Color me skeptical:

After a planned GM bankruptcy, during which the company will seek to shed burdensome debts, the U.S. and Canadian governments will own 72.5 percent of the reorganized automaker. In addition, GM will owe the United States about $8 billion.

The United States could recover most of that investment by 2013, when, sources said, a Treasury projection shows the company would reach an equity value of $75 billion.

The government share, by then slightly diluted, would be worth about $46 billion. The $8 billion debt would have been repaid, and the government would have reaped billions in preferred-stock payments. Sources said the estimates are constantly being refined.

So government bureaucrats, who are spending other people’s money, are sanguine about the government “investment” in General Motors. By contrast, investors who are spending their own money are fleeing for the hills: the GM stock price has been in free-fall, closing the week at 75 cents a share. If the company’s recovery under nationalization were such a sure thing, wouldn’t the stock price be increasing, not decreasing?

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