You know the Bare Naked Ladies song with a similar title? If I had a billion dollars to spare and an enormous sense of charity, here's what I would do:
Buy a controlling interest in GM and shut it down. Their market capitalization (as of this writing) is a little under $2.5b -- considerably less than, say, Bed Bath & Beyond. So for a mere $1.25b, one could control 51% and vote to liquidate.
GM is going out of business. They are bankrupt even if a bailout masks this fact. The question is, how much collateral damage will be done in the process of their failing?
I would argue that keeping them alive past their viability date is much more harmful than letting them go under now. They won't consume taxpayer dollars indefinitely. Their assets (brands, employees and facilities) will move to other firms who can better utilize them.
Megan McArdle points out that GM's sales forecasts are dropping, making their business even less viable than it was when they got their bailout a month ago. So the bailout is becoming more wasteful every day. It's taxpayer money being burned.
Practically speaking, a single person needn't buy up a 51% stake. Maybe a handful of civic-minded raiders could make it happen -- call Carl Icahn.
Even better: 1.2 million individual donations of $1000 each. I'm in.
And talk about multipliers: this $1.2b investment would save taxpayers tens of billions in current and future bailouts. A 10x multiplier! Someone call the President-elect...
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