Maybe the United States government began selling too soon.  In a report released on Thursday, former Senator Ted Kaufman, head of the bipartisan Congressional Oversight Panel, said the Treasury Department’s sale of General Motors shares — at 26 percent below the price needed to recover taxpayer assets in full — may have been premature, locking in billions of dollars in losses,  Likewise, he said, the Treasury sold its stake in Chrysler Financial so hastily that it might have fallen short on due diligence and missed out on getting more money from the deal.  While the Treasury’s actions were in keeping with Washington’s stated reluctance to be a shareholder, Mr. Kaufman emphasized that the government’s aims were sometimes contradictory, adding that its hands-off approach may have failed to maximize shareholder value.  Those contradictions, he said, made it difficult to determine whether the measures taken were successful.  Mr. Kaufman said the nature of the government bailouts after the financial crisis had only strengthened the perception that certain corporations were too big to fail, providing a clear incentive for excessive risk-taking and putting more prudent management at a disadvantage.  “Very large companies now have good reason to believe that they are immune from the usual rules of the market,” Mr. Kaufman said, “that no matter how badly they mess up, Uncle Sam will bear the consequences of their mistakes.”  The report stated that “there can be no question that the government’s ambitious actions have had a major impact and appear to be on a promising course,” citing among the Treasury’s several goals the preservation of American jobs.  But the report also said that the policy contradictions inherent in the government actions meant that while “Treasury’s ‘hands off’ approach may have reassured market participants about the limited scope of government intervention, it may also have forced Treasury to leave unexplored options that would have benefited the public.”  Mr. Kaufman, who succeeded Elizabeth Warren to head the panel, chose not to run to keep his Senate seat in a special election in Delaware last year, a vote that handed Chris Coons a victory over the Tea Party candidate Christine O’Donnell. Mr. Kaufman became a senator by appointment in 2009, replacing Joe Biden, whom he had long served as an aide and chief of staff.  His was one of the most critical voices in the debate over the financial sector that led to the Dodd-Frank regulatory overhaul passed last summer.
The Treasury's sale of shares in bailed-out auto sector companies may have come too soon to maximize value and recover taxpayer funds, the Congressional Oversight Panel said in a report.