--- title: U.S. Sells Off Last Major TARP Investment in Ally description: U.S. taxpayers made around $2.4 billion in the Ally investment, but auto bailout cost $10 billion in total canonical: https://time.com/3641804/tarp-treasury-department-ally/ author: Alex Rogers article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-12-19T16:01:18.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T03:00:50.751Z article:section: Politics og:title: U.S. Sells Off Last Major TARP Investment in Ally og:description: U.S. taxpayers made around $2.4 billion in the Ally investment, but auto bailout cost $10 billion in total og:url: https://time.com/3641804/tarp-treasury-department-ally/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: U.S. Sells Off Last Major TARP Investment in Ally twitter:description: U.S. taxpayers made around $2.4 billion in the Ally investment, but auto bailout cost $10 billion in total twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # U.S. Sells Off Last Major TARP Investment, 6 Years On > Sponsored content. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, three times a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. by [Alex Rogers](https://time.com/author/alex-rogers/) ## Alex Rogers Dec 19, 2014 4:01 PM UTC by [Alex Rogers](https://time.com/author/alex-rogers/) ## Alex Rogers Dec 19, 2014 4:01 PM UTC The U.S. has finally sold off its remaining major investment in the Troubled Asset Relief Program, six years after beginning to bail out auto companies, banks and financial institutions in the depths of the Great Recession. The Treasury Department announced Friday that it will sell its remaining stake in Ally, the former financing division of General Motors, capping the end of its last major TARP investment and the auto rescue program. Treasury touted that selling the nearly 55 million shares netted $1.3 billion for taxpayers, and $19.6 billion overall after spending $17.2 billion on Ally. However, the government’s overall losses on the $85 billion auto industry bailout were about $10 billion, [the Detroit _News_ reports](http://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/2014/12/19/ally-financial-government-exit/20633063/). After former President George W. Bush signed TARP into law in October 2008, the U.S. poured hundreds of billions of dollars to stabilize banking institutions, AIG, the auto industry and families facing foreclosure. “The Auto Industry Financing Program helped save the auto industry, more than one million jobs, and prevent a second Great Depression,” said Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew. “Thanks to President Obama’s leadership, our economy has rebounded from the depths of the financial crisis and is now creating jobs at the fastest pace since the 1990s. There is more work to do, but as we exit the last major financial investment, it’s important to take stock of the progress we have made, and the critical role TARP and the Auto Industry Financing Program played in getting us to this point.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3641804/tarp-treasury-department-ally/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3641804/tarp-treasury-department-ally/"},"headline":"U.S. Sells Off Last Major TARP Investment, 6 Years On","datePublished":"2014-12-19T16:01:18.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T03:00:50.751Z","description":"U.S. taxpayers made around $2.4 billion in the Ally investment","url":"https://time.com/3641804/tarp-treasury-department-ally/","keywords":["Treasury","Recession"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Alex Rogers","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/alex-rogers/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/politics/","name":"Politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/treasury/","name":"Treasury"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3641804/tarp-treasury-department-ally/","name":"U.S. Sells Off Last Major TARP Investment, 6 Years On"}}]}] ```