This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, May 11th, 2011. I'm Caleb Brown.

The slow denationalization of GM hasn't quite made taxpayers whole and probably won't for some time and it screwed up all sorts of

incentives and it raises questions about how Toyota has been treated the last couple of years.

Far from a success, the Cato Institute's Dan Eichenson says it's time for the government

to get out of the auto business.

GM has had several profitable quarters in a row, and some people are saying, look, once again, isn't it time to go ahead and call this one a

success a good job uh... to presidents bush and obama

yeah bailout enthusiasts and government interventionists want to use GM's profitability as the

metric by which to gauge the efficacy of the bailout.

And they say, isn't it time we call this a success?

The Obama administration bailed out the US auto industry.

Well, they bailed out GM and GM did have a very profitable quarter.

It's had five profitable quarters in a row.

It was 3.2 billion dollars but a lot of that profit was from a one-time

sale of shares in Ally Financial, its Financial Arm and a one-time sale of Delphi, its parts division. I think 1.8 of that 3.2

billion was from that sale. But that's not the real metric here.

We're not, it's easy for a company, even one with a

bad historical track record like GM in terms of performance to do well when the

government comes in with cash infusions and and all sorts of supports and and

rebate programs and extinguishes debt. and

extinguishes debt. So that's not the right metric.

We need to look at the overall costs and there were lots of costs to the industry

...