Quote from AAAintheBeltway:
I highly doubt it offsets a $20 billion loss. Like obama, you assume without the bailout, all those jobs and factories would have just disappeared. It's highly likely they would have been taken over by someone who could have run them profitabley, albeit without the crippling union contracts.
I actually acknowledge that this is a tough one. Hard to prove a potential negative. And, there are many subjective points involved. I don't assume we would have lost all of Detroit manufacturing, and I'm not sure that Obama thinks that either. We may be better off without Union contracts, especially all the debt involved with the retirement funds. $10-$20 billion could come back from the stock price, and it could come back from taxes going forward. Again, just difficult to prove the what-ifs or could have beens.