Reason Writers Around Town: Matt Welch Debates Dean Baker on Letting the Big 3 Go Bankrupt

On Day Three of an L.A. Times auto-bailout dust-up, economist Dean Baker warns that allowing the Big 3 to go through "uncontrolled bankruptcy" could "suddenly" erase 8.4 million jobs in Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio. Reason Editor in Chief Matt Welch responds that companies with valuable assets and products routinely emerge intact at the end of bankruptcy proceedings, and that "the federal government should be a referee, not a kingmaker, establishing clear and simple rules and procedures for industry and otherwise getting the hell out of the way. One of those procedures is the controlled force of bankruptcy."

Read the whole thing here.