Car Companies Fall Apart; There's Little Left To Save.

I had been strongly in favor of governmental intervention to save the old-line American car companies. So much of the industrial economy of the upper Midwest is dependent on auto manufacture. And I've argued that the US desperately needs to stay in the car business, because it is where the research and development frontier will be. Indeed, with the spread of car culture to China, South and Central Asia, Africa, and Latin America, it looks very much like this 21st century will be the era of the automobile.  But now it looks like governmental intervention will only make matters worse for the US. It will burden the manufacturing economy with antiquated autos and hobble the ability of the private sector to innovate and build cars people want here and abroad. GM will survive as government motors, building autos designed to pay unionized workers high wages and to meet policy goals that defeat the purpose of automobiles. The company will be burdened with horrendous debt, debt so great that the company will have to be subsidized forever. Chrysler is going to be broken up. It would be better to start over with a simple, deregulated industry and market so investors will have a reason to start new car companies, and so car companies can find what sells and begin to develop new kinds of personal transportation that meets car needs in the new overseas markets. But have no doubt; the feds won't let this happen. And the government will find policy measures to compel Americans to buy government cars they don't want. If you look around, the big cross-over vehicles, the SUVs, the Hummers, the light trucks, and so on are very popular. They are what people bought and wanted (and were enormously profitable to the companies). But the Left, the Democrats, and the parties enthused about lifestyle regulation never asked why such vehicles were/are economically good investments, why consumers were wanted to spend so much money for these vehicles. (They never watched families or wage earners or independent contractors work, so they wouldn't know why these vehicles sold.) And so we walk down the path of throwing taxpayer money away. Europe and Britain walked down this road a generation ago as old English car makers started to fade away. Government ownership won't work.