When the U.S. Treasury and General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM) announced that GM had repurchased 200 million shares of Treasury-owned stock, the Treasury said it would sell the remaining 300 million shares it owns in the next 12 to 15 months. Today the government took the first step along that path, announcing that it has begun “a pre-arranged written trading plan” to get rid of the GM shares.

At today’s GM share price of $29 or so, 300 million shares are worth about $8.7 billion. The Treasury received $5.5 billion from its December sale to GM. The federal government poured $49.5 billion into GM in 2008-2009, but won’t recover most of that unless GM stock should suddenly triple in price.

Today’s announcement from the Treasury department claims that the government has so far recovered $387 billion of the $418 billion (about 93%) it distributed under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).

GM’s shares are down about 1.1% today, at $29.16 in a 52-week range of $18.72 to $30.68.

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