Delay The Inevitable

It's not that GM, Ford and Chrysler might be headed for bankruptcy. For all intents and purposes, they already are bankrupt. And there's no reason to think that throwing a bunch of money at them will change that.

However, and I haven't seen this point made anywhere, there's something to be said for postponing their inevitable bankruptcy filings. The 25, 50, 75, or 100 billion bucks the Detroit manufacturers want won't do anything to change their awful labor contracts or fix their product mixes or help them dump a few thousand crappy dealers, but it will allow them to blunder on a couple more years.

And considering the shit-storm of financial disaster that's currently going on, simply keeping Detroit out of bankruptcy court for a couple of years may be a good enough argument in favor of giving them the money. With any luck, things will have calmed down by 2011 and then we can deal with the collapse of Chrysler, Ford and GM with something approaching calm. Okay, I'll settle for within-a-billion-miles-of-calm.

But ultimately, all three companies will need to be restructured and that probably has to be done through bankruptcy.

Just. Not. Now.