As GM Gets a-Moving (in a Chevy Cobalt!) Toward Bankruptcy, Let's Ask Whether Taxpayers Should Bail Out the Makers of the Pontiac Aztek…
To ask that question is, Glaucon, to answer it.
If GM can just get a few more line workers to help push it into bankruptcy court, that's where they'll almost certainly be by the end of the week. So says The Week, which quotes Reuters scribe Matthew DeBord as writing that a feller must "have a cold and mercenary character" not to be saddened by that outcome.
As a relatively satisfied Buick owner, color me Stealth Grey Metallic cold and mercenary. I feel bad for all the folks who are going to lose their jobs in the inevitable downsizing of the company, but come on already, GM is a company that for decades extracted all sorts of extra money (via direct and indirect subsidies, bought-and-paid-for legislators and egregious labor agreements, and so much more) from me, you, and every goddamn taxpayer on the planet. Time for GM to follow Woolworth's (and Woolco, the Andrew Ridgeley of discount retailers), and A&P, and thousand thousand other once-great companies into the void. Or Chapter 11, assuming they actually don't simply use congressional muscle to screw over their actual creditors.
Watch Reason.tv's Bailing Out the Big Three:
And watch yours truly debating GM bankruptcy on CNBC's Power Lunch: