Your General Motors bonds aren't worth much any more

— -- Q: What's going to happen to my $300,000 of General Motors bonds?

A: I'm afraid I don't have good news for you.

All the publicly traded shares of the old GM and the bonds issued by the old GM were moved into the Motors Liquidation Co., whose fate, and the fate of your bond investment, is going to be determined in bankruptcy court.

Mostly likely, the company will sell what assets it has, and the proceeds will be paid to creditors, including bondholders. Its extremely difficult to know how much bondholders will get when this is completed. It's fair to suspect that what you get will be well below what you invested, but I wouldn't want to hazard a guess on how much lower it will be.

You can read answers here to frequently asked questions about the bankruptcy and what it means.

You can keep up with bankruptcy proceedings here.

In the meantime, if you don't want to wait to see what the recovery will be, you can contact your broker. There's a chance the broker might be able to sell some of the securities at a significant discount if you need immediate cash.

But this might incur too much of a loss for you, and you might have difficulty finding a broker who can do it for you at a reasonable commission.

Matt Krantz is a financial markets reporter at USA TODAY and author of Investing Online for Dummies. He answers a different reader question every weekday in his Ask Matt column at money.usatoday.com. To submit a question, e-mail Matt at mkrantz@usatoday.com. Click here to see previous Ask Matt columns. Follow Matt on Twitter at: twitter.com/mattkrantz