General Motors' bankruptcy and government bailout

General Motors entered the 2008 financial crisis already weakened by years of declining US market share, high labor and pension costs, and a product lineup slow to adapt to rising fuel prices, leaving it with little cushion once auto sales collapsed alongside consumer credit. Starting in December 2008, the Treasury Department extended a series of emergency loans under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, ultimately totaling more than $19 billion, to keep the company operating while it developed a viability plan. When that plan proved insufficient, GM filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on June 1, 2009, and its viable operations were sold within about a month to a new entity formed by the Treasury, which took a 60.8% equity stake in exchange for further government financing. The government spent roughly $49.5 billion in total supporting GM and gradually sold down its stake, exiting completely in December 2013; a government audit later found taxpayers had lost more than $11 billion on the investment, though the intervention is widely credited with preserving hundreds of thousands of jobs across the US auto-supply chain.