Below The Beltway

Just over a month after it filed, General Motors, now effectively a subsidiary of the United States Government, has emerged from bankruptcy protection:

General Motors completed a major step in its turnaround on Friday and closed the sale of its good assets to a new, government-backed carmaker, at a speed unimagined by auto and bankruptcy experts even six months ago.

The government and G.M. signed the documents at 6:30 a.m. at the offices of Weil, Gotshal & Manges, the company’s chief bankruptcy counsel, according to a person briefed on the matter, after a bankruptcy court order staying the sale for four days expired on Thursday. G.M. will hold a news conference in Detroit, hosted by its chief executive, Fritz Henderson, and its new chairman, Edward E. Whitacre Jr., later Friday morning.

G.M.’s sale of its desirable assets, including brands like Chevrolet, Cadillac and GMC, to the new company — now named Vehicle Acquisition Company but soon to be renamed the General Motors Company — is meant to shed decades of buckling liabilities. The federal government will hold nearly 61 percent of the new company, with the Canadian government, a health care trust for the United Auto Workers union and bondholders owning the balance.

The new company will be much smaller, with brands like Saturn, Hummer, Opel and Pontiac in the process of being sold or closed. It will also have a smaller sales network, with thousands of dealers having been cut during the reorganization.

Whether this new G.M. can survive is still very much an open question, and the fact that it will be saddled with government oversight isn’t going to help at all, especially not if everyone follows this excellent recommendation from Daniel Ikenson at Cato:

Enough. Show Congress that you won’t comply and that you won’t be pawns. Boycott GM. Boycott GM until the government relinquishes its grip on the company’s decision making process.

Sounds good to me.