I know, I know. The bailout worked and all headlines today present GM as having its best year since this and that. But here is raw data that you won't see in many places:

в—Џ GM sold 2,595, 717 units in the Unites States during 2012; this is an 11% drop of the almost 3,000,000 units GM in 2008.

в—Џ GM U.S. sales in 2012 is lower and worse than any of the eight years Bush was in office.

в—Џ In December 2008, when the world was collapsing, when we were at the boiling point of the crisis, when we needed to save GM no questions asked, GM sold 221,983 units. How bad was it? Well, in 2012 in the midst of the great recovery, when "the bailout worked" as per Obama ads, GM sold only 245,733 units. Yes, that's correct: the difference between the worse times for GM vs "its best months in five years," is a mere 23,750 sales!

в—Џ If you replicate this 23,750 difference for a whole year, it still does not give GM enough sales to catch up to their 2008 level.

в—Џ Total 2012 sales of vehicles in the Unites States from all firms combined were 14.5 million units. Indeed, this is better than the 13.3M units sold in 2008, but the 2012 sales are worse than all other Bush years.

в—Џ These numbers will make your liberal friends go totally crazy: Total U.S. 2012 Auto Sales (all firms combined) are up 9% from 2008, but GM is down 11% in the same period. In plain Yiddish this means the firm that got most of the auto bailout, went the other direction from the industry overall. While the industry as a whole under Obama had one year better than Bush (2012 vs 2008), GM's best year under Obama is worse than the worst year under Bush.

Perhaps now more people will take note that the bailout was about saving over-contracted unions who ran GM finances, not the firm itself, into the ground.