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So you are arguing that without that capital Musk would not have been able to raise money from the private sector?

• twblalock 8y ago
  Yes, definitely. It would have been a very hard sell at that time.
  • resters 8y ago
    Perhaps, but if you consider that shortly after most of the automakers would go bankrupt, Musk would then have been in a very powerful position and would easily have been able to find private capital to help him extract the most useful 20% of value from some of the bankrupt companies for use by Tesla. Private investors did not want to invest in outdated infrastructure and overburdened pension programs, which is why the government bailout was "needed" in the first place. But if bankruptcy had been allowed to proceed, the best bits would have gone to the highest bidder, and Musk was well positioned to become the highest bidder.