.

GM lost $10 billion three years ago during boom times. GM will not suddenly become healthy by taking money from working people as taxes and giving it to GM. These companies MUST restructure. If bankruptcy is what is required to get management and UNIONS to be reasonable then so be it.

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GM and Chrysler need new owners and new management in order to get going again. They also need a new deal with the unions. All of this can happen with a bankruptcy. It is not so that everything will close down permanently. It will close down at the start of the bankruptcy but much will start up again with new owners, management and new deals with the unions or no unions at all. Helping fundamentally unhealthy firms will just cost more taxpayers their money and cripple the government’s resources to solve other problems.

The government could perhaps offer short-term loans to assist the financing of other US firms taking over the healthy pieces from GM’s and Chrysler’s bankruptcy estates.

The bailout money in the current deal will be used entirely to pay redeeming debt at GM and Chrysler. This money will never be paid back to the taxpayers they will just minimize the expected loss for GM's and Chrysler’s creditors when the inevitable bankruptcy is declared. Pelosi’s idea that this money will be paid back somehow a few months later is hilariously naïve.

@ | Dec 6, 2008 11:11:57 AM and Henrik

Your way of thinking has been proven tragically wrong. It has failed utterly. The result, the county, and indeed, the world is now spinning into the abyss. No one knows what the true path is, but it is not your path.

Your patron saint, Alan Greenspan, has been shown by events to be a dangerous ideologue, no worse, a charlatan.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/23/AR2008102300193.html?nav=rss_politics/congress

Except:

Alan Greenspan, once viewed as the infallible architect of U.S. prosperity, was called on the carpet yesterday, pilloried by a congressional committee for decisions that contributed to the financial crisis devastating world markets.

"You found that your view of the world, your ideology was not right, it was not working?" said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), the committee chairman.
"Absolutely, precisely," Greenspan said. "You know, that's precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well."

It’s now a matter of survival. You reap what you sow.

Clear your mind of pass foolishness. Think of something that will work. The alternative and your punishment for your wrong thinking mindset is sure, …yes … rooming the streets like hungry dogs with your muzzles in the garbage cans of the more fortunate.

Giving money to GM is total waste. There ain't enough market for all three of them. The GM divisions should be sold off.

@DS

A world full of sellers, a buyer ne'er be found.

Lord... Is it too early to demand Pelosi's resignation?? What a pathetic sideshow she's running. The next four years are going to make Chuck Barris look like a piker.

"Department of Energy loan program intended for retooling factories to develop advanced fuel-efficient vehicles. GM and Chrysler could instead use the money to survive"

Translation ... they get to have the money, but not make fuel efficient cars, and don't have to market an electric car using the technology they are keeping off the market ...

The American public is getting scammed by "big Auto" once again.

The very foundation of our free market is the survival of the most fitted. If the Big-3 (and their overpaid spoiled workers and managers) cannot compete without huge bail outs, they should be allowed to fold naturally. That's how the game is played.

Others (more fitted) will learn and quickly rise to take their place. That's how our wild free market works.

Limited financial support to transition from ICE to e-vehicles and keep ahead of outside producers is fair game.

To give those guys $$ B in tax payers money to keep them going deeper into their old inefficient ways should be proscribed.

At least one (and even two) of them should be allowed to fold naturally to make room for (new) more efficient players.

Like all other major industries, there is no "free market" for the automotive industry. Japanese companies have long benefitted from currency subsidies and home market non-tariff barriers. Korea has been following the Japanese model (strangely the Japanese are somehow unable to compete in Korea). China, India, Thailand, Brazil, Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Indonesia, etc. all have policies designed to promote their local producers at the expense of foreign-based firms. The only free markets generally are those too small to be of interest to big money. Thus, "free markets" is generally a sales pitch from those who don't want their particular set of barriers, subsidies, or tax situation (usually breaks) to change. The U.S. would be very foolish to allow the Detroit 3 to fail based on an economic ideal very remote from what actually exists.

Andy, take a look at Wiki “right to work”.

28 states “… have "union shop" labor laws, which required all new employees to join the union after a minimum period after their hire. Under "union shop" rules, employers are obliged to fire any employees who have avoided paying membership dues necessary to maintain membership in the union; however, the union cannot demand that the employer discharge an employee who has been expelled from membership for any other reason.”

This is exactly where Big3 is traditionally situated.

22 states have “…"open shop" rule, an employee cannot be compelled to join or pay the equivalent of dues to a union, nor can the employee be fired if he or she joins the union. In other words, the employee has the right to work, regardless of whether he or she is a member or financial contributor to such a union.”

“For example, in recent years all of the new auto factories have been located in right to work states. Moreover, they contend right-to-work states typically have lower unemployment rates.”

“Many companies — especially foreign-owned — say they will not even consider such locations for new sites. States with "right to work" laws that make union organizing more difficult had twice the job growth of Ohio and other forced union states from 1995–2005, according to the National Institute for Labor Relations.”