The bailout is inevitable! It has to happen for the government. What is cheaper? Throwing a $40m-$50M bone to the automakers to get their act together, retool them to make a cleaner, more fuel-efficient BETTER product OR let it die and watch 3,000,000+ people industry-wide lose their jobs. The unemployment/welfare tab on that one alone, over time, might be waaaay more than $50M.

As with the other recent bailouts, it would be an investment we would all (hopefully) reap the benefits from in the future, although I wouldn't hold my breath. If you are not a fan of government interference, then this would be a bad bailout for you. That's what is going to HAVE TO HAPPEN. All facets of the industry will have to change, but the primary focus will be busting the unions, unfortunately. The unions have played a very large part in the industry's demise, much like the airline meltdown that has seen THAT industry cave in over the past decade (people flying airplanes into buildings notwithstanding). Given the stubborn-ness and pride of unions, this is why the bailout might be doomed to fail. HUGE concessions will have to be made by the UAW and that is simply not likely to happen. At some point, though, a union member must look in the mirror and ask themselves "would I rather take a concession to save my job (career) or just screw it and let the f#$%er burn". For the record, I am a union employee...I am sure I do not sound like it, but I am! The bottom line is, if you don't study history, then you are doomed to repeat it. The UAW should take a quick study of the current plight of the airlines and realize that some of their problems can surely be avoided with some common sense practices currently not being employed. The average salary of an airline pilot has probnably gone down 35-40% over the past four years and retirement plans have been decimated. Has it helped the industry???? Well, airplanes are still in the air, despite the fact that fuel costs have more than doubled in that time period...at some point, something has to give! Pilots realised that cutting off your nose to spite your face doesn't bode well for job security. That being said, the quality of their product is pathetic, at best. The airline "experince" is a shadow of what it used to be in the good old days.

I digress...bring on the bailout, but with a REALLY good, forward thinking plan that highlights a transformation to fuel cell and hybrid technology, responsible pay and benfit packages for union employees going forward and upper management payscales that depend soley on company performance.