A Brief History of General Motor

General Motor (GM), the world’s largest car maker for 77 years until 2008, filed for Chapter 11 protection this morning, the same day its fellow car maker Chrysler could exit bankruptcy. The bankruptcy filing is expected after GM failed to reconstruct its debts with bondholders before the June 1 deadline imposed by the government. In the filing, GM said it had $82.3 billion in assets and $172.8 billion in debts. When GM is bankruptcy protection, U.S. taxpayers will again lend the company $30 billion to help it reorganize.

Following is a short video from MarketWatch that shows a brief history of GM.

BTW, Dow Jones announced today that Travelers (TRV) and Cisco System (CSCO) will replace Citigroup (C) and GM, two private companies that have received the most bail out money from the government, in the Dow Jones Industrial Average Index respectively.