and still come out well ahead compared to the ultimate cost of the bailout including the tax breaks--and over $100,000 a piece if we just wanted to break even against our losses on the common stock. ...

GM Makes a Big Profit: Time to Celebrate?
...Okay, let's not get too excited here. GM sold off big stakes in Delphi (formerly its captive parts supplier) and Ally Financial (formerly its capital arm) to generate the bulk of that profit; the company's not making record money because it sold three times as many cars. GM is still excessively dependent on big incentives and fleet sales to move cars off of its lot, which means that despite quality enhancements made possible by the bankruptcy (which lowered fixed costs, and allowed them to put more money into making cars), their brand still hasn't recovered from decades of neglect. And while later in the post, Cohn makes it sound as if GM has suddenly turned itself into the world's premier small-car maker, it is still heavily dependent on the same old gas guzzling SUVs and trucks that have been shoring up GM profits for decades as foreign competitors steadily eroded their car sales. Right now in America, small cars are largely an economy business, which means that unless you can command the sort of quality premium that Toyota and Honda get--and I think the reliance on incentives shows that GM can't get that sort of markup--it's still very hard to make money in that space....