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I am normally not a fan of bail outs...but, They paid something like 150 bil in taxes last year, so I don't see a loan of 34 bil (or even 300 bil) much of a problem. If they go bust, the taxes they turn over back to the gov will be zero and the gov will have to PAY more than 34 bil to the workers in form of some kind of aid.
Jeeeez they gave AIG 700 bil and didn't bat an eye, most people in this country could not tell me who AIG was but I bet they know who GM is.
I think the reasons for the collapse of the auto industry is being morphed into something that it really isn't. Yeah they ain't selling cars but it is not because people don't like the cars they are producing as congress is saying, it is paying for them that is the problem. If you are worried about loosing your job the last thing you do is buy a new car. IMO a lot of people were leveraging their homes to buy a car, this got out of hand and when the homes caved they stopped buying cars. It is not because of fuel prices (if so they would be buying now)
IMO the quality of similar priced cars is roughly the same these days. I am 52 and owned both Fords (3 explorers), a few GMs (chevy(3), cadi(3), GMC yukon xl(2)) toyotas (land cruiser(3), seinna(3) minivans), volvos(2), saabs(1) and a mg (1). IMO in general quality has improved nearly every year some more than others but in general they are all very reliable and far better than in the 70's. In my experience it is more expensive to repair foreign cars than domestic and I have had slightly more problems with foreign cars but the worst being volvo (pre ford), but never had any super-major problems with any of them.
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